Dual booting can be problematic. Windows is the most retarded OS ever which sometimes decides to overwrite boot partition.
FOr trying out stuff, you van install Linux as a virtual machine. Check there if your sw works there and is available.

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This may not work for everyone, but the only way to truly embrace Linux was to wipe the windows partition and start using Linux. That’s it, you no longer have to option to run back to your dual booted Windows if shit doesnt work. You sit down and figure it out.

I’m a middle-aged truck driver. I’ve been using Linux Mint (Cinnamon) now for about seven years as my only operating system (without dual booting) since Windows XP Pro became totally obsolete. Granted, I’m a hobbyist programmer and lifelong computer enthusiast. However, there are definitely some easy to install and use distros out there these days.

Kubuntu or Mint are great distro’s to begin with when starting your linux journey. It’s good to know down the road these should really be moved on from, but they’re great to get the ball rollin for sure!

My advice is to restart with Arch (I use Arch btw). Not Manjaro, I’m talking Arch.

I think using/installing Arch as well as its barebones nature FORCES you to understand how Linux works differently than Windows with concepts like root, bootloader, terminal emulation, and disk partitioning, just to give you some examples. At the same time, Arch has excellent documentation, a great package manager in pacman, and rolling release model that greatly simplifies maintainance during daily use so you can tune it to exactly how you want it.

I believe doing it the hard way at first will make it easier for you in the long run if you really want to understand Linux, and Arch is just the right amount of difficult to make you learn Linux, whereas Gentoo would be too hard and you don’t learn enough from using Ubuntu/Debian/Mint.

But yeah, if you just want to use something that works well out of the box, then Ubuntu is great, there’s nothing wrong with using the more user friendly distros.

Before I could fully leave windows, I spent a lot of time being lost in Linux distrohopping and ricing without even fully understanding what I was doing. Without a solid setup to live in, Linux had a weird experimental feel and it got frustrating when I wanted stuff done.

Coming to your case, there are 2 different priorities here: daily driving and Linux proficiency. You’re tied into windows for the daily driving bit for now so your main focus should be learning, and that probably won’t need a dual boot right away.

First up is understanding why there are so many distributions. Linux is the kernel, the common skeleton that you can’t use on its own. There are other modular bits that go on top to make a full fledged OS, and the choices of what those are is what makes a distribution. Learn more about the options available for the modular bits - the ones that you should concern yourself with for now are:

• package managers: the program responsible for installing and managing software. This is one of the main differences between the major popular variants of Linux(Debian, Arch, fedora etc). For example, on Debian and distros based on it, you’d use apt. That’s why you would’ve probably used apt on Ubuntu, it’s based on Debian.
• desktop environment: all the programs involved with the user interface - the main UI itself. This is a subjective thing and people use different desktop environments based on their workflow.

Once you get this modularity based perspective, distributions wont be overwhelming and vague. You’ll understand why people are recommending mint or popOS:

• it’s Ubuntu based and there are many popular Debian and Ubuntu based distros out there. You’ll be able to get software easily and if there’s some problem you need to debug, there’s a relevant question and answer out there
• mint’s desktop environment is cinnamon, which is simple, clean and not too jarring for people coming from windows

You’ll also know, you can choose whatever you want as long as it’s Ubuntu based for your learning phase. Only at that point I think it will make sense to dual boot. You can boot in for particular reasons instead of a vague “let me understand Linux”. The reasons will be finding alternative software to daily drive, learning how to use the terminal or just getting comfortable with Linux in general. From there, you can find your own way or reach out to the community with questions specific for your use cases.

My advice is, learning new things can be a pleasure, so try to improve your learning skills. Everything is possible then.

Rather than trying to muck with dual booting, I would recommend picking up a Lenovo T430S or better laptop on Amazon from around 150.00-500.00. Lenovo ThinkPad T series laptops are incredibly well supported by Linux. Then install Linux Mint. This is a great way to get started with a low barrier to entry. As you get better, you can start tinkering with the innards. By getting a cheap spare machine with which to learn Linux on, it will be the least disruptive to you.

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General tips:

• Don’t look for Linux versions of the Windows software you use. Instead look for software that fulfils the same purpose.
• If you’re cutting-and-pasting a lot of stuff from those articles, give yourself a check on what those things actually do. See it as a small investment of time to economise time later on, as you’ll rely less and less on those articles.
• Stick to popular distros. And for the desktop environment (DE), use whatever works for you.
• Keep it easy. It’s fine if you need to log into Windows once in a while, but over time you’ll notice yourself doing it less and less.

I have an arguably bad piece of advice, but one I hadn’t seen in skimming the replies.

You could always install Windows in a VM. Libvirt and virt-manager offer a pleasant GUI experience so it’s easy to do. If you give the VM a heavy resource allotment (while leaving a reasonable amount for the host) it should still perform well. The VM video driver is the only place you take a not insignificant performance hit, but for A/V manipulation I don’t think it’ll matter. Unless you use GPU based video encoding. In which case it’ll be CPU bound now so slower. You can potentially do PCI pass through to your GPU but that adds complexity.

A big downside here is that as far as Windows is concerned, this is different “hardware” so it won’t activate based on your physical device. As I recall, it only allows the use of one core while unactivated which is pretty much unusable. So a pretty hefty expense relative to a personal VM, I think. But it is an option.

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Being able to easily switch back to Windows hindered my attempt to learn Linux. When I wasn’t in the mood to learn a new concept, or failed to get something working after a few tries, then I’d just boot right back into Windows. I was able to push on when I deleted Windows in a rage and now the alternative to getting over the Linux hill was going back down and doing the “no, no, no, no, fuck off” dance that is the Windows install process.

Websites recommending Ubuntu to noobs didn’t help me much. The panel being stuck of the left size of the monitor after my friend boasted about customization on Linux really grinds my gears. Linux Mint was much better coming from Windows, and I’m still on it years later.