How to try out Linux on Laptop?

[TheEndIsNear]

in the past i think i've heard of booting linux from usb, but what im trying to do is getting use to linux for daily task and is there any ways i can do that without losing windows on my laptop?

[Jockkk]

You get a option in most Linux distro when installing too dual boot i.e if you have windows 10 and you want linux mint. When you're about to install LInux mint it offers the option to install along side with windows 10. it also offers the partion option where you allocate LInux HDD space and Memory

Hope this helped

 

-http://www.tecmint.com/install-linux-mint-18-alongside-windows-10-or-8-in-dual-boot-uefi-mode/

[domandric034]

create bootable usb with rufus and boot into but choose try linux

[captain_to_fire]

19 minutes ago, TheEndIsNear said:

in the past i think i've heard of booting linux from usb, but what im trying to do is getting use to linux for daily task and is there any ways i can do that without losing windows on my laptop?

Run it in a VM 

[SCHISCHKA]

Don't be scared go balls in YOLO

[SCHISCHKA]

get a second hard drive. you can get OEM drives really cheap.

[captain_to_fire]

2 minutes ago, SCHISCHKA said:

get a second hard drive. you can get OEM drives really cheap.

He might need to disable Secure Boot in the UEFI settings first before dual booting Windows and Linux. 

[SCHISCHKA]

Just now, hey_yo_ said:

He might need to disable Secure Boot in the UEFI settings first before dual booting Windows and Linux. 

just fast boot. dont need to change anything if install target is usb

[GrayFox1991]

Bash is now in Windows, so if there is something specific you are trying to run you should be able to do it from Windows now (as long as it is CLI based). Your other options as stated above are either dual boot, live CD/USB, or run a VM (Virtualbox etc).

 

 

[Jockkk]

There is loads of options for linux,

 

.You can get a portable hard drive and boot with linux from your laptop

https://askubuntu.com/questions/446682/how-to-install-ubuntu-on-portable-external-hard-drive

 

Boot from Usb and use it to try but you cant store projects i dont think because you havent allocated Disk space

https://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/create-a-usb-stick-on-windows

 

Or you can Dual boot like i mentioned in the first comment

http://www.tecmint.com/install-linux-mint-18-alongside-windows-10-or-8-in-dual-boot-uefi-mode/

 

used a few linux distros and i would recommend Mint for your first try if you havent used it before.. great OS linux are, hope it helped

[MorganO]

1 hour ago, hey_yo_ said:

Run it in a VM 

can i change how much ram i need after i have set up the VM?i put 4gb but it seems a little sluggish

 

[orangecat]

Easy. Don't.

[vorticalbox]

31 minutes ago, KOMTechAndGaming said:

can i change how much ram i need after i have set up the VM?i put 4gb but it seems a little sluggish

 

did you change the cpu count? Virtualbox defaults to one core. 

12 minutes ago, Kilobytez95 said:

Easy. Don't.

Why not?

[MorganO]

1 hour ago, vorticalbox said:

did you change the cpu count? Virtualbox defaults to one core. 

uh, i didnt can i chanbge this after ive set up the VM?

found it

[tlink]

dual boot it with windows if you don't mind restarting every time you need to switch operating systems, or run linux in a virtual machine which will allow you to run linux emulated inside windows.

 

here's a guide on how to dual boot:  https://www.howtogeek.com/214571/how-to-dual-boot-linux-on-your-pc/
here's a guide on how to  run a VM: https://www.howtogeek.com/196060/beginner-geek-how-to-create-and-use-virtual-machines/

[vorticalbox]

Just now, KOMTechAndGaming said:

uh, i didnt can i chanbge this after ive set up the VM?

click the vm then settings at the top. you can change any setting so long as it is powered down. 

[MorganO]

1 minute ago, vorticalbox said:

click the vm then settings at the top. you can change any setting so long as it is powered down. 

thanks, it seems to be a little faster, although typing seems to have as little delay?

(written from inside my vm)

[vorticalbox]

Just now, KOMTechAndGaming said:

thanks, it seems to be a little faster, although typing seems to have as little delay?

(written from inside my vm)

do you have an ssd or a hd? If it's the latter remember you have about 150m/s to handle the host and the virtual machine.

 

if you're thinking of moving to Linux then I would boot from a usb so you get a better feel of how fast it will be. 

[MorganO]

Just now, vorticalbox said:

do you have an ssd or a hd? If it's the latter remember you have about 150m/s to handle the host and the virtual machine.

 

if you're thinking of moving to Linux then I would boot from a usb so you get a better feel of how fast it will be. 

its a HDD

[orangecat]

2 hours ago, vorticalbox said:

Why not?

Linux is garbage and broken on nearly every modern computer. Not to mention the serious lack of driver support. It's really not worth the headaches.

[vorticalbox]

1 hour ago, Kilobytez95 said:

Linux is garbage and broken on nearly every modern computer. Not to mention the serious lack of driver support. It's really not worth the headaches.

I am running ubuntu 17 on an AMD 8350 and everything works. 

[MEC-777]

@TheEndIsNear

 

The best solution to do what you want to do is to dual-boot. However, with secure boot and windows 10, it doesn't play nice. This is a problem with windows and secure boot, NOT Linux. I want to make that very clear. I tried to do this very thing on my laptop (Acer Aspire E5-772G) but I could not get it to work even after trying several different fixes. In the end I just wiped windows and installed Ubuntu Gnome 17.04, straight up, and all is well. But I know you'd rather try it first. 

