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Joined 2 years ago
Cake day: November 27th, 2023
  • monovergent@lemmy.mltoLinux@lemmy.ml•Easy Dual Boot Method to Give Family Offramp from Windows
    3·
    3 days ago

    Linux Mint is your best bet. Intuitive for new users without any flashy features to get in the way.

    All said, temper your expectations. I did this for a couple of my folks and the Linux partition just sat untouched until I next visited (and presumably thereafter). Despite updates for their existing Windows 10 ending. For an unfortunate majority of people, they don’t really care until their browser stops rendering pages, no matter how you proselytize Linux.

    on second thought, don't even dual boot. A separate computer would have fared better. But if you must dual-boot...

    No personal experience on how to make the dual-boot graphical, but that’s a very good idea. I’ve witnessed computer science graduates struggle to get their computer to boot from a USB stick.

    Separate disk because that eliminates interference with the Windows Boot Manager. More like the other way around since Windows tends to mess with GRUB after certain updates if it’s on the same disk. Nearly every concern with whether to install Windows or Linux first arises from trying to dual-boot on the same disk. And if anything goes wrong, you can just revert by unplugging the Linux disk instead of painstakingly reconstructing a broken Windows install.

    If you are passionate enough and have some money to spare, get a used laptop (240 GB SSD, 8GB of RAM, 3rd Gen i5 at a minimum), preferably enterprise-grade (Latitude, ProBook, ThinkPad), clean it up, and pop Linux Mint onto it. Your folks can then experience Linux at their leisure, side-by-side with their existing machine at no risk. No fussing with boot order menus, which I have seen confuse computer science graduates.