What are the chances that I, a not particularly tech savvy person, go to download mint and end up bricking my computer?
Honestly, my computer is an absolute bottom of the barrel $200 Dell laptop right now, so it wouldn’t be that big of a deal, but I’d hate to fuck it up, get a better computer, and fuck that up too.
If you’re capable of booting from a flash drive you’re capable of installing Mint.
If you want to keep your Windows environment around for emergencies, you might need to learn a little bit about how to partition a disk, which is about 15 minutes of learning and 5 minutes of doing. Or if you have a second hard drive installed that you want to devote to Linux you don’t even need to do the partitioning.
What are the chances that I, a not particularly tech savvy person, go to download mint and end up bricking my computer?
Very low. You’ll download Mint and set it up on a USB drive, then boot that USB drive and be able to run it live BEFORE you make any permanent changes to your computer.
Everyone here is saying it’s easy but nobody is mention that if you have any sort of unforeseen problem it can be a huge headache to fix. For example, let’s say your touchpad doesn’t work correctly. Resolving driver issues with Linux can very easily overwhelm anyone who isn’t tech-savvy and now you’ve put yourself in a situation where you want to reinstall Windows and have to figure that out next.
Definitely look into using Rufus to create a flash drive with Mint, let your laptop boot from it, and then just demo it for a few weeks. It’ll run slower than actually installing it to your computer but at least you’ll get a sense for if you actually want to pull the trigger or not (and if you don’t, unplug the drive and you’re back to booting your Windows environment with no harm done.)
Also on a quick note(I am saying that because that is what a lot of people hate on linux), download and try libre office before you change to see what you lose if you switch to libre office and if libre office did not work out for you, try only office and WPS office(both are available on linux) to see what is the best for you before you switch.
I personally use WPS office on linux with internet access turned off for it.
Fellow non-techy here. I’ve been on Linux for years, only leaving Windows for one specific program (that I finally found a way of using on Linux). It’s easy. Obviously the techy people can explain any risks better, but if you want to dual boot, or even nuke windows, it’s super easy. Etch it to a flash drive, there are a million YouTube videos on how, and boot from the USB. There’s a GUI wizard that walks you through everything. Mint is great, and the UI is familiar to windows users. I prefer Fedora, because I wanted a change from Windows, and it’s fun and intuitive to use GNOME for me. The Linux of today isn’t difficult to use. In fact, unless you go with something like Gentoo, you’ll probably never have to open terminal if all you do is web based stuff. It’s pretty freaking sweet. If you go with anything that uses GNOME as the DE look up extensions. They make it better and more customizable.
Biggest thing, just back everything up you might want to keep. I got nextcloud through hertzner. 15 bucks a month for 5 TB of storage. Backed up both laptops, my phone, my tablet, and have my brother, my mom, my sister in law and my friend on there, too. It’s worth doing if you’re concerned about losing important documents or photos
You already got some good replies, but I still have something to add:
It is extremely unlikely you will permanently brick your laptop. The realistically worst thing to happen is that you end up without any working OS, be it Windows or Linux. If you can get help you will be able to install Windows again (not that hard though to do by yourself).
Second thing is that Linux installers usually come with a live environment. That means that your windows installation is absolutely safe while Mint runs from your USB. You can then do some browsing or play around with Mint before deciding to install it permanently.
Its very unlikely you would brick the computer in the sense of not being repairable. Most likely mistake would be accidentally wiping everything that’s on the laptop currently. As always, backup your important files to an external device first just in case.
Not very large, download it, put it on usb with rufus(choose the right Disk, not you C:, ) Start from USB and test without making changes, if the laptop is super New stuff may not work yet on Mint
It’s pretty unlikely these days. You can try it on a bootable usb stick first, to make sure the hardware is ok with it. Ubuntu has more support for things like non-free drivers and such.
For the best outcome, buy 2 USB sticks and then burn windows enterprise iot From massgrave on one of them and linux mint on the other( I recommend Opensuse tumbleweed instead, but you are free to choose), this way even if your linux installation got fucked up, you could still install windows again and resume your work.
Techy person, you’d really have to fuck up that install bad to brick your computer. Like, I think the worst you could do might just be breaking your install drive and that would probaby just be regular hardware failure.
What are the chances that I, a not particularly tech savvy person, go to download mint and end up bricking my computer?
Honestly, my computer is an absolute bottom of the barrel $200 Dell laptop right now, so it wouldn’t be that big of a deal, but I’d hate to fuck it up, get a better computer, and fuck that up too.
