Linux is easier than you think

Fri, 25 Sep 2026 17:27:05 -0400

Intro

A lot of people are curious to try Linux, what with Windows being a bit of a nightmare lately. But I think many guides out there are too commital. They tell people that they need to switch to Linux or they’re a dumbass, or that they need to wipe their computer to try it out, or that the best way to try it out is to use a VM (which isn’t inherently problematic but I think the delay and lag introduced by the typical VM setup gives people the wrong impression). I don’t agree, those statements aren’t necessarily true. I want to give you a practical guide to getting Linux up and running alongside your existing Windows install.

Some educational preamble

What’s a computer?

The primary parts of a computer are the motherboard, processor, memory, storage, and input/output (so your mouse, keyboard, screen, and speakers). Everything else supplements the rest of the computer; for example, you may have heard of a graphics card, but that’s just a supplementary expansion to the computer that’s designed to be really good at calculating stuff for drawing pictures.

In a typical computer, the motherboard holds everything else and lets them communicate with each other. The processor does the actual work of coordinating work between parts and doing calculations. The memory holds temporary data that the processor needs to access, including temporary calculations and programs. The storage saves data long-term, so that you don’t lose any of it. The input/output provides a mechanism for you to interact with everything going on on the computer.

Let’s make an analogy. The motherboard is like a manager, the processor is like a(n) employee(s), the memory is like a notepad, the storage is like a filing cabinet, and the input/output is like a conference room. The manager comes into the office, receives orders, and then relays instructions to their employee(s), who use the notepad to keep themselves on track and write down numbers. When the employee is finished with a task, they write a finalized report and hand it back to their manager, who then puts it in their filing cabinet. Every once in a while, the manager enters the conference room to present results and receive more instructions. This is a very basic overview, but this analogy can be very flexible and accommodate more complex functions (for example, a graphics card could be like a graphic designer; i.e. a type of employee whose only job is to do art and drawings).

What’s an operating system?

Windows or macOS is probably the operating system (OS) you’re running on your computer right now. All that means is that it’s a collection of software designed by Microsoft or Apple to provide an environment for you to run the software you want on the computer hardware. Let’s run through what that means when your computer turns on.

When you turn on your computer, the parts can’t just immediately leap into action. The instructions for how to do anything are buried in your storage; most notably, your OS is sitting on your storage device, so your processor needs to figure out a way to load it into memory. Luckily, the motherboard has a very small stash of instructions called the BIOS. The BIOS tells the processor how to dig another stash of instructions called the bootloader out of the storage. The bootloader in turn tells the processor how to dig the OS out of the storage.

Since the bootloader has free reign on how to load an OS from storage, it can support multiple OSs installed on the same storage device. This is called dual-booting or multi-booting.

What’s Linux?

Linux is technically a kernel, which means OSs are built around it. It is open-source, so anyone with technical know-how can experiment and submit a request to change a part of it. This also means its inner workings are documented very well, making it extremely easy to build software around it. This is why whenever you look at Linux, there are dozens of OSs to choose from that all distribute the Linux kernel. We’re currently seeing a huge surge in Linux popularity thanks to massive improvements in the gaming infrastructure in the last decade.

The game plan

Quick note: this guide targets Windows computers, but it is possible to dual-boot a Linux OS on Apple computers. Some parts are different, especially on the software compatibility side, but parts of this should also be applicable to Apple computers.

This guide will walk you through preparing your computer for dual-boot, creating an installation USB stick, actually installing the Linux OS, and a few post-installation recommendations. A quick disclaimer first

WARNING

Please have a backup plan. Following this guide to the letter shouldn’t result in anything bad happening, but since we’re dealing with operations that can wipe your storage and change how your computer works, there is always a risk of losing your data (or rarely, of breaking your hardware) should something go awry. Following this guide is your choice, I cannot be held responsible for any damage you incur. Please do not proceed with anything in this guide until you are sure you are doing it safely and correctly, and please do not risk anything you aren’t willing to lose. (Though realistically I have never heard of anyone permanently damaging a device by installing Linux on it, I really do feel the need to provide the disclaimer because it is possible but exceedingly rare.)

The guide – let’s get started

Prepare for installation

Download ISOs

Download a Linux OS ISO of your choosing. At this point in time, I would probably recommend Nobara, Ubuntu, or CachyOS. I personally use CachyOS. Feel free to poke around and find one you like more, but do yourself a favor and pick a popular-ish distro so that there are plenty of community guides available to teach you how to do things the way your distro expects them to be done.

I also recommend you download a Windows ISO handy so you can reinstall or recover Windows if something goes wrong.

