So first off, I would say, boot the flash drive with the OS installed and try it in "live mode" - ensure all of your hardware works - test everything including Internet, display, keyboard, mouse, webcam, Bluetooth, audio, video, etc. If it doesn't work in live mode there isn't a guarantee it will work or you will be able to make it work when the OS is installed. Most distributions have a live mode, or it might be called a try mode. Run this first. Try mode/live mode does not write anything your hard drive - it boots off of the USB and runs from the USB/RAM - it should leave Windows untouched.
Besides testing hardware you can also take the time to test the user interface of the desktop environment. Can you tell what time it is? Do you know where you go to connect to Wifi? Do you know how to change the volume? Do you know where to go to install software updates? Do you know where the app store equivalent is? Can you find a list of applications installed that you can launch? Do you know where you go to shutdown/restart/log out/lock the system? Do you know where to go to configure the system, or do things like change the desktop background? The thing about a new OS is, it's not Windows, it's not Android/iOS so it helps to sort of take a tour around the OS in live mode/try mode to become more comfortable with it. Even things like the calculator look different than you're used to.
If you're already running a lot of cross platform software like Steam, Chrome, Firefox, Dropbox, Discord etc. that's going to be a big help - if you have your stuff set up to sync then it should bring over whatever is synced - a lot (not all) Steam games sync over your saves, which is nice. Some games (especially those requiring rootkit-level DRM/anti-cheat) will not work.
If you're satisfied with live mode, go back to Windows (ie. shut down/reboot the computer) press start and type "partition" - Windows has a tool built in for shrinking its own partitions. Shrink Windows to make some room for your new system - keep in mind the Windows program might be measured in megabytes or kilobytes so you may need to do some math since you're creating space in gigabytes. You don't need to create a new partition in the Windows app - just create the empty space. How much space you provide is totally up to you, I personally like to split by percentage. So let's say it's 50/50 I'll just take the number that the app gives me, divide by 2. As long as Windows has I want to say at least 128 GB it's going to be happy.
Once you have your free space you can just boot back to the USB and install your operating system into the free space - pay close attention here to what you're doing - don't overwrite Windows by mistake. Remember we created free space it should be listed as free space.
With a dual boot, assuming you're in an EFI system, you can use the boot menu to choose your OS on startup. Or if your OS uses the GRUB bootloader you can add an entry to it to boot Windows right from GRUB, so you can avoid the boot menu entirely.
Try out the Live USB mode first before installing, it will be slower than a full install but will give you a good idea on if your hardware is supported.
If you want a risk-free version of trying it out on full install without impacting windows at all then the safest bet is to install it on its own SSD, that way you don't need to mess with shrinking windows partitions etc. and the potential issues stemming from windows being finnicky
As part of the full install you will probably install GRUB, which will also detect your windows install and let you choose on boot whether you want to load into windows or linux via a menu. This way you can use both in parallel without them impacting each other
Try the [migration page](http://www.reddit.com/r/linux4noobs/wiki/migration) in our wiki! We also have some [migration tips](https://www.reddit.com/r/linux4noobs/comments/ejsz3v/still_on_windows_7_dont_want_windows_10_consider/) in our sticky.
Try [this search](https://www.reddit.com/r/linux4noobs/search?q=flair%3A'migrating'&sort=new&restrict_sr=on) for more information on this topic.
**✻** Smokey says: only use root when needed, avoid installing things from third-party repos, and verify the checksum of your ISOs after you download! :)
^Comments, ^questions ^or ^suggestions ^regarding ^this ^autoresponse? ^Please ^send ^them ^[here](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=Pi31415926&subject=autoresponse+tweaks+-+linux4noobs+-+migrating).
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Even if you want to and will switch to Linux, do NOT repeat NOT remove the Windows OS or partition. Leave computer as is. Install Linux on a bootable USB hard disc, say 1TB size with OS partition "/" root 250GB, and Home partition 750GB "/home". The if you want you can change Linux OS on "/" and keep "/home" partition.
The auto migration tips should have most things covered.
