Preferably a linux “flavor” thats more MacOS like in aesthetic, but that also has good availabillity of apps and stuff?
I put Linux on an external 2.5 inch SSD in a USB 3.0 enclosure. That way I could disconnect the Linux drive if I needed to boot Windows, that way Windows couldn’t accidentally bork my Linux install.
When I didn’t end up booting Windows for a month, I removed windows and installed Linux on the internal nvme drive. That was 18 months ago and I haven’t looked back
For me the only reason I don’t switch to linux is Flight Simulator 2020. Still not fully sure if it works correctly.
Install it on an old computer, if you mess something up you can just start over again.
Not the best option for everything but you can test distros online. https://distrosea.com/
Many (if not most) linux distros have a ‘live USB’ option, where you can boot into a fully functional system contained within a USB drive, without making any changes to your computer.
If all you want to do with it for now is ‘playing around with it’, then that would be a great solution. Lets you know how well it works on your hardware, doesn’t have the slowdown issues of a VM*, doesn’t require any drastic changes and has no risk of breaking anything.
*A live USB will still be a bit slower than a real installation in some respects, especially when it needs to read anything from storage, since USB storage is much slower than your hard drive.
This is the beat option. Also make sure if you’re considering fully switching to see if any of the software you’re using is supported on Linux or has an alternative.
not an answer to your question, but I personally never felt dual-booting or VM’s were a good way to get into Linux. If your experience is the same, you might enjoy just getting a different computer for Linux. E.g. you could get a raspberry pi to use as a Syncthing-server, or an old laptop if you have a stationary computer-
As for the aesthetic - if you’re new to Linux, you should not prioritize aesthetics when picking a distro. Find something reasonably stable and well supported, like Mint or Kubuntu, and play around with themes and such in stead.
VM’s are fine - the world runs on VM’s.
Dual booting is asking for a failure.
You have two options: create a new partition and dual boot, or run a virtual machine on windows to try it. The VM solution is the easiest, but it’s also a bit slower.
A VM is the best option for getting started. If you mess it up, you can just delete it and start over. Dual boot can be problematic because Windows actively tries to sabotage that. Another great way to get started is to find any old machine that you can just wipe and install Linux on.
Yep, x2.
Windows will get an update and actively fuck up your boot loader, if not worse.
Windows is like a petulant child that can’t be allowed to do group play with other kids, without constant supervision.
Bare metal dual booting is not worth it.
Hi, not OP. May i ask, can you briefly expand a little bit about windows trying to sabotage a dual boot? Since when is this happening? I remember having a dual boot some 7 years ago, but can’t remember any sabotage issues. Is this because of the now enforced bios updates and such?
With windows 10/11 after most updates you will get your boot partition overwritten… At least that’s what I read on different forums. I haven’t used windows on my personal PC for over 15 years.
There are all kinds of issues that are being reported after Windows updates. In my opinion it just isn’t worth the hassle. I tried dual booting for a while but I quickly got fed up. I absolutely would not recommend it for a beginner.
I recently replaced my laptop and would like to try mint on the old one. How would i go about wiping windows and installing Linux? I’m not super the savvy, but i am a quick study…
When you install Mint, it’ll deal with deleting windows on its own.
Installing it will be broken down mostly into:
- download the right version of Mint.
- make a USB to install ( it’s not just putting the file onto the USB)
- plug the USB into your old laptop, turn the laptop on, then follow the steps.
A much better guide (with pictures!) is https://linuxmint-installation-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
“Explaining Computers” is a great YouTube channel that covers Linux quite a lot. I think he recently did a video about installing Linux Mint. There’s plenty of this stuff around. Just search "installing your-distro-of-choice"and you’ll get plenty of content. I’d suggest watching a few of those before getting started.
Do i need any additional physical materials to do that like burning the installer to a disc or putting it on some bootable drive or something or can it all be done from the Windows side as is?
Based on your questions I would recommend the VM route. For that you don’t need any physical devices. You need to check if your hardware supports virtualization first.