Prepare a USB stick

There are several methods to get your ISO onto a USB stick, but I prefer Ventoy because it’s one of the few options out there that lets you select between multiple ISOs when you boot it up.

If using Ventoy, simply open the program and install it to a USB stick. Enabling safe boot support and GPT mode in the Ventoy settings may make things easier. Then, simply drop your ISO files into the new space on the USB stick.

Shrink your Windows partition

Open the Windows Disk Management tool (you can find this by typing “disk management” into the search bar). Here you’ll see a list of storage devices and partitions (AKA volumes) on your system. Partitions are simply separate virtual spaces on your storage. Right click on your C: drive and select “Shrink Volume…” and shrink it by about 30-ish gigabytes (multiply the number of gigabytes by 1024 to get the number of megabytes). This will create space for your Linux installation. You can search around for recommendations, but remember this is gonna be annoying to change later so don’t go too stingy if you have the space for it.

Make a note of your partitions’ sizes afterward, it may be useful to remember for later in the process.

Disable Fast Shutdown and Hibernate

Fast shutdown and hibernation are both features that save the current computer state to your storage before shutting down, then restore the computer state when your computer turns back on. The trouble is that with multiple OSs able to read and write to any part of your storage, you run the risk of corrupting the restore state by switching to a different OS than the one that saved the state. The simplest way to avoid this disaster is to disable these features. The only downsides are a lack of hibernate features and a potentially slower startup when you boot into Windows from now on, and hibernate is getting rarer these days so I doubt the average user has used it in the last 5-10 years. Although I guess if you’re here, you’re not the average user…

Anyway the Arch Wiki has a fantastic command to run to disable them both from an admin command line terminal:

powercfg /H off

Switch your system clock to UTC

For the most part your OSs will be isolated from each other, but it’s inevitable that they will need to share something if they’re both on the same computer. One such thing is the system clock. Windows expects it to be in local time by default, but most Linux OSs expect it to be UTC time by default. If you find out your distro doesn’t need this, you can skip it. A simple registry trick on the Windows side is the easiest way to fix it.

Thanks again to Arch Wiki for the copy/paste one-liner for the admin command line terminal again:

reg add "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\TimeZoneInformation" /v RealTimeIsUniversal /d 1 /t REG_DWORD /f

Disable secure boot

Your computer probably has secure boot turned on, which means it’ll probably not like booting from your USB stick. The simplest workaround is to disable secure boot. This will depend on your motherboard’s manufacturer, so you might have to search online for how to do it. Depending on the Linux distro you’ve chosen, you may be able to turn secure boot back on once you’re done.

Install it

To be honest this is the easiest part. Plug in your USB stick and go through your computer’s BIOS to boot up Ventoy, then go through Ventoy and select your distro’s ISO. After a little wait, your distro will likely have a popup window asking you if you’d like to install your distro. If not, search around for an installer icon somewhere. After that, follow the installer’s prompts. Most of the default options should be fine, but feel free to change things to suit your liking. The screenshots here may differ depending on which distro you’ve selected.

Pay extra attention to the disk partitioning section of your installer, since we need to make sure we’re installing to the empty space we made by shrinking Windows. Otherwise you probably wipe out your Windows, and that kinda negates the whole point of dual-booting. The partitions will use a different labeling scheme than Windows used, so this is where that note I mentioned earlier comes in handy. The screenshot will probably differ from what you see since I’ve already got a Linux OS installed and I am not wiping it for y’all.

At this stage you may also run into hiccups while the installer checks to make sure things will be fine. For example, when installing CachyOS it notified me that my bootloader partition from Windows was too small… resizing it was a pain in the ass, but it turned out fine in the end.

At the last step, the installer should warn you before it makes any changes to your system. Review your selections, make sure you haven’t made any mistakes, and let it rip.

Live in it

After it’s done, you can reboot your computer. The installer will probably have replaced your bootloader with one that can look for Windows and Linux installations, so go ahead and select your Linux installation and play around for a while. You’ll notice plenty of things that are “wrong” compared to Windows, but playing around in wonder is half the fun. Mess around, break things, use search engines and wikis to help you solve problems. Learning is fun!

Some tips

Use your distro’s documentation to get some common things set up that you might need to live comfortably in your distro

Check your distro’s website periodically for update news, it may be more important for you than Windows’ news

There is no C: drive; instead Linux distros have the root directory (/) and everything is mounted somewhere in the file tree

Generally, it’s preferred that you install programs through your distro’s package manager instead of by downloading from the program’s homepage

Thank you so much for reading, have a nice day.

– Patch

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