I’ve wanted to go over to Linux for a long time but I have no idea how to go about it. I hear about incompatibility problems with hardware and all the different options for different Linux OS’s and that’s it, I forget about it for a while to avoid the headache.
So where do I start? I don’t even know how to choose hardware or what to look for. The number of options with Linux makes things a little confusing.
And although others here have answered the question before, I’m unsure what I have to do to stay ‘safe’ on Linux. Are there extra steps or is it just the standard, don’t open dodgy links and turn off Java script in the PDF viewer kind of thing? Does Linux come with a trustworthy firewall/antivirus/malware detection? Is there a chance of Linux e.g. sending my passwords, etc, to someone or just letting someone into my harddrive? I hear that ‘open source’ means people can check the code but how do I know if someone has checked the code—I wouldn’t know what to look for myself.
I followed the Linux subreddit but the users the can be rather… enthusiastic, which is great, but I need something far more basic to get started lol.
Is there a good step-by-step guide somewhere? Or can anyone give me some pointers/tips/advice?
I mainly browse, type, and read pdfs and other text files. No gaming, although I wouldn’t be opposed to it. No need to be mobile; laptops are terrible for my back so I always use an external monitor, anyway, so I won’t be using it ‘on the go’.
Edit: Thanks for all the advice. I got a machine up and running from a bootable USB.
Any others who read the comments here because they’re interested in trying out Linux – if you have Windows installed and want to keep it on your HDD/SSD, partition your drive within Windows. Then boot from the USB. You can partition your drive (and keep Windows) from the bootable USB but it’s a bit more complicated and it makes it harder to create a swap partition and a storage partition. I had to go back and forth a few times to figure this out.
Tl;dr: when you get into it, you will change distros like you change clothes, so it doesn’t really matter.
Theres no much to go wrong by picking popular choices (Ubuntu) and figuring out how to change it later.
I was going to continue, but I explicitly wanted to write the shortest post in the thread.
I went from an arch based distro to arch, in like 5 years.
Seeing as I’ve only changed my clothes once in that time span, checks out.
Can you turn the distro inside out at two and a half years to get a bit more use out of it?
There are distros made specifically for older hardware. They have simpler interfaces and use much less ram.
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/top-best-lightweight-linux-distros for example.
You can often revive older laptops with that’s stuff. :)
This looks great, thanks. In this case, I might ring round everyone I know to see if they have an old machine lying around.
I’m getting the impression that it’s quite easy to switch distros. If I do switch distros, do I need to start again every time or is there a way of saving my files?
That’s “partitioning” for you.
Most people split their hard/solid drives into, say, 10% core Linux, 10% Windows, 60% actual storage, 20% system stuff, like swap files, bootloader, etc
So when we decide to change, you only format the core Linux partition. You can also have multiple installations at the same time and alternate between them by restarting the computer. That’s usually under the umbrella of “dual-boot”.
It’s a beautiful rabbit hole, isn’t it?
Depending on how much of your windows parititon you use, the Ubuntu Live USB can move all the files to the same section of your hdd/ssd and create a small partition for Ubuntu (I think it needs 50gb), the swap memory(equal or slightly higher than your ram) and the bootloader (1 or 2gb is more than enough).
It does sound fun, I’ve got to admit.
Is it possible to do this without disturbing the Windows currently installed on the HDD, even if it’s not partitioned? I’m now thinking it might be possible to boot to USB, partition the drive, twice, move personal files to the storage one (labelled ‘/home’), install a distro to the other, then reboot to the drive and unplug the USB.
And just to be clear because the numbers are small enough to be both: are you talking storage rather than memory/ram? So swap memory and bootloader get their own small partitions as well?
Is bootloader only needed to set up a dual boot system? Or is the bootloader and swap memory to go on the distro partition?
Or, do I have this wrong and the swap memory does refer to ram? In this case, am I just reserving some ram to allow both OS’s to be ‘on’ at the same time?
Feel free to tell me I’ve completely misunderstood something!
Technically, you will “disturb” the current installation. But in practice it’s just piling all of the useful data together and freeing up a specific section of the disk for the other OS.
https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-dual-boot-windows-10-and-ubuntu-linux-dual-booting-tutorial/ This one should give you an overview on how it’s done. And contrary to my initial belief, you can do that from windows itself, you don’t even have to boot from the live usb for that.
Everything in that paragraph after the question also makes sense.
I’m talking storage. Swap is used as extra slower RAM if the physical RAM is not enough. And it’s also used for hibernation, where the system will dump everything from RAM into it before hibernating. The boot section is also very small. Mine is 1gb and I was annoyed because I thought it was too much.
This is my setup. 1gb bootloader, 100gb ubuntu, 16gb swap, 210gb windows, everything else is linux storage.
The bootloader is needed if it’s a linux only installation as well, I believe. They all live as different partitions.
I’m not the biggest expert here, so there’s room for criticism from other to the things I say, and maybe my knowledge is a bit rough at the edges for this stuff.
If you want a practical step to play with it, just pick any distro and create a liveusb, check how it works with your computer, check the network, audio input/output, camera, keyboard functions. If it all works, you can consider making storage space and installing it.
Thanks for this detail. I’m going to have a play around when I get the chance. This is all very helpful and I can see the advantages of using partitions like this.