Pat

Interesting take. I definitely agree that the ease of “just do it in Windows” that comes with dual booting was a thing for me, in the years when I was dabbling and thinking about switching for good.

What finally motivated me was getting fed up enough with Windows and M$ to not care about possible collateral damage from switching full time to Linux. My switch was helped by the fact that I left a job with a lot of overtime work that needed to be done in Windows for corporate compatibility. Once I was free of that, my dependency on one or two critical Windows apps was gone, so it was easier to switch as well.

What I really enjoy is the freedom to keep exploring/learning/changing. I set up Home on a separate partition, so if I can distro-hop without too much downside,if and when I get bored.

Yep. Check out the ‘fuckai’ community for information on just exactly how far-fetched this scenario is.

Yes, exactly. You would choose your Linux distribution that has a “live boot” option, download the appropriate .iso file, and then make a bootable usb drive using that file, via software like Rufus. When that’s all complete, you would plug in the usb drive and reboot. (You may need to press a key or access your system’s BIOS settings to ensure your system boots from the usb as well - sometimes this is not automatic.)

The chosen OS will load directly from the USB and give you a chance to try it out. You may not have access to the data from your existing system in this mode, but you may not need that if you’re just kicking the tires.

This exercise also helps focus you more on what you actually need/want your system to be able to do. Most of my personal use is web browsing, media consumption, and basic documents and Linux is more than capable of delivering on all of that right out of the box.

If you get stuck on a step, there are probably hundreds of posts out there where someone had the same problem, so you should be able to find solutions to any problems that occur with some patience.

I have found the journey to be very freeing and rewarding, and hope you find the same.

I have several older laptops that would not perform well on windows 11 running Linux mint, Debian, Ubuntu with no problem. If you stick with distributions that let you try the os from a bootable usb first, this should increase your comfort level and help you feel better about your decision.

One note, depending on your laptop BIOS, you may have trouble booting a live USB. I experienced this with Ubuntu and Pop-os, but the issue is solved by creating the bootable USB with a GPT partition instead of the default MBR. The only reliable way I have found to do this is using Rufus on Windows, so keep in mind you may need a Windows machine around for this purpose.

Good luck and have fun!

Sounds like a great experience! Congrats.

I switched from full-time windows to full-time Linux with Pop_OS and haven’t looked back. I’m very happy with it and enjoy finding FOSS alternatives to my former go-to apps. So far so good. I’m also keeping an eye on Vanilla OS as that sounds like a very cool project that is headed to beta by summer.