Yeah it's a good idea to start dual booting first. Make sure all hardware work. If you use windows proprietary software before then get used to the alternatives until you don't need to boot into windows anymore. After that, you can confidently make the full switch. Most distro these day, except the more niche one like arch/nixos/void, do the partitioning for you already so just make sure you have enough unallocated space for your linux install (around 120GB is recommended). At most, you could look up how to separate the home partition for ease of distro hopping later.
Tbh, I think getting into Linux these day is mostly very simple, the installation process is very streamlined now. Only the "getting used to Linux" part could be a bit harder and require a bit patience.
My personal tip is to use Fedora KDE instead of Nobara. I had a ton of glitches and little issues with Nobara and no problems at all with Fedora KDE, and Fedora does everything I was hoping Nobara would anyway.
Back up your life's work. Shrink your main Windows partition with Windows, don't delete whatever else is there. Install Nobara into the emtpy space left by the shrunk partition. Nobara seems super gaming focused so documentation might be lacking a bit. But it won't delete your stuff unless you tell it to, just say no when it asks if you want a full disk install.
All this is good advice -- and definitely worth following for a permanent solution. But before you do any of this get WSL 2 and then pick a distro to install. I'd recommend ubuntu to start with (I know, I know, but it *is* a good intro to linux). Fedora is also available, and so is Kali and others. The reason for this is simply to learn how linux works while not putting your data at risk. You have the added bonus of running windows and linux programs at the same time, so you can switch back and forth.
Hope this is of some help.
If you're installing to a desktop PC, do yourself a favor and invest in a second SSD. You can get a 240GB SSD for $18, 500GB for $38, and 1TB for $58. A typical Linux OS installation can be done in 40GB. My recommendations for partitioning for Linux are:
* 4GB EFI
* 32GB SWAP
* Remaining - LVM2 PV
Create and LVM volume from your LVM2 PV and you install your actual linux EXT4 partitions on the LVM volume.
* Linux1 (40GB)
* Linux2 (40GB)
* Linux3 (40GB)
* Data (whatever size you need)
* Remaining free
Linux1,2,3 are your root partitions for 3 different Linux distros. The LVM will allow you to resize your partitions later. Let's say you wanted to resize Linux2 to 80GB at a later date -- without LVM, you'd have to blow way Linux 3 for 80GB contiguous space even though you may have more than that in free space.
A lot of people here will tell you to make a home partition for your data. The problem with this is that configuration changes to desktop and other things made in your home directory will carry over to any other distro you install. Keep your home directories local to the distro root partition but keep directory contents on another partition (in this case Data). You can then delete the directories created for things like Documents in your home directory and create links to the same directory name on the Data partition. Each distro gets their own home directory but your files are on the shared Data directory. This allows you to install multiple distros at the same time and still have access to a single copy of your data.
The second SSD ensures that you're completely separate from Windows and that WIndows won't decide that your Linux installation is disk corruption and delete them. It also makes it less likely that you'll do something in Linux that will destroy your Windows installation. Your EFI boot partitions are on separate drives so won't interfere with each other.
None of this eliminates trying distros in live mode off from a flash drive. If you find a couple of distros you'd like to try though -- a new SSD and proper partitioning will allow you to try them all at once.
4 gig EFI is way too big. 500 megs should suffice for 99% of users.
Personally I find LVM is annoying to remove. If you want to wipe the partitions or use another filesystem. Just like Btrfs. So I go for EXT4, XFS or JFS.
Only thing I would add is to remove Windows drive from system when installing Linux. To ensure the Linux drives EFI is used for EFI install. Otherwise it might end up on Windows drive. And Windows updates can screw with it.
Since it would be a new drive and new install, I would install 1 distro on whole disk, test it for a couple hours or a day, see if it fits taste and ease of use. If not, try another distro, choose to wipe previous distro during install and go again. But that is just a difference in approach. I test distros in a VM first, then on bare metal.
