Exchange home page template for another template

Hello WordPresses, I decided to try out wordpress locally via xampp, to finally start with that blog. Pretty quickly hit a snafu –

The default page, home page, where posts are displayed is itself a template I guess?

There is the alt page template that I like (can’t remember the exact name – something something “alternative”), but I cant switch it out for the default homepage template, unless I create a new page, apply that alt template and then designate that as my homepage, right? There is no way to change the default page template directly?