 

2nd best solution is to run it in a VM in windows, but the performance of VMs in windows using virtualbox generally sucks, even if you give it enough ram and CPU cores. It will, however, give you an idea of how to use Linux. Pretty much any distro running as of the host OS on almost any hardware that is fairly modern will run really nice (far better than in a VM on windows). 

 

On 4/25/2017 at 6:34 AM, Kilobytez95 said:

Linux is garbage and broken on nearly every modern computer. Not to mention the serious lack of driver support. It's really not worth the headaches.

Not true at all. This is blatantly wrong on so many levels. I've been using Linux as the primary OS on a number of machines over the last 3-4 years and the improvements I have observed during that time have been significant. Fairly simple things that once required extra steps and multiple lines of commands to execute 2-3 years ago are now either automatically done, or easily completed via one-click through the GUI (like switching/updating to the latest graphics drivers). User-friendliness of Linux has come leaps and bounds in recent years/months.

 

What was the last distro you used and on what machine? 

[TheEndIsNear]

21 hours ago, MEC-777 said:

@TheEndIsNear

 

The best solution to do what you want to do is to dual-boot. However, with secure boot and windows 10, it doesn't play nice. This is a problem with windows and secure boot, NOT Linux. I want to make that very clear. I tried to do this very thing on my laptop (Acer Aspire E5-772G) but I could not get it to work even after trying several different fixes. In the end I just wiped windows and installed Ubuntu Gnome 17.04, straight up, and all is well. But I know you'd rather try it first. 

 

2nd best solution is to run it in a VM in windows, but the performance of VMs in windows using virtualbox generally sucks, even if you give it enough ram and CPU cores. It will, however, give you an idea of how to use Linux. Pretty much any distro running as of the host OS on almost any hardware that is fairly modern will run really nice (far better than in a VM on windows). 

 

Not true at all. This is blatantly wrong on so many levels. I've been using Linux as the primary OS on a number of machines over the last 3-4 years and the improvements I have observed during that time have been significant. Fairly simple things that once required extra steps and multiple lines of commands to execute 2-3 years ago are now either automatically done, or easily completed via one-click through the GUI (like switching/updating to the latest graphics drivers). User-friendliness of Linux has come leaps and bounds in recent years/months.

 

What was the last distro you used and on what machine? 

I generally would like to go dual boot, but i don't get what you meant by not playing nice?

There is another option for me though, i have two laptops, one with an i5 which is my main use laptop, essentially i do everything on it such as running program like AutoCAD, and my second laptop is a recently bought 11inch celeron which i have to bring around with me (because my first laptop is big and heavy and the battery doesnt lasts long enough, should have bought a desktop back then smh) So my second option is going for convert the celeron into a linux pc, but before choosing this option i would like to know if there are backup so in the event it doesn't work out for me or i have to send for warranty, i can restore it back to windows 10 and also having the license ( the license activated is what im more concern of)

[MEC-777]

14 minutes ago, TheEndIsNear said:

I generally would like to go dual boot, but i don't get what you meant by not playing nice?

There is another option for me though, i have two laptops, one with an i5 which is my main use laptop, essentially i do everything on it such as running program like AutoCAD, and my second laptop is a recently bought 11inch celeron which i have to bring around with me (because my first laptop is big and heavy and the battery doesnt lasts long enough, should have bought a desktop back then smh) So my second option is going for convert the celeron into a linux pc, but before choosing this option i would like to know if there are backup so in the event it doesn't work out for me or i have to send for warranty, i can restore it back to windows 10 and also having the license ( the license activated is what im more concern of)

By not playing nice, I simply mean the way Windows and secure boot are setup within the UEFI/BIOS, it's done in a way that does not allow other OS's to run along side Windows. I don't fully understand it, but this is what I have read on the Linux forums where quite a lot of other people have been trying to deal with this exact same problem for a while now. For some people, there is no fix and it simply doesn't work (like me). So I said; bye bye Windows, you suck! lol. 

 

Anyways, yeah, you have a good option there, to run Linux on your Celeron laptop. What I would do if I were you, if you want to retain that original windows install, is buy a cheap 120GB SSD, install that and keep the windows HDD in a safe place. Install Linux on the SSD and watch it fly.  

 

It also depends on how much data you typically need to store on the machine though. Most people actually don't store that much on their laptops, so a 120 or 256GB SSD is plenty. Otherwise, I'm not sure how you'd "save" that windows install, besides creating a system image, but that doesn't save all your data. 

[TheEndIsNear]

2 minutes ago, MEC-777 said:

By not playing nice, I simply mean the way Windows and secure boot are setup within the UEFI/BIOS, it's done in a way that does not allow other OS's to run along side Windows. I don't fully understand it, but this is what I have read on the Linux forums where quite a lot of other people have been trying to deal with this exact same problem for a while now. For some people, there is no fix and it simply doesn't work (like me). So I said; bye bye Windows, you suck! lol. 

 

Anyways, yeah, you have a good option there, to run Linux on your Celeron laptop. What I would do if I were you, if you want to retain that original windows install, is buy a cheap 120GB SSD, install that and keep the windows HDD in a safe place. Install Linux on the SSD and watch it fly.  

 

It also depends on how much data you typically need to store on the machine though. Most people actually don't store that much on their laptops, so a 120 or 256GB SSD is plenty. Otherwise, I'm not sure how you'd "save" that windows install, besides creating a system image, but that doesn't save all your data. 

I assume linux doesn't use as much space as windows for its os? it looks like a nice idea buying an ssd for it, since what i do on a celeron laptop if fairly limited by its CPU power, so probably wont be having much programs on it anyway. Thanks for help!