If you’re capable of booting from a flash drive you’re capable of installing Mint.
If you want to keep your Windows environment around for emergencies, you might need to learn a little bit about how to partition a disk, which is about 15 minutes of learning and 5 minutes of doing. Or if you have a second hard drive installed that you want to devote to Linux you don’t even need to do the partitioning.
Very low. You’ll download Mint and set it up on a USB drive, then boot that USB drive and be able to run it live BEFORE you make any permanent changes to your computer.
Its pretty straightforward and completely covered in the official Installation Documentation.
Everyone here is saying it’s easy but nobody is mention that if you have any sort of unforeseen problem it can be a huge headache to fix. For example, let’s say your touchpad doesn’t work correctly. Resolving driver issues with Linux can very easily overwhelm anyone who isn’t tech-savvy and now you’ve put yourself in a situation where you want to reinstall Windows and have to figure that out next.
Definitely look into using Rufus to create a flash drive with Mint, let your laptop boot from it, and then just demo it for a few weeks. It’ll run slower than actually installing it to your computer but at least you’ll get a sense for if you actually want to pull the trigger or not (and if you don’t, unplug the drive and you’re back to booting your Windows environment with no harm done.)
Also on a quick note(I am saying that because that is what a lot of people hate on linux), download and try libre office before you change to see what you lose if you switch to libre office and if libre office did not work out for you, try only office and WPS office(both are available on linux) to see what is the best for you before you switch.
I personally use WPS office on linux with internet access turned off for it.
Fellow non-techy here. I’ve been on Linux for years, only leaving Windows for one specific program (that I finally found a way of using on Linux). It’s easy. Obviously the techy people can explain any risks better, but if you want to dual boot, or even nuke windows, it’s super easy. Etch it to a flash drive, there are a million YouTube videos on how, and boot from the USB. There’s a GUI wizard that walks you through everything. Mint is great, and the UI is familiar to windows users. I prefer Fedora, because I wanted a change from Windows, and it’s fun and intuitive to use GNOME for me. The Linux of today isn’t difficult to use. In fact, unless you go with something like Gentoo, you’ll probably never have to open terminal if all you do is web based stuff. It’s pretty freaking sweet. If you go with anything that uses GNOME as the DE look up extensions. They make it better and more customizable.
Biggest thing, just back everything up you might want to keep. I got nextcloud through hertzner. 15 bucks a month for 5 TB of storage. Backed up both laptops, my phone, my tablet, and have my brother, my mom, my sister in law and my friend on there, too. It’s worth doing if you’re concerned about losing important documents or photos
If you can follow the instructions on the install site, you should be fine (especially if you don’t try to dual boot): https://linuxmint-installation-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/burn.html
You already got some good replies, but I still have something to add:
It is extremely unlikely you will permanently brick your laptop. The realistically worst thing to happen is that you end up without any working OS, be it Windows or Linux. If you can get help you will be able to install Windows again (not that hard though to do by yourself).
Second thing is that Linux installers usually come with a live environment. That means that your windows installation is absolutely safe while Mint runs from your USB. You can then do some browsing or play around with Mint before deciding to install it permanently.
I’d recommend keeping all your important files on a separate disk/partition. It makes it easier and quicker for back ups and system restoration.
So even if you fuck up bad (which IMO is pretty hard to do), you can just nuke the OS and your personal files are fine.
Its very unlikely you would brick the computer in the sense of not being repairable. Most likely mistake would be accidentally wiping everything that’s on the laptop currently. As always, backup your important files to an external device first just in case.
Not very large, download it, put it on usb with rufus(choose the right Disk, not you C:, ) Start from USB and test without making changes, if the laptop is super New stuff may not work yet on Mint
There isn’t that big of a risk that it breaks completely. If the installation isn’t to your liking you can still go and reinstall windows
It’s pretty unlikely these days. You can try it on a bootable usb stick first, to make sure the hardware is ok with it. Ubuntu has more support for things like non-free drivers and such.
For the best outcome, buy 2 USB sticks and then burn windows enterprise iot From massgrave on one of them and linux mint on the other( I recommend Opensuse tumbleweed instead, but you are free to choose), this way even if your linux installation got fucked up, you could still install windows again and resume your work.
Techy person, you’d really have to fuck up that install bad to brick your computer. Like, I think the worst you could do might just be breaking your install drive and that would probaby just be regular hardware failure.