1. Is there a difference between mining and running a node?
2. How does one go about setting up a node?
1. Mining gives you bitcoin. Running a node does not.
2. Running A Full Node:
https://bitcoin.org/en/full-nodebookmarked, thanks
I suggest going to bottom left of thread and hit lock. It will stop people from answering this for days like some threads.
Just scroll all the way down and bottom left should say lock. Hit it and it will lock thread.
im not that new, i know how to close a thread