I'm using Inkscape 1.1.1 on an old iMac (2013-ish) with Linux Mint 20.2 installed.

I wanted to make a new shape using circles like how I used to in Adobe Illustrator. However, since there is no Shape Builder tool equivalent to be found I then stumbled upon videos on how to do something similar: Make circles, make sure to make them paths instead of objects, make sure they're overlapping, make sure they have no fill and only a stroke, make a rectangle or square, make sure that is filled, make sure that's a path, lower it so that it's below the circles, select everything, go to the Path menu, and press Divide, and it should divide your rectangle along the paths of the overlapping circles. This doesn't happen in my case though. It deletes the other two circles and only cuts a circular hole in the rectangle as you can see in the svg. Is this a bug or human error here?

BTW, I tried to search for similar issues on here, but apparently the search function of this site is broken. I search for 'Path', no results, 'Bug', no results, almost anything I try to search for either gets no results at all or like four or five. I guess it could be my browser (I'm currently using LibreWolf.), but it's pretty annoying nonetheless.

Before using Divide, try
1) Select all paths but the rectangle
2) Path>Combine
3) Proceed by selecting the combined path and the rectangle -> Path>Divide

Steps are:

1. Draw circles as many as you like - no conversion needed because you

2. select all and go Path->Combine

3. draw rectangle larger than the circle arrangement and "important"; put it under the circle combination (Object->Lower to Bottom)

4. select all and go Path->Division - select and delete the rectangle-with-hole

Here´s to a sneak peek to the upcoming shape-builder tool for Inscape: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d22FmeJJc8g