Technology

I've recently been dabbling with Linux for the first time, so here's a few things I've found along the way.

First, look at whether you can disable secure boot. Most computers can, but as I've recently discovered on my laptop, the option just isn't there for some motherboards. If you can't or don't want to for whatever reason, it's not the end of the world, you'll just need to pick a distro that supports secure boot, I know Ubuntu does, and I believe a few of the other more popular ones do too.

Next, grab a few distros to try out. You may want to look into recommendations if there's anything specific you want to do. For example, I wanted to make sure gaming setup was as straightforward as possible, so I looked at distros that were tailored towards that. Create some bootable USBs and spend a few minutes just looking at each to get a feel. You'll pretty quickly decide whether or not you like a distro, there's really no point spending more time with one if there's something that puts you off from the get-go.

Dual boot is the way to go until you feel like dropping Windows entirely, if you can. And if there's something that just isn't going to work on Linux, it's good to be able to just jump across to Windows for that purpose. The only annoying thing I've found is that Windows updates can break the dual-boot partition, so just be aware of that. If it happens, it's not that difficult a process to repair it.

Other than that, Linux isn't that different from other OSes in how you'll probably use it. There are a few different ways you can install programs due to the different distros, so you'll want to look at things like how to install a flatpak. For Windows programs, you can look at whether you can get it running in Bottles or a VM if you don't want to bother rebooting.

It’s not like it used to be where you absolutely needed to know command line and memorize them. It hasn’t been that way for at least a decade now.

Most Linux distros look identical to Windows that the average user would assume it’s Windows with a different skin.

And with WINE and Proton, Windows apps (except Windows Store apps) can be run with little to no issues in many cases.

The biggest obstacles are going to be:

• Choosing a Linux distro, which can be fun in some ways
• Making some apps compatible or finding an alternative if it doesn’t already exist there or isn’t compatible with a translation layer like Proton
• creating the USB to install, but this has been made a lot easier in the last decade and the installation process has been simplified on many Linux installations

I’m currently on KDE Neon which I love. Thinking about moving over to it fully on other computers too.

I’d say getting a distro with KDE Plasma is a good thing if you are accustomed to Windows.

GNOME if you are more accustomed to Mac.

Just in the way it looks and behaves. KDE Plasma feels a lot like Windows 7/10.

Some good distros to try with this would be KDE Neon, Zorin, or SteamOS. There are others out there to try.

YouTube is fantastic for any setup questions or just to follow for a painless experience.

The only difficult part is getting Linux on to a USB stick. After that, you boot your computer from the USB stick and click next, next, next until it's done. It's super easy.

There are guides how to burn a iso file with the Linux distinction to a USB stick too. Just start there, see if you can do that as step one.

As for Linux distro, pick something common and easy, like Pop OS or Fedora.

In my opinion Linux is now easier to install than windows. The installers don't have any user hostility built-in, nagging you for Microsoft accounts or activation keys or any of that crap. Once it's Installed you could park your grandma in front of it and she'd be able to figure out how to surf the web.

If you're interested, start here