A Layman's Guide to Linux

Howdy! Are YOU looking for an alternative to Windows? Do YOU have an older computer that can't make the jump to Windows 11 without a bunch of workarounds? Are YOU tired of Microsoft's data harvesting, forced online accounts, OneDrive integration, bloat, and AI ethics and implementation? Do YOU just want to try something new?

Then Linux might be a viable option for you!

This series of pages will provide some basic guidance for backing up your data, preparing your computer for a new operating system, creating installation USBs for both Windows and Linux, and installing your new OS. I will also explain a few basic things in Linux that may be foreign to you. I won't be reinventing the wheel, so wherever possible, I will link to other guides and explanations as well.

This guide will not be comprehensive, and it will assume that the reader is a Windows user. I have never used or owned an Apple product, and I am unfamiliar with the process of installing alternative OSes on MacBooks. The Asahi Linux project is working on making modern Apple Silicon work on Linux, and folks involved with that project can provide better information.

So, what's this whole "Linux" thing? I'm sure you've heard of it, but if you've not used it, you probably don't have a frame of reference for it. You may picture some ridiculous hacker nonsense like this:

The reality is not quite that exciting or cringe. Linux can kinda mean a couple different things. The first, technical, official explanation is that it's a kernel. That means that it's the bedrock for other OSes to be built upon. A kernel is the most essential instructions given to your hardware to do stuff. It tells your graphics card to display things on the monitor, it issues instructions to your RAM and CPU, and all sorts of other things.

Usually, though, when someone say "Oh, I have Linux on my laptop," they mean that they're using one of many, many operating systems built on the Linux kernel. Ubuntu is the most well-known one. Starting with the Linux kernel as its bedrock, Ubuntu has all the bits and pieces needed to use your computer! Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, and a bunch of others are different ways to build a computer system from a shared foundation, catering to different kinds of users, looking for different things from their computer. All of these different OSes are called distributions, or "distros."

If you want to install Linux, you'll need a few basic things to get started:

A Computer! (of course!)

A couple USB flash drives. One for installing your Linux distro of choice, and the other for reinstalling Windows in case you need to go back.

Backups of your important data, documents, photos and the like. When it comes to data backups, "Two is one, and one is none!" I recommend a couple higher-capacity flash drives, an external hard drive, and a cloud storage solution like DropBox or MEGA, to ensure you don't lose everything from a drive failure.

Patience and time. Don't do this in a rush. Give yourself a free weekend to figure out the initial installation and setup, and a couple months to learn and adjust to to change. Be kind to yourself and show yourself some grace!

Ideally, keep a spare computer on standby running Windows, in case you need an emergency fallback option. If you only have one computer, consider buying a low-capacity SSD, remove the drive with Windows on it, and install Linux on the new drive. I do not recommend dual-booting from a single drive, since Windows has a habit of overwriting your bootloader and making your Linux install impossible to access without a headache.

Next: Picking a Distro