Personally, I dual boot with an external NVMe drive. It works great! I have Linux and only Linux on the internal drive and Windows gets relegated to an external one.

The trick to getting it to work is: you have to temporarily install the NVMe drive internally in order to install Windows onto it. Then you pop it into an external enclosure and it just works. Just make sure your BIOS is set up to boot USB devices before internal drives.

The ideal thing to me is if you have your last pc. You throw linux on that (I recommend zorin) and you have it available alonw with your newer windows machine. In most cases I believe the linux machine will perform better. Move as much as you can to it until you have whatever little things you still need windows for. Ideally you realize you need windows for so little that you flip the script and change your newer machine to linux and windows as your backup or you put linux on your next machine and the older windows machine sticks around.

I use FOSS even when I used to use Windows. So the programs I use and format I use were ready for me to switch. If for some reason you rely on a proprietary or Windows-only software you may have to make the effort to migrate, readjust and learn a new set of software to to do your work.

It's very simple.

You simply switch your apps too, not just the OS. Everyone thinks that they can switch the OS 1:1, but it's not like that. You will never be happy if you expect the same apps on all the OSes. Instead of photoshop, you use Gimp. Instead of Illustrator, you use Inkscape. Instead of resolve/premiere, you use kdenlive. And so on. You will have to invest some time to relearn not just the OS, but the apps too.

If the software you need to use isn't very demanding, you can run windows in a virtual machine (VM) inside of Linux – the exception is games that have kernel-level anti-cheat, those will probably never work on Linux in any way, and you'll have to dual boot to run them. Most other games will run easily if you just install them with Steam, but I've come across a few that I use a VM for.

What software and games do you need to run? I might be able to help.

Also, the distro you should go for is called Linux Mint.

Mint has the perfect balance of stability, support and up-to-date-ness for beginners - and honestly for a lot of experienced users as well.

Simply put -- you've got to realize a couple things:

1- Linux is not Windows.

2- Use Linux like a brand new type of software you never heard about -- do not make any pre-assumptions.

3- Use Google to search for the most simple things, including "How do I install something on (Linux distro name you've chosen)"?

4- Have some patience -- you won't learn (everything) on day one. There will be mistakes, there will be problems you will not solve em today. But you will solve em tomorrow.

And here's a little "cheat sheet" of mine on how to use (and get used with) linux:

1- Get used how to use the package manager. (Where you will search and install stuff.)

2- Learn what are your audio and graphic packages (The "drivers") are. (See 3- above.)

3- Learn how to run the stuff you installed.

4- Learn how you configure the distro to your liking.

Learn all these four steps, and you can consider yourself a linux "pro" user.

Remove windows completely or you'll swap back at any inconvenience, once used to linux then dualboot windows and swap when needed. I use windows for iracing and wrc, if im not playing that I swap to linux and use it for everything else.

I've been running only Linux for 25 years. Any software you think you need that you only can get on Windows you don't. Drop windows, say goodbye to your apps, and explore the alternatives. Try to have fun. A growth mindset helps

a few tips for you:

• try open source software in windows too, like libreoffice, inkscape, etc, depending on your needs. It will help the transition to be easier
• if you have a spare machine, try linux on that instead of dual booting, because windows tend to mess with the bootloader in dual boot
• don't be harsh on yourself. It's normal to have difficulty to adapt to things. You can do that in steps as small as you feel comfortable with
• try distros like linux mint, because they tend to be easier for new users
• experiment wine or winboat for software you need from windows, if there aren't alternatives

What games can't you play on linux? Some apps can't be run natively in linux, but use an emulation for them. That will work...

So I started by dual booting; it's not a bad way of doing things although Windows likes to mess with bootloaders.

Optimal way is have physically separate hard drives/NVME cards, Windows on one, Linux on the other. The Linux bootloader should detect windows and point to it's bootloader as a menu option without issue.

Make Linux the default OS and only switch to Windows when you really have to. I haven't used my Windows install in like 1 year? I kept it for gaming but everything I want works in Linux. I even have a Windows VM in Linux for using Office if I need to for work (used it a few times in a year and beat having to restart into windows)

I'd wipe the windows drive but I just can't be bothered right now.

