This is my third attempt. Partly to rage quit Windows, and partly to gain utility and control with some professional AV software.

I have converted an old Asus netbook to Ubuntu netbook remix and used it for a while. I was impressed with how much better that tiny thing ran with Linux than Windows. But in the end it still had less power than a TI-84. So I stopped using it, and never really learned Linux proper.

I dual boot my Chromebook, so I can use gimp for photos on vacation, but everything I do with the Linux partition is cut and paste from articles by people who know what they’re doing. (I was motivated to post here by a meme about that.)

I’m thinking of dual booting my main desktop, because I need Windows for some fairly processor intense A/V software I use for work. So what would be a good distro to look into for a novice and where should I look for a tutorial? I would ultimately like to see if I can use Linux to run my AV software in emulation and add drivers for some professional audio interfaces. I’m fed up with windows and trying to see how far I can get without it. Your help is appreciated in advance, and if this is inappropriate for this topic, let me know and I’ll delete it.

  •  Meow.tar.gz   ( @ablackcatstail@lemmy.goblackcat.com ) 
    9•1 year ago

    Rather than trying to muck with dual booting, I would recommend picking up a Lenovo T430S or better laptop on Amazon from around 150.00-500.00. Lenovo ThinkPad T series laptops are incredibly well supported by Linux. Then install Linux Mint. This is a great way to get started with a low barrier to entry. As you get better, you can start tinkering with the innards. By getting a cheap spare machine with which to learn Linux on, it will be the least disruptive to you.

    •  curioushom   ( @curioushom@lemmy.one ) 
      1•1 year ago

      While this is a valid advice normally, OP has already tried this with Linux on a netbook and a dual boot chromebook. Since OP wants to do AV stuff it’s probably going to be a lot better experience with a desktop (assuming more capable than laptop) and monitor(s). Going another laptop route might be fine for learning but OP wants to switch and that’s not going to happen unless it’s on OP’s main rig.

      My advice would be leave the windows installation alone and add a new drive (SSDs are pretty cheap these days) and install Linux on that. Use the BIOS to set the default drive to the new Linux drive and install and use Linux. You’ll have your windows install exactly how it is when you want to go back and just pick that as the boot device from the boot menu. Making Linux the default boot drive also helps with habit forming.

  •  Hovenko   ( @Hovenko@kbin.social ) 
    5•1 year ago

    Dual booting can be problematic. Windows is the most retarded OS ever which sometimes decides to overwrite boot partition.
    FOr trying out stuff, you van install Linux as a virtual machine. Check there if your sw works there and is available.

  •  Lvxferre   ( @lvxferre@lemmy.ml ) 
    4•1 year ago

    General tips:

    • Don’t look for Linux versions of the Windows software you use. Instead look for software that fulfils the same purpose.
    • If you’re cutting-and-pasting a lot of stuff from those articles, give yourself a check on what those things actually do. See it as a small investment of time to economise time later on, as you’ll rely less and less on those articles.
    • Stick to popular distros. And for the desktop environment (DE), use whatever works for you.
    • Keep it easy. It’s fine if you need to log into Windows once in a while, but over time you’ll notice yourself doing it less and less.
  •  neytjs   ( @neytjs@lemmy.ml ) 
    2•1 year ago

    I’m a middle-aged truck driver. I’ve been using Linux Mint (Cinnamon) now for about seven years as my only operating system (without dual booting) since Windows XP Pro became totally obsolete. Granted, I’m a hobbyist programmer and lifelong computer enthusiast. However, there are definitely some easy to install and use distros out there these days.

  •  Shdwdrgn   ( @Shdwdrgn@mander.xyz ) 
    2•1 year ago

    As an alternative (and since you need to keep Windows running for now), have you considered downloading VirtualBox and installing linux thee on your desktop? There’s a couple of really good reasons behind this… First off, you don’t have to mess with switching back and forth when dual-booting, but it also gives you the ability to play with some different distributions and find something that feels more comfortable without having to trash a machine and continuously starting over. You can even load up multiple distros at the same time on your Windows desktop and compare them.

    Now for really getting going with linux… It’s easier if you don’t expect yourself to figure it all out at once. Pick a daily task, like reading your email. Maybe you already use something like Thunderbird, so that’s an easy switch. Just shut it down on Windows and start using the linux screen for this every time. Web browsing might also be an easy switch, and you already mentioned you use Gimp. Have you played around with different desktops yet? With linux you can install several and select one of them when you log in, so maybe try KDE, Gnome, or Mate (this one is my favorite because it’s fairly light on my older system but still lets me configure a lot). What else can you dive in to? How about configuring your login screen for different options like showing available users or automatically signing you in when you boot up the linux system in virtualbox? There’s a lot of configuration you can do by editing files in the /etc/ folder so it pays to get familiar with that aspect of things.

    Once you think maybe you found a distro or desktop you like, consider what other things you can do to really start getting familiar with linux. You could change your default shell, or your default command line editor. What about setting up a local DNS cache or maybe your own email relay? Maybe even set up your own web server and database, and use them to develop web pages locally. The point is, once you realize there’s no limitations in what you now have available to you, your brain starts thinking about all the things you could do – and that’s where you really start learning how to work with linux. Sure you need to use online guides the first time you set up a web server or something else. Sure you’ll have to continue to rely on the web for some time, but as you work through various projects you’ll start to remember where you found things, and you’ll start to see how they connect to other things, and one day that thing you’ve been re-typing from your notes suddenly clicks and you understand WHAT that thing was actually doing.

    It’s never an easy process to start something new. The first time somebody gave me a bunch of old PC parts and I powered up a machine on my waterbed, I looked at the blinking cursor and thought “now what?” (Yeah he didn’t even give me a DOS boot floppy!) But here we are thirty-some years later and I’m running servers, troubleshooting multiple operating systems at work, and doing pretty much anything I want. Linux was a complete change of gears but it was totally worth taking the time to figure it out, you just need to work on one piece at a time.

  •  dart   ( @dart@lemmy.fmhy.ml ) 
    0•1 year ago

    The linux motto to any problem is “it’s possible, but here are the pitfalls”. You can do almost everything on linux (unlike windows), but the tradeoff is it can sometimes require more time to learn and troubleshoot issues. In my opinion, linux is great for those of us who dislike to use the mouse and take our hands off the homerow. Get used to using the terminal to launch apps, instead of clicking stuff on the desktop. Learn keyboard shortcuts. My recommendation is to use a window manager like i3 with an i3 status bar at the bottom. This will give you a minimal desktop, where you can move windows/tiles around all with keyboard shortcuts. Open apps with something similar to dmenu, where you just have to press a keyboard shortcut and type the first few letters of the app you want to open, and press enter. Learn vim-like keyboard navigation to edit text and reposition the cursor through the text all without the keyboard. Linux integration with this style of experience is vastly superior to Windows and Mac.