I agree this is the way to go and it is good that they have been making it easier to do.

Just one question: Do you keep the bootloader on its own partition or are you glad to see it go when formatting? I changed to the latter.

To be honest, a flash drive or live CD is always the best way to work with Linux when you aren't sure. It lets you do everything but install new software or make any real changes. This allows you to see how it feels, how it looks, and what is included out of the box. It also is good for spotting any hardware incompatibilities. Don't worry- those can be fixed with patches.

When in doubt, a big community and a lot of people writing about an distribution is a good indicator of how newbie friendly it is. This means lots of help if you need it! For example: I liked Bodhi best but went with Mint (Mate) when I first started with Linux. It had a bigger community and was better documented.

Also pay attention to what your distribution is based on. If it's Ubuntu based, for example, any Ubuntu stuff will typically work on it.

I just wipe out everything including the efi system partition.

Mind you, I can afford to do that mainly because I don't have a complex booting scheme (no dual-boot). If you multi-boot, you need to keep the efi partition around (though in the case of a Linux/Windows dual-boot, I vaguely recall that Windows gave me all kinds of pain toward the end when the Linux installer initialized the efi partition, though that was several years ago mind you).

If I need to run another distro to run or troubleshoot something, I can either do it in a container or if I really need it to run in a full blown OS, in a kvm (Linux has amazing native virtualization capabilities once you learn a few commands). So, a dual-boot is superfluous really.

LMDE does >not< like my system. None of my usb devices besides the live image stick work with it. The mouse doesn't even work, and it's the generic linux-compatible one I used on Zorin and Mint Cinnamon.

I was hoping to be able to try it out, but it's fine. I think I read that my 970 chipset motherboard is a little too new for certain distros and that they have issues reading the usb headers, which would make sense why nothing worked when I just fired up LMDE.

I personally recommend Mint. Zorin was one of the first I tried and I honestly found it to be a headache to get what I wanted out of it (gaming). I'd also like to recommend you try Solus. Mate or Budgie is fine, though I always use Mate at this point when available.

I GOT IT! FINALLY! It's been driving me nuts since this thread started!

Zorin is the name of the villain in A View to a Kill. I knew I'd heard that name before.

Shit movie, great theme song.

LMDE is also based on an out of date LTS Debian spin, so being so far from upstream is a likely downfall. I wouldn't be surprised if there weren't packages from 2015 lurking in it.

Thanks, everyone! I also figured out that Linux likes my usb 3.0 ports better than my 2.0 ports for some reason. When I get a hardwired connection, I'll most likely dual boot with win 10 and mint cinnamon/mate.

Thanks everyone, for all of your advice! I do kind of like how slick ZorinOS looks, but it is slightly more cumbersome than Mint from the little I've experimented.
-Cym

Slight adjustment to plans: I am probably putting a Ryzen build together in the spring, so I will transition this current build over to a dedicated linux machine at that time so I can learn it better, while keeping the other PC windows based for now.

I really appreciate all the help and advice in this thread. Thanks!

Hopefully the next Ryzen generation will be out by then.

Necroing my own thread.

I have tried to install Mint as well as ZorinOS alongside my win 10 install. I tried to do this by having my C: drive (Windows) be used only for windows, and attempting to install Linux on my D: drive which is empty. I tried this without formatting D and again formatting D in FAT.

The problem I'm having is the GRUB loader does not install properly and the install fails. Windows recovers, but it has to clean stuff up and then of course D: has mint or Zorin installed on it, but it's in linux so it's unusable on windows.

What am I doing wrong? I thought that Grub had to have its own partition on the D drive so that's what I tried to do.

Win 10 is installed on a 120 gb SSD which doesn't have enough room to host Linux as well as the home directory.

Please advise. I'm ready to dual boot but afraid of bricking my Win 10 install.

You might want to read my Mint beginner's guide: https://www.gog.com/forum/general/adamhms_linux_mint_beginners_guide

It should be something like this:

- Disable secure boot and fast boot if they are enabled (fast boot needs to be disabled both in Windows and the system's BIOS/UEFI)
- Make sure to boot the Linux live enviroment in the same mode as Windows is installed in (legacy or EFI - it's most likely installed in EFI mode but my guide explains how to check)
- Since you're installing Mint to its own dedicated drive you can simply use the "Erase disk and install Linux Mint" option to install it. You'll be prompted to select the drive in the next step & it'll then set up all the partitions etc. automatically.

If it's being installed in EFI mode then GRUB needs to be installed to an EFI system partition. Since Windows will have already created one on the SSD it'll install GRUB there, alongside Windows' bootloader (and it should automatically set the BIOS/UEFI to boot into GRUB by default).

And i thought RedHat was a very easy OS to get started in.

Though with the Gnome window manager... not a huge fan of.

Thank you, I completely skipped the "Erase disc and install Mint" because I thought it would erase my C drive. Cheers!
Keep in mind he was re-teaching me how to use Windows since the last time I'd regularly used a computer, it had Win 3.1 on it. So he went with the easiest common denominator.

Posting this from my new Mint Tessa install that's dual booting with Win 10. Only hiccup so far? I have to F12 to boot into Windows. Not a deal breaker, this is unbelievably satisfying having a new OS to explore more than just the live USB stick.

Having an extensive DOS background as a child and having programmed in BASIC a lot in the 90's, I think I'll be ok, but not to jinx myself too much, I bought the humble bundle pack of books for $15 or greater. I figure if I'm serious about learning Linux, the timing is too good to be true.

Also HUGE SHOUTOUT TO ADAMHM for his newbie guide that helped me get my dual boot set up!

Thanks all! I really appreciate all the advice given in this thread, and I'm hoping within the next 5-10 years I'll be completely Windows free!
-Cym of the Tyr.