I recommend a KDE distro to start as it's very flexible - it can mimic windows and also be wildly different if you want. I use OpenSUSE Tumbleweed but I'd recommend OpenSUSE Leap as a stabler point release distro when starting out. I know longer recommend Mint as I find Cinnamon tired and there is so much old and bad advice on tweaking or fixing issues on Mint that it is actually potentially detrimental to being secure and safe.

Just accept shit won't work and drop it cold turkey. Nuke the fuck out of the windows drive and force your self to move on.

If you don't need to to make a living then fuck it and move on.

You learned to use a computer once you can do it again. When you didn't know how to do something in the past you looked it up. When you needed an application you churned though options till one worked.

Shit breaks or is half assed on windows. Your just use to what you know that works. Your use to having your apps your use to.

Learn to get over the fact you gotta relearn things, find new options, and will be frustrated.

After like a month you will be fine Basically git gud. You were gud growing up and got bad. Time to return to your childhood and have fun learning and exploring again.

Also plain ass normal fedora is going to be your best middle ground if you want the widest possiable support of software. Arch if you don't mind a bit more leg work with the aur.

you gotta get used to it, get over the frustration of having a system work completely differently than you are used to.

people spent 30 years learning windows, which is why windows frustrations are invisible.

if you don't need those windows only programs to earn a living, just install linux, don't fuck around with dual booting. accept that you're gonna have to learn new things. you'll adapt.

if you do need windows for something, i guess dual boot, but make a pact with yourself to only use it for that one program, and switch back when you're done, and keep looking for replacements so you can cut that last chain lashing you to m$. i highly recommend alternativeto for that.

Thanks for this question, I’ll get a bit out of this too

Can you name the programs to get a better idea of the context?

check out winboat, bottles

If you have the luxury of access to multiple computers, or the expertise to dual boot, those are what worked for me.

I ran Linux and Windows side by side for years.

Over time, returning to the Windows shifted from "Ah, nice and familiar" to "oh, not this bullshit, again".

Once I was comfortable with both, all the corporate bullshit became very noticable on Windows.

I just put my friends 80+ year old parents on Linux Mint with no issues so far. you can do it!! .. why are you switching back ?

As others have mentioned, keeping around a USB SSD with a windows install can be useful, I have a cheapo 10Gbps NVME eclosure, that is more than fast enough to host a snappy windows install. I have so far used it to run the shitty windows-only reddragon software to rebind buttons on my mouse, and to run stellaris (when they had a platform-dependant OOS but that has since been fixed)

A note about dual-booting, I learned a lot about EFI setting that up ages ago, and while I no longer dual-boot, the knowledge has been useful to me on many occasions, even for recovering cooked windows installs. I imagine it is more stream-lined these days, but then again it seems to have fallen out of fashion, so maybe not. YMMV

I’d say. Try and figure out if the softwares you use have Linux alternatives, most do. Learn how to use those and you won’t depend on windows.

As for games. Some just won’t run on Linux and there is nothing you can do about it. If that’s a dealbreaker then you are unfortunately stuck with windows. That being said, many games work!

I don’t recommend dual booting. Sure it’s nice on the surface but in reality you’ll just be on what ever OS is most convenient, which by the sound of it will probably be windows and you won’t find a reason to boot into Linux.

I use and love Linux Mint. I actually just deleted my windows partition. I have used it off and on for years. This is the first permanent switch.

I don't game and have pretty basic needs, so not for everyone.

I did find that on this most recent migration, i never need windows for anything. So much has moved to in browser or open source alternatives are good enough that i am fine.

I have one machine in Linux and another in Windows. I've also made bootable persistent thumb drives to save myself any accidents creating a dual boot. That way I can run Linux for daily stuff, and Windows when I'm too incompetent to figure out a workaround for a game or whatever.

Windows needs to be rebooted all the time anyway, so it's not really that big of a deal to boot into something else now and then. Plus it gives you a little change of pace.

First step is to figure out if you have hard requirements i.e. specific software that you rely on your studies or work and cannot be replaced.

If there is no such requirements, or your requirements have Linux versions, best thing to do is do the jump and accept the struggle until you figure out the new way of working. A lot of games run fantastic. Heroic Launcher for GoG and Epic games, Steam for Steam.

You need to edit a video, just search for "Linux video editor", same for whatever task you want to achieve.

