I’m a 20yo, Hella Autistic, ADHD-riddled spaz that likes to tinker with programs and software settings alot. I’m building a pc for the first time right now, and while I am tech savvy; or more tech savvy than most; coding, programming, tech engineering is complete and utter gibberish, and it seems like the only people that use Linux are HEAVILY experienced with those things I just listed… HOWEVER… I’m not. I just like digging around various program settings or messing with things, or personalizing them as much as I can.
The more I delve into tech or tech related spaces; whether its through building my pc or just- using this website; the more people wont stop yapping about “OOH LINUX, I LOOOVE LINUX.” and every time I ask about it and why I should use it, they make it out like its an absolute godsend piece of technology (im sure it is tbh… it does look nice)
But then looking into it myself, all I see is a bunch of technical word vomit that makes no god damn sense to me. and the more I ask for people to explain this to me, the worse my confusion becomes. now I’m learning there’s like 40 different “Distro’s”… Someone else told me about Linux Mint, which looks nice, but again- I DO NOT want to be forced to use a terminal just to get the most outta my operating system. I like having some kind of UI to use.
idk man… from everything they say I can do with it, ESPECIALLY in terms of customization, I’m so tempted to use it. But my mental understanding of whatever tf Linux is, is at best a toddler’s.
Personally, I would not recommend diving into Linux headfirst by installing it as your only operating system. If you can afford an additional small drive (128GB should be plenty), I would suggest buying one and installing something like Linux Mint on that, while putting Windows on your main drive.
That way, you can switch between them whenever you want to (when you turn on your computer, you can just use a menu to choose which drive to boot to), and get somewhat familiar with Linux before deciding if it’s worth your time to really dive in.
(There’s a way to put both operating systems on the same drive, but it’s really easy for something to go wrong and end up with one of the operating systems inaccessible. Since you’re inexperienced, I would avoid going that route for the time being, and just keep both on separate drives.)
I second the point to avoid dual-booting from a single hard drive. If you want both Windows and Linux, just get a 2nd hard drive and save yourself the inevitable headache. Windows doesn’t know how to share.