Linux
A community for everything relating to the GNU/Linux operating system (except the memes!)
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Oh didn't see that one, thanks! Of all the advice there did anything stick with you and help in the end?
I have been using some of the learning resources, specifically this one https://linuxjourney.com/. I hope the video recommendations are helpful to you but I am kicking myself for not adding "also I really hate watching videos and would prefer to read something" to my original post. I have not actually made the switch yet, I want to back up my files first. Bought a new external hard drive with enough space. It was nonfunctional. Had to send it back for a warranty replacement and am waiting on the new drive to show up. Will reply again if I remember once I actually manage to switch over.
EDIT: I haven't forgotten this. They refunded me instead of sending a new drive, so that's another wait period waiting for a good one made by someone else to go on sale…
Alright, I went and installed Linux! I honestly have not looked at most of those resources since I made the post but I plan to as needed—the thing that I took was a user's advice on which distribution (Nobara) for my specific use case. In case we have the same use case: I was replacing a Windows computer that I only used for video games (none of which are online multiplayer games or have anticheat, sometimes those might be incompatible with a Linux install?) and BOINC/Folding at Home. If I hate it or have too much trouble I'll try another distribution.
One thing I can tell you is a couple things I learned during the installation process. Only later did I find https://www.howtogeek.com/693588/how-to-install-linux/ which would have helped me hit less bumps in the road. (Mainly because I was looking at https://wiki.nobaraproject.org/ and saw the two steps about downloading ISO and creating a usable USB device. I already had the ISO, so I moved onto creating a bootable USB device on my own and failed at that. Ended up finding the howtogeek guide which helped me with the USB device later.)
- I am an idiot who thought doing https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server-essentials/install/create-a-bootable-usb-flash-drive dumping the ISO on a flashdrive was enough before reading that howtogeek guide. It is not. I learned the hard way I had to use https://rufus.ie/en/ on the ISO (if you're smarter than me you can figure out what that actually does to make it bootable lol). That linked tutorial does work though.
- Because I was migrating from a Windows 11 machine, I needed the flashdrive in fat32 so UEFI could read it, not NFTS.
- Finally, I got "the volume is too big for fat32" or something like that when trying to format to fat32. I tried to look up if I could just make a smaller partition on my flashdrive that was fat32, no answer found. So I just did it. Yes, you can indeed just make a smaller fat32 partition that is big enough to hold your Linux install.