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I've drawn the line when my files were eaten by their cloud, and also because fuck monopolies and yadwleeyaddeeyada.
Drawn the line but haven't stepped over: I have one laptop and can't really afford a new one. What if I brick it installing Linux? I really really really really want to, haven't dared yet.
you cant brick computer just by installing operating system. That happens if bios breaks but mostly there is no reason to mess with that.
The main thing I think is a valid fear is losing things necessary to reinstall Windows in case of emergency.
With 11, they tie it to MS account which makes a reinstall easier. Some devices, I think it’s tied to the hardware though? That’s actually something I’d like to learn more about so people doing Linux tryouts have a safety net.
Sooo.. you say I should. What if I'm not entirely tech illiterate but enough and too confident that I fuck up the BIOS inadvertently?
I'm gonna do it.. I'm gonna install Mint tomorrow.
Thank you for giving me the push
You always have the option to run Linux from a flash drive and see if you like it, disregarding slowness.
Search
[your laptop model] linuxand see what other people have experienced. IME it's almost always painless unless you just happen to have a proprietary wifi chip or something that devs are still reverse engineering.Now, you can just buy premade. Ubuntu and Pop!, mostly. With that, the hardware will be compatible out of the box. Mainstreaming capacity is here.
That's very very unlikely to happen.
What might happen is you can't run some version of Linux because of some bios setting and you're left with no working OS on the machine (Even when it does boot fine from the USB, the installed one may not boot because of secureboot, legacy boot mode, or something else).
So when you finally do decide to take the leap, keep a windows ISO burnt into a USB around.