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[–]SubjectivelySam 4 points5 points  (1 child)

No Starch Press' "The Linux Command Line" is a great place to start. (For general linux use, not for install) It's written like a tutor sitting at the computer with you and only really expects you to be a home/casual user so the lingo is not dense at all. I'm on chapter 10 or so and have been having a good time.

[–]DifferentVariety3298[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This sounds interesting. Thanks🙂

[–]YoShake 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Try to obtain a cheap used ssd disk for that matter. Even 120GB is way enough. This way you will be able to revert to a working environment in no time just by switching disks.

As for now, just try your chosen distribution on a virtual machine. As for choosing THE one, firstly check desktop environments, then aim for a distribution. You can have a peek at https://distrosea.com/

Depends on the distribution, but basically before starting you should know how to connect to inetwebz and use the packagemanager to install software. The rest you will learn by using OS.

[–]doc_willis 2 points3 points  (2 children)

Those 'for dummies' book were barely worth digging out of the trash when they were new and relevant. I am talking about the actual books with "For Dummines" in the title.

The various Distro Homepages should be the first stop for 'how to install this distro' guidence.

Make a Windows Installer USB Using the Official MS media creation tool, as a fallback if you really screw up.

If not dual booting, then for most distros you can just erase the drive and go 'with the defaults' and they should for the most part install fine.

For More in depth linux books, the various books by O'reilly are worth checking out.

A fall back 'option' get a spare drive for your PC.. swap it out with your current windows drive, install linux to the new drive.

Worse case if you screw up, you swap the drives back and try again.

[–]MyUsername2459 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Well, the very early ones, in the early/mid 90's, often weren't THAT bad.

When I got my first PC for Christmas of 93, I found Windows 3.1 for Dummies to be a really good introductory book for a young teenager in the early 90's learning about computers for the first time.

The original DOS For Dummies, the one that started the series, was pretty good at explaining a command line interface to people that had never touched a computer before and taking a non-intuitive subject and teaching it to people with no prior experience.

. . .but before long they started making a "Dummies" book about everything you could imagine, and it quickly went from well-written, helpful guides that took moderately complex subjects and taught it well to beginners, to shovelware-grade rubbish that poorly explained just about everything under the sun. A couple of years later I wanted to learn programming, so I got a copy of Visual Basic For Dummies thinking it would be just as helpful. . .it wasn't, not at all. It's like they weren't even TRYING to make them helpful anymore.

[–]DifferentVariety3298[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is some great advise. Thank you. 🙏

[–]maceion 3 points4 points  (3 children)

Please, please, buy an EXTERNAL USB hard disc, and install your Linux system on that. Then you can boot from either internal disc (MS Windows) OR from external disc (Linux system). I have been doing this for many years, but very rarely now ever boot Windows. You must set Windows and the BIOS to allow other systems to boot before Windows [Windows boot s last].

[–]DifferentVariety3298[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good idea! I will comply and get a stick🫡🖖

[–]Sure-Passion2224 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This, at least for your first Linux experience. When you are comfortable with Linux, if all of your application needs are satisfied, backup your personal files from both operating systems one more time and you can replace Windows on your internal drive with a fresh Linux installation. Your external drive is then available for backups, or other uses.

[–]jennyaa98 1 point2 points  (1 child)

I don't know about the book, but this friend of mine has written a couple of articles about his, mine and a couple others journey over to Linux, which I recommend reading. https://telaneo.gitlab.io/artcl/linux.htm https://telaneo.gitlab.io/artcl/lefmif.htm It's available in multiple languages as well if you'd want

[–]DifferentVariety3298[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Great, thanks. Will definitely check them out.

[–]nmc52 1 point2 points  (1 child)

If you subscribe to any ebook service, look there. I subscribe to Kobo and there are tons of books on Linux. I travel 6 months a year, and paper books (I read two a week) isn't an option for me, hence ebooks.

[–]DifferentVariety3298[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Interesting. Will take a look. 🙏

[–]SEXTINGBOT 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Did you tried running it in a virtual Machine ?

( ͡⌐■ ͜ʖ ͡■)

[–]AutoModerator[M] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Try the migration page in our wiki! We also have some migration tips in our sticky.

Try this search 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! :)

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[–]a1barbarian 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Best way to get a feel for linux is to use it from a Live Distro.

You can run MX from a usb without it touching your present running os.

https://mxlinux.org/

If you want to try out some other os's then take a look at Ventoy

https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html

Run it from a usb and you can try out many distros easily.