Look up WSL2. You may have to enable it first, but it comes with Windows. It will be slower than running Linux on a dual boot, as you’re running Windows along with the virtual OS. Maybe faster than on a USB.
You should make a ventoy USB and install a few different distros on it so you can try them out and choose one you like the feeling of.
Then you use the live image to shrink your Windows partition, install your chosen distro on the remaining space, and Bob’s your uncle
If you have some money to spare buy the cheapest ssd and use that drive for linux and as your boot device.
But start with a vm first. It can’t be easier.
Using multiple OSes in parallel is called “dual booting” and it’s not too hard to do. (Another commenter mentioned VMs. Also possible, plus is no usb needed, but you get reduced performance and imo it’s more complicated to set up).
You need a blank USB stick (or one you don’t care about destroying data on). You can write an ISO to it using rufus. Or if you trust enough the author’s included binary blobs, you can use Ventoy which lets you multiple ISOs onto the flash drive, that you want to try on your PC more quickly. If you have a DVD drive that’s a classic option, but be aware that some newer ISOs have started going past the 4.7GB single layer limit. At startup mash the F2, F9, F10, F12 or Del key depending on your motherboard maker and choose to boot your boot drive or change its boot priority up. Alternatively from inside Windows, hold Shift and click Restart, and select the option to boot from your other device.
Now if you just want to play around for one session only to do a very cursory test of the look and feel, most ISOs come with a live environment which loads into your RAM and goes away when you power down.
If you’ve settled on one to have more persistently, go through the install menu and select the option to install “alongside Windows”, exact language varies by your distribution. The only thing to look out for is that if you see a message that says “If you continue, changes will be made to your disk”, or “your disk will be erased/formatted”, triple check that you select the “alongside” or “dual-boot” option because the latter message indicates that you didn’t and the OS installer is about to replace Windows entirely.
This is years ago, but elementaryOS was the most mac-like in my opinion. MATE desktop (GNOME2 successor) has a “Cupertino” customization preset that mimics macOS in menu styling. However, with any Linux OS, you can get the Plank launcher (the latest version seems to be under the “Plank Reloaded” name) to get the iconic mac appbar thingy.
Dual booting can get tricky when you try to remove the second OS or add a third, etc. suddenly you have to learn about EFI partitions and boot loaders.
Haven’t been dual booting in a while. How does secure boot work these days on Linux? I remember at one setup I had to go into bios whenever I swapped between them.
Last time i fiddled w it, i only had to go to bios once, set a admin password, register the linux shim key, then clear the admin password.
The usual options are live-usbkeys, dual-boot, and VM. All have their pros and cons. I’m not fond of any of them. Live keys are slow, windows updates occasionally break dual-boot. VM on a windows host is… blegh.
I’d suggest pulling your existing drive and shoving it in a drawer. It stays safe, ready for you to swap back at any time you want. Now you’re free to experiment all you want.
If you’re already comfortable with Windows, you can install that in a VM on your Linux host. That’s your crutch to fall back on until you’re comfortable with Linux. That would be my first significant Linux project if I were starting today instead of 20 years ago.
You could install and use WSL… Just depends on what you’re really wanting to do.
Yes, you can make your pc dual boot. Many guides are out there. Elementary linux is probably what you are looking for.
Ps:look up ventoy! An easy way to try different distro’s without making a new usb every time. You can store as many live iso’s as your usb key can hold an choose the one to run each time you boot
This has got to be the most “Linux user” answer. Q:“How can I…?” A:“yes you can, rtfm”. Have my upvote.
You make it sound like rtfm is a bad thing, while it helps to learn and understand.
But sure, it makes absolute sense to write the instructions here again! In full. I can do it so much better than the rest, and it keeps this post readable.
(I’ll take a pass on your upvote)
Don’t be so touchy, I just made a (to me) funny observation.
Also, instead of posting everything “here again, in full”, you could at least have given a link to one of the many guides you referred to. Or you could have not posted at all, since your answer supplied the OP with no additional information.
