Post #1176330

@NickGates First you will get overwhelmed because a bunch of weirdos are tripping over themselves to give you advice. Fight the panic! You should use Ubuntu, Mint or Fedora, and whichever choice you make it will be the right one, because it doesn't matter. Next you will download an ISO file from the distro's website. It's a disk image of the operating system. You will flash that ISO onto a USB stick. You can google how to do this. You can boot your computer from the USB stick and use Linux without installing it. Try it out. Kick the tires. Maybe watch some videos on a Youtube channel called The Linux Experiment at this point. When you're ready, and your files are backed up, you will install it on your computer. If you're not sure you're ready, you can install Linux on that old laptop in your closet. If it's a PC less than 15 years old, it will work well. A Mac with an Intel processor will work too. If your closet is empty, a virtual machine is also a good way to take an extended test drive. Anyway, when you're ready, install the OS. Installing an OS is one of those things that is scary and turns out to be easy. For the most part, everything is going to work. If you're unlucky, something non-crucial like the webcam might not work at first. You will fix it by installing a driver. If there isn't a Linux version of a piece of software, look on AlternativeTo.net for an alternative. However, if it isn't made by Microsoft or Adobe, there usually is a Linux version. If there's some particular thing you absolutely need that they don't make, you can usually get the Windows version working. When you have a question, you will post it on Mastodon and you will get ten more answers than you need.