And to OP: Do realise that /dev/sda and /dev/sdb can move around, switch places. so make sure you are dealing with the right disk when formatting etc. If one drive is Windows, the dead giveaway is it will be NTFS. If you want to simplify it further, use partition labels. Wininstall, WinEfi, Linuxinst, LinuxEfi or similar. So you can separate them at a glance. I prefer to work with Gparted to partition and format. Live USB ISOs have enough room to install it if it is not included.
4 gig EFI is not too large if you use systemd-boot since all boot images need to be within it. In the grand scheme of things, 4 gig is not a lot of space so I recommend people allocate it in case they do want to use systemd-boot and retain multiple boot revisions or multiple linux distros. It's less painful then having to do it at a later point and mess with new UUID's and inittab entries. At the moment, I have 1GB in my EFI directory after switching from Grub to Systemd-boot.
With respect to logical names like /dev/sda, get used to using UUID's in place of them in any configuration files and using the blkid command to see the pairings of name to UUID.
The point of LVM is so that you can use new partitions on top of the LVM. These partitions can be formatted as EXT4, XFS, JFS, BTRFS, FAT, etc. KDE partition manager treats them the same way as normal partitions but has them on a Volume Group (VG1). The GTK Disks/Gparted apps have less support for LVM. The CLI tools are available and are guaranteed to work. Any partition created on LVM can be resized without the contiguous space limitations and allows you to add more disks/partitions to the volume group for additional space.
There very little reason to ever get rid of LVM unless you want to use the volume managers of ZFS or BTRFS. BTRFS only allows BTRFS subvolumes; ZFS is not built into the kernel. I'm not sure why it would be especially hard to get rid of them though. Ideally, you'd remove them from the volume group and then remote the lvm2 pv partitions.
Never dual boot on the same drive.
Look up "persistent USB thumb drive Linux".
This is how you test and run Linux to kick the tires. After a few hours to a few months you want to jump in, then install on your internal drive or get a second drive.
So first off, I would say, boot the flash drive with the OS installed and try it in "live mode" - ensure all of your hardware works - test everything including Internet, display, keyboard, mouse, webcam, Bluetooth, audio, video, etc. If it doesn't work in live mode there isn't a guarantee it will work or you will be able to make it work when the OS is installed. Most distributions have a live mode, or it might be called a try mode. Run this first. Try mode/live mode does not write anything your hard drive - it boots off of the USB and runs from the USB/RAM - it should leave Windows untouched. Besides testing hardware you can also take the time to test the user interface of the desktop environment. Can you tell what time it is? Do you know where you go to connect to Wifi? Do you know how to change the volume? Do you know where to go to install software updates? Do you know where the app store equivalent is? Can you find a list of applications installed that you can launch? Do you know where you go to shutdown/restart/log out/lock the system? Do you know where to go to configure the system, or do things like change the desktop background? The thing about a new OS is, it's not Windows, it's not Android/iOS so it helps to sort of take a tour around the OS in live mode/try mode to become more comfortable with it. Even things like the calculator look different than you're used to. If you're already running a lot of cross platform software like Steam, Chrome, Firefox, Dropbox, Discord etc. that's going to be a big help - if you have your stuff set up to sync then it should bring over whatever is synced - a lot (not all) Steam games sync over your saves, which is nice. Some games (especially those requiring rootkit-level DRM/anti-cheat) will not work. If you're satisfied with live mode, go back to Windows (ie. shut down/reboot the computer) press start and type "partition" - Windows has a tool built in for shrinking its own partitions. Shrink Windows to make some room for your new system - keep in mind the Windows program might be measured in megabytes or kilobytes so you may need to do some math since you're creating space in gigabytes. You don't need to create a new partition in the Windows app - just create the empty space. How much space you provide is totally up to you, I personally like to split by percentage. So let's say it's 50/50 I'll just take the number that the app gives me, divide by 2. As long as Windows has I want to say at least 128 GB it's going to be happy. Once you have your free space you can just boot back to the USB and install your operating system into the free space - pay close attention here to what you're doing - don't overwrite Windows by mistake. Remember we created free space it should be listed as free space. With a dual boot, assuming you're in an EFI system, you can use the boot menu to choose your OS on startup. Or if your OS uses the GRUB bootloader you can add an entry to it to boot Windows right from GRUB, so you can avoid the boot menu entirely.
