I’ve used Windows my whole life, except for a 2006 Mac OS X I got when I was a kid, and I never thought about switching away from it. However, in recent times, I’ve grown to care more about FOSS and customizability, and I’m also a bit more tech-savvy than the average person, I’d say. As such, I’ve of course heard of Linux, and didn’t realize how simple it was to install certain distros until my brother installed Linux Mint on an old laptop he repaired. I want to play around with it and see if it’s something I’d be interested in, but at the moment I only have one computer, which is my laptop, and I don’t think it’d be a good idea to do a full switch over when all my important stuff is on here. As such, I’ve heard people talk about “dual booting” which from what I understand means having both Windows and Linux on the computer, and picking which to use on start up? This sounds like a perfect environment to play around with Linux, assign it like 50GB of space (Is that enough?) and see if I like it, but I’m very ignorant about a lot of things related to Linux, and don’t want to start playing around with something I don’t understand. Advice would be appreciated.
Sadly there’s a few too many replies for my busy self to respond to. I’ll say thanks for the help though, I appreciate it!
Depending on which Linux you go with, some Linuxes (Ubuntu, Mint, Debian, or Fedora) are able to utilize Secure Boot, which is a godsend if you’re dual booting with Windows 11. Before everyone in the linux community runs you over with “But Arch!”, I would suggest getting a USB Stick and making a Mint install stick first by downloading the preferred version of Mint Linux (I prefer XFCE because it’s super light and super fast, all the better for a laptop), download rufus (rufus.ie), make yourself a boot stick that is gpt/efi, booting on that, and from there, you can install Mint Alongside Windows (it has an option to do it automatically, or you can use the progran GParted, which should be on the “Live” desktop when you Try it) to resize Windows partition. Word of advice: Restart Windows, do not Shutdown, when you are going to boot on the stick, or it will not be able to do the resizing, and make sure to leave at least 20GB free with Windows if you manually resize, or you run the risk of breaking something by making the resized partition too small. Other than that, go full ham.
P.S. If there is a problem with Secure Boot after installing Mint, disable Secure Boot in your bios (uefi), and run the Updater in Mint. There was a bug in one of the versions where Secure Boot fails.
P.P.S. A lot of linux users are really salty and don’t like anything Microsoft and swear Secure Boot is pointless and a waste. Don’t listen to that, every Linux should support Secure Boot by now.