If you all you have is Linux, you'll be forced to adapt. Bite the bullet and just do it.

I've been using Bazzite on my 2 desktop PCs for +1.5 years, I recently installed it in a mini gaming PC for my living room TV, and I also have a Steam Deck which is basically identical to Bazzite.

I freaking love it, best computing & gaming experience I've ever had.

I'd say dual booting would be best, as much as Windows will try to break it. Then you can stay in Linux as much as you can, only switching to Windows when you need to. And then, if you're like me, you get annoyed at Windows lacking features and find alternatives that work under Linux.

For distro selection, I'd recommend Linux Mint. It just works well out of the box and most instructions online that apply to Ubuntu should work with it.

I started with Ubuntu (dual-booted with Windows) and it was the same, for some months I did exactly that: "First I use Ubuntu but if for some reason something not work as I want, I switch back to Window".

I don't really remember how I "stay" on Linux and when I stopped dual-booting, but I believe it was because there was so good open source programs and I really liked that, that I stay. One of this programs was Freetube for example.

You might not see it right now, but you have a lot of options.

First of all, you can dual boot Windows and Linux on a shared computer, but recently Windows made that process quite unstable and risky (though I don't speak from first-hand experience, so take this with a grain of salt). Setting this up should be relatively easy, as most? linux installers can see a Windows installation. From there it's as simple as selecting a menu option at startup.

Secondly, you can install Linux (I'd recommend a beginner friendly distro such as Linux Mint or ZorinOS, or a gaming focused one like Bazzite) and create a Windows virtual machine. There is also a project called WinApps which lets you run Windows apps directly on Linux (using a virtual machine), though setting this up is PAIN. Further the setbacks of virtual machines are pedictively that you are running 2 operating systems at once, so it's nearly unfeasable to deploy them on devices with lower memory and/or slower cpus. Even further you'd need to enable 3d acceleration (as in using the gpu in the virtual machine) for games, which is again nontrivial.

Your third option is seeing whether you have any alternatives. You could be surprised by how many great alternatives are out there which work perfectly fine on Linux. As I have seen widely used softwares are available under Linux in one way or another (major exceptions include Adobe stuff), and a surprising amount of games do indeed run under Linux (an operating system they weren't designed for) thanks to the efforts of Valve at al. and the Proton emulation layer.

Suppose none of the aforementioned options work for you, you can still stay with Windows. Operating systems (however broken or commercialised they might become) ultimately serve the user, and at the end of the day, we need something that works. If you'd take this path, rest assured, there IS a thing called WSL (or Windows Subsystem for Linux) which is a Linux emulation layer (or virtual machine, I'm not an expert on this) on Windows (so Linux Subsystem for Windows would be a better name for it, but I digress).

These are just a few of your available options, you can mix and match these, or disregard them altogether. I can recommend you Alternativeto, which is a website that suggests alternatives to popular proprietary software; another interesting site would be Distrowatch, which shows you information about various Linux distributons (but again I'd recommenf Linux Mint or Bazzite for your use case). Lastly, take care and use what works for you. Peace!

I wouldn't recommend dual booting anything with Windows, especially if you're not familiar with installing multiple operating systems. Windows will pretty frequently fuck up your boot settings when it updates because it doesn't respect not being the only OS on your system and will cause way more problems than it solves.

My recommendation if you really want to stay on Linux is to run Linux as your only OS and then run Windows from a VM for the apps you absolutely need to use. VirtualBox or GNOME Boxes are good options if you want a regular Windows VM with little to no integration with the host Linux instance. There are also software that will create an experience like Parallels on Mac with Windows apps that appear as regular windows in your Linux desktop (I've heard about WinBoat but don't personally use it so can't say if I recommend it or not). For most games, Proton should have you covered.

If you want distro recommendations, I'd say Fedora or Linux Mint are good options for general users getting into Linux. If you do a lot of gaming, I've heard good things about Bazzite.

It took a bit of effort and finding a really stable Linux distro on my hardware. For me that was Linux Mint.

Switching was made relatively easy by dual-booting and running Linux as much as possible while going back to Windows if I didn't have time to figure something out. After few months of this I wasn't using Windows at all and eventually deleted the partition.

If you want something you don't have to fuss over, that's very stable (but also gets frequent updates), and "just works" with most games? Bazzite is your answer.