Looking to change to a Linux-based OS on a laptop, but I don't really understand coding so I haven't tried any of them. Is LinuxMint a good place to start?

[rowinxavier@lemmy.world]

I would ask how many times you have bricked your Windows machines in the past? That said, if you did stop it from booting it would be the same as it not booting a native Linux install.

That said, I would recommend installing first on the older machine. New life for that machine will feel good and it is very low risk. Once you have done a few installs and not botched anything too badly you could give it a go on your new machine. I find the performance boost from using Linux over Window is enough to out weight significant hardware differences most of the time.

[alecsargent@lemmy.zip]

My Office Suite is LibreOffice and as far as I’m aware that’s Linux compatible

It is very much compatible, haha. And usually comes pre-installed as the desktop office suite in many distros like Ubuntu and Debian that ship the Gnome desktop environment pre-installed.

but would my ISP be impacted by Linux then?

It should not be impacted at all.

The simple aspect of my printer being compatible didn’t come to mind at first

If you install any popular beginner friendly distro (like the ones I recommended) everything should work out of the box and it is very unlikely that any extra drivers need to be installed. For example on Archlinux no printing programs/services and drivers come pre-installed or enabled.

So do not worry at all, if your laptop cover the main requirements, the distro should handle the rest automagically. If you have any more questions you can talk to me directly here on Lemmy, or we can figure something out.

One thing though, Mint is based on Ubuntu which itself is based on Debian. But it doesn't really matter.

Since you are going to check what software you need/want for your new Linux device, you can always fill the gaps with Flatpaks on Flathub, these are meant to be universal packages for every Linux distro and usually you can find there the packages that your distro does not package natively. You can even find proprietary software like Discord and such.

And again, if you have any more questions be sure reply or send me a message directly her eon Lemmy.

[penny7@lemmy.world]

A Windows computer I had got massively fucked once like, 15ish years ago. No idea what happened. No new downloads or installs, I hadn't done anything different from any computer I've had before or since, just one day it stopped and it wasn't even that old, two years tops. Not a custom build, straight outta the box from Best Buy (maybe even Future Shop it was so long ago). My friend couldn't tell me what happened when they figured out how to get it at least booting up again. Only time it's happened. It was weeeeeeeiiiiird.

Glad to know about the performance boost.

[penny7@lemmy.world]

Thank you, that's such a kind offer! I might take you up on that! It'll probably be a bit 'cuz I need to take some time to look into programs and such that I didn't think of before to make sure what I'm used to is compatible and then I'll go from there!

[brucethemoose@lemmy.world]

MPV is the golden standard on Linux (and windows) TBH. There’s also some stuff to do to try and get picture quality and HDR looking better, if you’re interested.

But yeah, if you aren’t gaming you don’t have to worry too much about distro choice.

[libb@piefed.social]

I could have been confusing seeing somebody on Linux using the Command Box thing as more intricate coding, but for somebody in my shoes, with limited tech knowledge, it all looks like coding and is a little intimidating.

It is, I will agree with you. But it's not that complex . It's just... different and require we learn to use it, like when one learns a new foreign language of some sort..

And, btw, I did learn to use it that command prompt... not because I was forced to but because I realized how effective it was. It's incredibly useful even though I barely use it at all, compared to experts. I run some scripts to prepare content for my website... First, I was doing everything by hand, which was a real pain, but it's so much simpler and faster to let a script do all the work. And, like I said in my previous comment, I'm anything but a coder

[nibodhika@lemmy.world]

A partition is a dedicated space on a disk. In windows there's not much use to partition a disk, but it can be done, and you would have a and drives with only one physical disk. I used to do that back in the day to have a partition for backups.

If you only have one disk and want to have multiple OS, you need to partition the disk, so that each OS can write their data without interfering with one another. Essentially what you're doing is, like you said, putting a wall between areas in the disk, but you can do that regardless of having different OS in each side.

In Linux things are a bit different, the representation of your disks is a file inside /dev, for example the first disk (non-nvme) Linux finds will be /dev/sda, the next one will be /dev/sdb so on and so forth, but since disks can be partitioned the first partition in your first disk is /dev/sda1, then /dev/sda2, etc. Then there's a file called /etc/fstab that has lines like /dev/sdb3 /home, this means that the 3d partition in the second disk will be accessible in the folder /home. You don't really need to worry about this file in general, during the installation there will be a nice GUI to let you say which partition goes where.

How is that useful? Well, if you have the system in /dev/sda2 and your /home folder in /dev/sda3 you can format /dev/sda2 and reinstall the system or change the distro entirely without losing your data stored in /home.

PS: I'm simplifying some stuff, but for reference :

• you might see partitions jump from 2 to 6 in older systems, this is due to limitation in partitioning schemes for old disks
• if you have a really old computer you will see /dev/hda1, this is because the s in sda refers to SATA, which essentially all disks are nowadays
• nvme drives are /dev/nvme0n1
• /etc/fstab has other parameters to tell it certain flags like mount read-only. Also it rarely used /dev/sda1 style naming because that might change if you swap the cables in your computer, instead it uses a unique identifier that's points to the correct partition regardless of order.
• Partitions are not really a wall, instead the first bytes of a disk contain a table saying stuff like byte 0-61648716832 partition 1, bytes 61648716833-9274816418393 partition 2, etc. Old drives had limited space in that table so you had to create one partition for the rest of stuff and repartition that again, which is why partition numbers jumped from 2 to 6.

but all that's besides the point.

[rowinxavier@lemmy.world]

Yeah, I've had bad random things happen with tech, only with systems that are closed though. When they are more open you can get logs, see what is happening, and eventually modify things until they work again. I had a phone that just wouldn't stay online for more than 5 minutes if the screen turned off. Screen on, internet working just fine. Screen off for 4 minutes, perfectly happy most of the time. Then suddenly around 5 minutes it would just die. It was running Android so I could see some stuff but I simply couldn't get the information I needed to figure it out. Linux is much more forgiving with logs and such giving actual error messages which with a simple copy paste can get you to a reasonable next step.

[obothehobo@ttrpg.network]

It's not necessarily a problem, it just shouldn't be the first thing you try. On windows people are used to always downloading the program directly from the internet first thing, but on linux you'll have a better time if you check the package manager and/or flathub first for programs. Then, if it's not there, then yeah download direct from the internet.

[rapchee@lemmy.world]

it depends on your pc/laptop, some models are super easy, usually the ram and disk is on the more easily available side. try looking up a youtube video like "<my model> hd swap" or "<my model> disassembly" if the first doesn't work
for example fujitsu-s are super simple, they have a compartment for the disk, just unscrew the cover, unscrew the hd, screw in the new one and pop it back in
others are more complicated, but it's usually just removing the back cover
in case you do it, keep track of the screws, where they come from, where you temporarily store them. it's a common issue that one ends up with a couple "extra" screws