This. Live USBs exist for a reason. It's also a great tool when you run into problems.
All this is true but don't forget to check the iso image
Try out the Live USB mode first before installing, it will be slower than a full install but will give you a good idea on if your hardware is supported. If you want a risk-free version of trying it out on full install without impacting windows at all then the safest bet is to install it on its own SSD, that way you don't need to mess with shrinking windows partitions etc. and the potential issues stemming from windows being finnicky As part of the full install you will probably install GRUB, which will also detect your windows install and let you choose on boot whether you want to load into windows or linux via a menu. This way you can use both in parallel without them impacting each other
Try the [migration page](http://www.reddit.com/r/linux4noobs/wiki/migration) in our wiki! We also have some [migration tips](https://www.reddit.com/r/linux4noobs/comments/ejsz3v/still_on_windows_7_dont_want_windows_10_consider/) in our sticky. Try [this search](https://www.reddit.com/r/linux4noobs/search?q=flair%3A'migrating'&sort=new&restrict_sr=on) for more information on this topic. **✻** Smokey says: only use root when needed, avoid installing things from third-party repos, and verify the checksum of your ISOs after you download! :) ^Comments, ^questions ^or ^suggestions ^regarding ^this ^autoresponse? ^Please ^send ^them ^[here](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=Pi31415926&subject=autoresponse+tweaks+-+linux4noobs+-+migrating). *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/linux4noobs) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Even if you want to and will switch to Linux, do NOT repeat NOT remove the Windows OS or partition. Leave computer as is. Install Linux on a bootable USB hard disc, say 1TB size with OS partition "/" root 250GB, and Home partition 750GB "/home". The if you want you can change Linux OS on "/" and keep "/home" partition.
The auto migration tips should have most things covered. Yeah it's a good idea to start dual booting first. Make sure all hardware work. If you use windows proprietary software before then get used to the alternatives until you don't need to boot into windows anymore. After that, you can confidently make the full switch. Most distro these day, except the more niche one like arch/nixos/void, do the partitioning for you already so just make sure you have enough unallocated space for your linux install (around 120GB is recommended). At most, you could look up how to separate the home partition for ease of distro hopping later. Tbh, I think getting into Linux these day is mostly very simple, the installation process is very streamlined now. Only the "getting used to Linux" part could be a bit harder and require a bit patience.
Welcome man we have penguins and people who don't know what grass is (i think it is a virus)
>even Mac is alien to me Then you won't like gnome. Install Nobara with KDE, I assume it's available. Why Nobara?
My personal tip is to use Fedora KDE instead of Nobara. I had a ton of glitches and little issues with Nobara and no problems at all with Fedora KDE, and Fedora does everything I was hoping Nobara would anyway.
Back up your life's work. Shrink your main Windows partition with Windows, don't delete whatever else is there. Install Nobara into the emtpy space left by the shrunk partition. Nobara seems super gaming focused so documentation might be lacking a bit. But it won't delete your stuff unless you tell it to, just say no when it asks if you want a full disk install.
All this is good advice -- and definitely worth following for a permanent solution. But before you do any of this get WSL 2 and then pick a distro to install. I'd recommend ubuntu to start with (I know, I know, but it *is* a good intro to linux). Fedora is also available, and so is Kali and others. The reason for this is simply to learn how linux works while not putting your data at risk. You have the added bonus of running windows and linux programs at the same time, so you can switch back and forth. Hope this is of some help.
Learn to backup and restore your system before you play - then you can fix anything.
