How to Switch To Linux - Step by Step Walkthrough

Switching to Linux can be a scary proposition. The steps you need to take, the various obstacles, the risk of wiping your disk, everything leads to questions and doubts. The choice can also be overwhelming. This video series aims to help people willing to switch, take their first steps. We’ll start by listing the steps you need to watch to ensure the transition goes well, and move on to how to choose a distro, actually installing it, and how to get help if something goes wrong.

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Moving to Linux doesn’t imply any technical or coding knowledge, nowadays, but you still need to take some precautions first. You’re going to be messing with your SSD or your hard drive disk, so some amount of care is required. The obvious first step is to backup your data.

Check your components online Check what your computer has inside before trying out Linux. Most motherboards, processors, hard drives and SSDs will work out of the box, no questions asked. Graphics cards aren’t an issue anymore: for AMD users, the open source drivers are perfect. For Intel users, everything is already supported as well. For Nivida users, you’ll just need to install the proprietary driver to make sure you get the full potential of your card. What you need to look for is your wifi and bluetooth modules. Check the model numbers, and look them up online with the keyword “Linux”, to see if people report errors, or have solutions to make them work.

Choose a distribution For those of you who are not familiar with Linux at all, a distro, or distribution, is basically a “version” of a Linux based OS. What we call Linux is not a single unified operating system as Windows or Mac Os. it’s an ensemble of the Linux kernel, the GNU tools, a display server to allow to have a graphical interface, and a desktop environment and applications. For Beginners, Ubuntu or Fedora will work for stability, and Manjaro will do the job if you want bleeding edge. You can then pick the desktop environment you want to use: GNOME for simplicity, KDE for super high customization, Cinnamon for an intermediate mix, and XFCE if you want something lightweight.

Create a live USB Generally, what you need to do is download the distribution you chose, and put it on a USB key with a dedicated tool. Most distros are provided as an ISO image file, what was used to burn optical disks.To put that image on a USB key, all you need is Etcher, a very simple tool that will let you select the ISO itself, the USB key, and click “go”.

Boot from the USB key This means starting up your computer using t ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ro6IWsT3uRk