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[AzyWng]

I can’t say my laptop hasn’t suffered from its own problems with Windows 10, and yeah, plenty of the things that Microsoft’s doing now are pretty sketchy as it is...

Which has go me considering installing a Linux OS.

Thing is, I still want to be able to play games on my laptop. I know there’s programs that let you do that - (WINE) comes to mind - but I’m still a bit afraid of what changing OSes will do -can I still keep things like photos?

Anything I should know before installing Linux in general?

[ChairmanPoo]

I'd backup everything. Best way to go around this is to repartition the hard drive. . You can do it without a backup resizing the partitiion but hat might threaten data stability -caveat emptor.

You might if you want make a big partition with a format compatible with both linux and windows, a smaller partition for linux, and preserve the windows partition, or alternatively, split the windows partition and use the splint to make two partitions for linux*, one for OS and another for data. I did that in my old netbook. Done correctly it allows you to boot in whichever OS you prefer at a given time. WINE will work with many games, but not all games, and not all will perform as well as they would under windows. Go with native games if you can.

*it's better to keep the OS and the data in separate partitions. Among other things it makes installing a new distro over the old one simpler, and helps preserve your data

[pisskop]

I went with the easy way.  Linux Mint and reinstalling windows on my computer.  I moved all my datas to a hard drive, and mint is easy to learn.  Plus I now get a convenient grub menu to boot, and keep a spare install disk around.


One day Ill go full Arch, but for now this works.  Plus Linux is not windows, so there's that major boon.


P:

https://www.linuxmint.com/

Id go and use an old computer if possible.  I put the program onto a usb and installed from that.  Used the boot menu to set the usb to load, and an option on the usb to delete windows.

[Il Palazzo]

Do you like driving splinters under your fingernails, and then acting all smug towards splinterless persons?

But more seriously, even couple years back, when I flirted with Linux, there were many streamlined and user-friendly distros available. You can expect all the Windows-standard formats of photos, videos, sound files, archives and docs to be supported.

What you need to get ready for is two things:

1. Having to consciously choose, install, and/or manage your everything, because Linux community would never dare to force any single standard on you. You can get some well-rounded distros with many pre-installed utilities and ease-of-life features, that can take the edge off of it. But inevitably there will come a time when you need some specific tool, or there's some missing driver or other, and you'll have to search through and personally configure seventy bazillion poorly described downloads to get what you need.
You'll get the first taste of this when choosing a distro - there's like a million, and everybody's got their favourite. So you either choose at random, or spend an afternoon or two reading about them and weighing your options. Then installing one, deciding it's not what you wanted, and repeating the process.

2. While the day-to-day operation should be rather painless and even satisfying in a smug way, once you encounter a more serious hardware or software problem e.g. with configuring your network, there won't be any easy, Microsoft-grade solutions. Any problem you had in Win 10 will be significantly harder to solve in Linux. You'll have to git gud. Learn the lingo, learn the console commands, and drive that splinter full length in.
But then again, that's kinda the point of going Linux.

[Maximum Spin]

1. Having to consciously choose, install, and/or manage your everything, because Linux community would never dare to force any single standard on you.

It is pretty clear that you haven't been in the Linux community for a few years now. The whole Systemd fiasco is a good example of how this is no longer the case at all.

[wierd]

Linnart Poettering and Pals and the SystemD that ate the kernel are indeed a thing, but so is Devuan.

that means the observation still stands.  The part I disagree with is that it is a splinter under the fingernail. While it certainly does reinforce the "smug arseholes" angle to say this, for those of us that were already "gud", it was a sigh of blessed relief to take those sweaty mittens off, not a painful jagged splinter level of pain, when switching. The only pain was trying to constantly find ways around Microsoft's nanny-level meddling.

Granted, most people are not terribly into computers.  Don't misunderstand me, they certainly like computers, but they are not "into" them.  EG, people might like driving a sports car, but they are not a "Car Person", if you know what I mean.

