fireclawx

Bingo my man

So you'll want to boot into BIOS first. This generally involves pressing the del or f12 key on your keyboard before the computer boots into windows. (I believe if you have fastboot enabled you won't be able to get to BIOS, so in that case, when you get to the screen you posted a picture of, you'll want to hit F8). Once you're in the Boot options menu (if you hit F8) you'll want to change the boot drive to your USB. If you go the BIOS route, then you'll have to navigate the BIOS to change it to boot from the USB first. Hope that helps

Haha no worries my man. Everyone starts somewhere So a Virtual Machine (VM for short) is when an application (in this case Virtual Box) emulates another operating system within your existing OS. It does not install anything on your actual hardware. If you dual boot, you're actually installing the operating system on your hardware and has it's own boot partition on your laptop. If your laptop has an SSD and an HDD, you'll need to choose where you want to install it (I'd recommend the HDD if your SSD is small and you want to keep that for windows only). What you'd need to do is create a partition for arch (again, this is all explained in the video) and then install arch on that partition. To be perfectly honest, if you don't know anything about partitions, and VM's, then you should probably hold off on an actual install and do a bit more reading first It's always best to be safe rather than sorry, especially if you only have 1 computer that you need to use for everything and it's your main/only machine. You really don't want to mess anything up, so the more research you do the better!

Whee. I just wrote a reply to someone else who was interested in learning linux. You can find it here Read the whole thread too, it's pretty interesting.

Yeah. Just to add on to this (and I should have actually put it into my original post, I'll edit it in) here's the link to the Arch Wiki (which is pretty comprehensive). Between the YouTube video I linked, and the Arch Wiki (which you can find here https://wiki.archlinux.org/) you should be able to easily get started

Ok, you guys are gonna hate me (probably) but I'm honestly gonna recommend that you start with Arch. Before you castrate me, hear me out on this one: -Yes, the Arch install is a f*cking pain in the ass x100. -Yes, you will type in some commands and have 0 idea what they mean and do HOWEVER If you want to learn about UNIX, the basic commands, and just learn how your computer works (how it boots, what is an EFI partition, what does all this sh*t mean/do) then there is no better way to learn than to do it yourself. So with that said, here's what I recommend you do. Step 1: Get a new/wiped HDD that you don't give a sh*t about. (there's a very good reason for this, you might f*ck up and accidentally wipe it, or have to wipe it after you f*ck up). Step 2: Unplug all the other drives from your system before you start (this reduces the chance of you wiping a drive you didn't mean to, it's easier than it sounds). Step 3: Follow this guide on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMkST5IjSjY Step 4: THIS IS IMPORTANT!!! In order to actually learn anything, you can't just blindly type in whatever you see in the video. GOOGLE EVERYTHING. Does he type in a command and you don't know what it means? Get your laptop or your phone and google that shit. It's a time consuming, and daunting process for a noob, but you'll learn a lot and I highly recommend it. Good luck! EDIT: The arch wiki is also an awesome resource. You can find it here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/

k, so I'm new here and I don't know if it's frowned upon to link other sites so I won't link it, but if your laptop is supported you could always hackintosh. Head over to tonymacx86 (.com) and check to see if they have a guide for your specific make and model of laptop. It's honestly not too too difficult (especially if you follow the guide). The most annoying thing you'll probably have to contend with is the fact that there is no support for most wifi cards in osx so you'll have to buy a separate usb wifi adapter that is supported. With no UNIX experience, I built a hackintosh and had it up and running in like 2 days after a bit of troubleshooting. It's difficult, but not impossible. Good luck!