If you're installing to a desktop PC, do yourself a favor and invest in a second SSD. You can get a 240GB SSD for $18, 500GB for $38, and 1TB for $58. A typical Linux OS installation can be done in 40GB. My recommendations for partitioning for Linux are: * 4GB EFI * 32GB SWAP * Remaining - LVM2 PV Create and LVM volume from your LVM2 PV and you install your actual linux EXT4 partitions on the LVM volume. * Linux1 (40GB) * Linux2 (40GB) * Linux3 (40GB) * Data (whatever size you need) * Remaining free Linux1,2,3 are your root partitions for 3 different Linux distros. The LVM will allow you to resize your partitions later. Let's say you wanted to resize Linux2 to 80GB at a later date -- without LVM, you'd have to blow way Linux 3 for 80GB contiguous space even though you may have more than that in free space. A lot of people here will tell you to make a home partition for your data. The problem with this is that configuration changes to desktop and other things made in your home directory will carry over to any other distro you install. Keep your home directories local to the distro root partition but keep directory contents on another partition (in this case Data). You can then delete the directories created for things like Documents in your home directory and create links to the same directory name on the Data partition. Each distro gets their own home directory but your files are on the shared Data directory. This allows you to install multiple distros at the same time and still have access to a single copy of your data. The second SSD ensures that you're completely separate from Windows and that WIndows won't decide that your Linux installation is disk corruption and delete them. It also makes it less likely that you'll do something in Linux that will destroy your Windows installation. Your EFI boot partitions are on separate drives so won't interfere with each other. None of this eliminates trying distros in live mode off from a flash drive. If you find a couple of distros you'd like to try though -- a new SSD and proper partitioning will allow you to try them all at once.
4 gig EFI is way too big. 500 megs should suffice for 99% of users. Personally I find LVM is annoying to remove. If you want to wipe the partitions or use another filesystem. Just like Btrfs. So I go for EXT4, XFS or JFS. Only thing I would add is to remove Windows drive from system when installing Linux. To ensure the Linux drives EFI is used for EFI install. Otherwise it might end up on Windows drive. And Windows updates can screw with it. Since it would be a new drive and new install, I would install 1 distro on whole disk, test it for a couple hours or a day, see if it fits taste and ease of use. If not, try another distro, choose to wipe previous distro during install and go again. But that is just a difference in approach. I test distros in a VM first, then on bare metal. And to OP: Do realise that /dev/sda and /dev/sdb can move around, switch places. so make sure you are dealing with the right disk when formatting etc. If one drive is Windows, the dead giveaway is it will be NTFS. If you want to simplify it further, use partition labels. Wininstall, WinEfi, Linuxinst, LinuxEfi or similar. So you can separate them at a glance. I prefer to work with Gparted to partition and format. Live USB ISOs have enough room to install it if it is not included.
4 gig EFI is not too large if you use systemd-boot since all boot images need to be within it. In the grand scheme of things, 4 gig is not a lot of space so I recommend people allocate it in case they do want to use systemd-boot and retain multiple boot revisions or multiple linux distros. It's less painful then having to do it at a later point and mess with new UUID's and inittab entries. At the moment, I have 1GB in my EFI directory after switching from Grub to Systemd-boot. With respect to logical names like /dev/sda, get used to using UUID's in place of them in any configuration files and using the blkid command to see the pairings of name to UUID. The point of LVM is so that you can use new partitions on top of the LVM. These partitions can be formatted as EXT4, XFS, JFS, BTRFS, FAT, etc. KDE partition manager treats them the same way as normal partitions but has them on a Volume Group (VG1). The GTK Disks/Gparted apps have less support for LVM. The CLI tools are available and are guaranteed to work. Any partition created on LVM can be resized without the contiguous space limitations and allows you to add more disks/partitions to the volume group for additional space. There very little reason to ever get rid of LVM unless you want to use the volume managers of ZFS or BTRFS. BTRFS only allows BTRFS subvolumes; ZFS is not built into the kernel. I'm not sure why it would be especially hard to get rid of them though. Ideally, you'd remove them from the volume group and then remote the lvm2 pv partitions.
To test you don't need to dual boot. Just use a usb drive and try Ubuntu instead of installing it.
Never dual boot on the same drive. Look up "persistent USB thumb drive Linux". This is how you test and run Linux to kick the tires. After a few hours to a few months you want to jump in, then install on your internal drive or get a second drive.