Linux was, and still very much is-- an OS made for hardcore enthusiasts. It has more options, more configurability, and more access than anything microsoft has ever dreamed of releasing since DOS.  For people that just want to use it to check facebook, it is not really what you are looking for in the general sense, but there are some very nice daily driver oriented distros, like Mint. Even those though, are very much "Hey, lets make our enthusiasts distro a little more friendly!" in their implementation; A veneer on top of that more arcane assemblage that presents a friendly front on top of the complexity underneath.  If you ever really need to actually fix something, you will be up to your elbows in that complexity before you know it. I would actually (shudder) steer people toward OSX rather than Mint, if only there was a good windows API implementation for OSX like there is with Linux. (There was once a project to make wine work with OSX, but it died, IIRC.)

So, if you do not mind learning about that complexity under the hood, (or even, COVET being able to get into that complexity without the userland actively trying to pop you on the wrists and saying naughty naughty at you) then linux is probably going to be a good fit for you.  Otherwise? Hrmm...  OSX is the most mature alternative OS.

[AzyWng]

1. Having to consciously choose, install, and/or manage your everything, because Linux community would never dare to force any single standard on you.

It is pretty clear that you haven't been in the Linux community for a few years now. The whole Systemd fiasco is a good example of how this is no longer the case at all.

The Systemd fiasco? What happened there?

In any case, I’ll probably need to be walked through/handheld through the process of installing if I ever do get around to it, since I’m a bit worried about messing up my laptop. For instance, I’m a little worried (well, kinda terrified) of the proespect of fiddling around with partitions.

[wierd]

Basically, what started as yet another alternative to system V init, became the init that consumed everything else.

SystemD does more than start all your services on power on, or manage your running services. It also mangles your log files for you, is required for basically anything and everything on many modern distros due to incessant feature creep, and removing it and replacing it with some other init is not realistically feasible on those distros due to developer dependence on systemD's apis.

Basically, it represents the opposite of user choice-- where the person running the system decides what software to run, and how to run it-- and instead represents developer choice, where the developers choose what software you **WILL** be running, without giving you the option.

But again, I said things like devuan exist.  (which is a fork of debian, where systemd has been purposefully and explicitly excised with prejudice and vindication.) The fact that such things exist re-asserts that the linux world is about user choice-- when efforts to remove that choice are undertaken, efforts to forcibly restore that choice are also undertaken.

See also this friendly article
https://www.infoworld.com/article/3159124/linux/linux-why-do-people-hate-systemd.html

[Il Palazzo]

I warned you about lingo bro. I told you dog.

[monkey]

For gaming, if you have Steam last week Valve released Steam Play Beta https://steamcommunity.com/games/221410/announcements/detail/1696055855739350561 (kinda like a prepackaged wine)

Most games are working, https://spcr.netlify.com/

[AzyWng]

I warned you about lingo bro. I told you dog.

Y-you didn't tell me it ran this deep... 

Now I'm a lot less certain in my decision...

[George_Chickens]

Just dual boot a Ubuntu based distribution for ease of use and use it to learn. You can build up your skill and move on to harder things if you want once you're comfortable with it. I recommend Linux Mint, as it runs very smoothly and tends to require the least out of the box configuration.

The idea that you'll have to do all sorts of crazy command like shit just to fix minor problems is wrong, btw. Most of the casual desktop use distros have had means to fix things without having to solely use the command line for several years.

[wierd]

while not TRULY indicative of the actual user experience, what you CAN do to help with your decision is to boot the install dvd in "live dvd" mode, and just poke around on it, and in general, do stuff that you think might make the OS break.

This would give you a "feel" for it, so you can decide if you think you could handle the switch or not, without actually installing anything.

("Live DVD mode" basically uses a temporary ramdisk as the "writable" storage for the OS, with all of its system files and such run directly from the DVD, and presents a more or less "actually usable" instance of the OS that you can test drive doing various things. Just that nothing gets actually written to any disks, and so when you shut it down, everything goes *poof*, and is not retained-- Each boot of the live DVD is "fresh, out of box experience".)

[Il Palazzo]

Yeah, with live CDs (or DVDs, or USBs) it's super easy to toy with being a Linux-person without any serious commitment.

[AzyWng]

Yeah, with live CDs (or DVDs, or USBs) it's super easy to toy with being a Linux-person without any serious commitment.

Good to know. So, what do I need to do to Dual-boot, anyway? I have no idea how to access the BIOS on my laptop...