First time Linux user, kind of nervous of committing to the installation

Having my own desktop was a dream of mine for a while and I’ve only just now gotten a hold of one with my own money. Due to various sources I set my eyes on Linux and eventually OM to be the OS for it.

I didn’t find any hardware issues so I’m at the awkward part of deciding to commit to it because silly me only bought one drive and I hear that windows can break a single drive dual boot.

The main uncertainties I have is that I didn’t get the memo that Samsung drives (990 pro 2tb) can have issues. As well as the amd cpu plasma Rome builds being labeled as snapshots and not knowing if that comes with major limitations that other builds don’t have to worry about.

Open Mandriva interests me as it sounds like it has neat history behind it, though what I know about it is limited because Mandrake is older than I am. I hear Linux is getting pretty good performance with gaming lately and it’s nice to know that the devs that don’t hate me. I’ve been mentally describing Linux as “the frontier of modern times” due to its promise of freedom.

I’m not too worried about the console, I can pick up programming fairly easily (and I am ready to take notes), I just think people who do it on a regular basis are masochists. I’m not that attached to windows as I never had the MS office suite or Adobe at home, and the games I play seems to be Linux compatible. I have had a positive first impression skimming these forums, so I’m posting this to see what happens.

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Welcome! We hope you find a new home here with us.

First thing I would do in your situation, is wait and get another drive. One can dual boot from one drive, but I don’t do it anymore. Drives are cheap now. I have been pleased with TeamGroup drives. Wait a month or so and grab a new drive to install on. I think you will be much happier in the long run.

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I second what @WilsonPhillips said. Get a second Harddrive, They are not that expensive and it helps when you need more storage.

And welcome to OMLx. Glad to have you!

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That does not matter. Rolling ISOs are all snapshots actually.

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Yes, Arch, Tumbleweed, etc. all the same. Snapshots.

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Well you see, I’ve been fighting with myself about dual booting because I’m bad at getting into things by easing into it. My hesitations to dive into things is the key reason I’m bad at studying Japanese as a language.

My drive is fresh because I planned on switching from the start, I’m just getting cold feet. I still have a craptop to get the windows ISO from and my license is on my Microsoft account so I have the means to back out. I feel like I’m not attached to windows enough for dual booting to be worth it in the long run.

It is fact that I can make it work, and yet part of me is lame and wants approval.

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Then install OMLx. As you are new I would recommend ROME Plasma6.

Full disclosure: My opinion is of course biased as I am a long time OM Contributor. If you save your license somewhere you could still install Windows in the future but you probably won’t miss it unless you have some specialized need for some Windows only software. And you can run a lot of Windows apps with Wine, Proton, or Proton Experimental.

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Thanks for the replies, I’ll do my best.

I’m not clear, but do you have 2 drives now?

If so, what I did when I ran Windows and Linux was remove the Windows drive and install Linux on the other drive. Then I put the Windows drive in and just use the BIOS Boot menu F8 to choose which I wanted to boot to. Yours may not be F8, there there should be a boot menu and in the BIOS/UEFI, you can pick which one you want to default.

Just the one drive and a usb burnt with the iso.

Did I goof with the definitions? I mean does the USB count a “dual booting?”

No. That doesn’t count. The USB just gets you a live environment.

My mistake, I seem to have mentally connected boot settings to a second drive in response to your confusion.

Don’t bother with dual booting or waiting for a second drive. Do what Ben said above, pull your windows license, write it down, and just wipe the whole drive and install OM. You can always reinstall wimdows and put your license key back in to activate windows.

Yes, USB counts. When running a live image it is perhaps less useful, but you most certainly are booting and running an OS from a second drive. I had a laptop with a 2.5" rust platter that had something on the motherboard die that caused the drive to become unreadable. I put the drive in an external USB enclosure, plugged it into a USB port, booted from it and was back up and running. You could hardly tell the difference because those old drives are so slow anyways. I don’t know if it is still a popular thing to do, but for a few years there it was common to build a NAS that booted from a USB thumb drive plugged into an internal USB port on the motherboard.

I’ve not done dual booting with two operating systems on one physical drive since the WinXP days. Back then it wasn’t a big deal, just install Linux after Windows and it was fine. When that computer was about 4-5 years old WinXP was very slow to boot and almost unusable, but the Ubuntu install was still fast and responsive. As a result I gradually used WinXP less and less. Now days when I dual boot it is using multiple physical drives and it doesn’t involve the use of Microsoft products. If you don’t need Windows for a particular piece of important software then I’d recommend just switching over to Linux. If you want to keep Windows around just in case then save up and spend the $40 to get a second drive. Drives used to cost a whole lot more and coffee a whole lot less so I know you can find the money if you really want to.

FWIW I do multi-boot and have for years using one drive and one /boot/efi partition. I rather thought this was the purpose of grub2.

Anyway over the years I derived something that works well for me. I can see that in some ways it may be easier to switch systems in BIOS/Firmware but as a one computer laptop user I only have one drive. And it seem kind of silly to tell users they need to buy another drive when the grub2 software was written in order that this not be necessary.

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I would agree with @ben79, I boot multiple os’s from one drive and never had a problem. If you want to keep windows consider making a large ntfs data partition so you can share all your files (photos, music, madia etc) between windows and OM. I do this and just symlink these folders in my home directory If you need help with this i can walk you through it. But if you’re not attached the windows you will probably be better off just ditching it. If you hit any problems this forum will be way more help than any MS i have used.

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I like @richp’s approach to this.

FWIW I am not meaning to state according what may be right or wrong just stating what works for me. I do not mean to imply that those who do things a different way are wrong.

For me some years ago ditching Windows was the right thing to do. This is not so for everyone and I recognize that. For various reasons some people can’t ditch Windows.

I made the jump and so far am having no major issues, may have made a mountain out of an ant hill.

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Glad to hear it! Don’t hesitate to ask questions. Join the matrix chat too, some of us are on there more often than the forums.

This it true. If you update it as soon as you install it, there will already be plenty to upgrade.