1个月前

Resources for the technically challenged?

I have an ASUS ROG that came with Windows 12 11 pre-installed. I tried using it once and it pissed me off so bad I haven't opened the laptop again. I want to switch to a Linux distro that's compatible with it but need the process explained like you would to Grandma trying to bank online. Are there any resources that break it WAY down? Like, starting just after turning the computer on (I've got that down already).

Edit to say: it has been pointed out that Windows 12 does not, in fact, exist and I may or may not be posting this from the future.

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It's probably best to get someone to help you in person. See if you are near a Linux user group since they often supply installation help.
The method I always recommend is buy a new hard drive or SSD and swap it into the place of the old one, so you can swap back if something goes wrong. Then do a clean Linux install onto the new, empty drive.
Don't bother with dual boot, it's complicated and often goes wrong, and anyway you're trying to escape from Windows.
As for installation, you may have to go to your Bios setup to allow booting from USB. Then, on another computer, go here:
https://cdimage.debian.org/images/release/current-live/amd64/iso-hybrid/
Download your favorite iso image. I'll suggest "amd64-mate" if you don't have a preference, since it should be pretty familiar looking to Windows users. Then you want to write a bootable image to a flash drive. I only know how to do that with Linux, but https://duckduckgo.com/?q=write+iso+image+to+flash+drive finds a bunch of pages for other OS's.
Finally, plug the flash drive into your ASUS machine and boot. You should get a bunch of installation prompts and you can generally follow the defaults. It will install a lot of packages one at a time and take around half an hour, so do something else for a while, but also keep an eye on the install process because it will occasionally prompt you for something.
Come back after the installation finishes.
- Holy crap, thank you!!!
  
  Just a note, the person just gave you a link for Debian, which is one of the main distributions. However there's many others, as there isn't a single Linux (OS), so you may want to check what you prefer.
  Debian-based distributions have the best program support, at least for some of the proprietary stuff. "Download for Linux" in those cases means you get a .deb file which should work fine on these distros.
  I personally recommend Linux Mint for most cases.
  Oh, and you may have a bit of issue with drivers, especially if it's a newly released laptop. That's the software that makes hardware work properly with the OS. Ubuntu and Linux Mint (which is based on Ubuntu) have graphical driver manager which may come in handy.
  
  So when folks ask especially folks with limited knowledge I mention zorin os https://zorin.com/os/download/ you can just grab the core. The main thing with this os is it uses the long term support kernel of ubuntu which means it tends to be a very stable base and then its aims to give a windows look and feel along with an out of the box experience so many common programs are installed by default like libre office, cd burner, music, video, etc and this includes wine and play on linux so you can right click a windows .exe and install it. Wine is not 100% an for games you want to use proton but its good for being about as easy as can be. One thing to note that if you go to the software app the search eyeglass is in the upper left. It is placed so innocuously that its easy to miss.
  
  Also, if you don't have a machine to just experiment on, swapping an internal SSD drive back and forth may be cumbersome. If you've got the extra 15 Euros, buy a (preferably used) NVMe-to-USB3 adapter/housing, so that you can connect your SSD externally via USB. Such an adapter is very useful anyways. (This setup is still way better than permanently using a regular USB drive.)
  
  Or, while you won't get answer on hardware compatibility, just give it a try in VM under Windows.
  Won't cost anything, and can easily be ditched when you want to try something else.
- I generally disagree on dual booting. It's not complicated, barely ever goes wrong if each OS has its own physical drive, and having Windows as a backup is very, very handy, especially at first.
  
  This was about a laptop and they rarely have multiple drives. Anyway, if the OS's are on separate drives that's not really dual boot. Dual boot means the boot loader lets you choose a partition to boot. Maybe it works better now than back in the day, idk, I don't run Windows any more.
  
  GRUB absolutely takes partitions from other physical drives, and so do many other bootloaders afaik.
  So, you can choose the OS to boot as normal as you start up your computer. Just install virtually any modern Linux distro after you install Windows or if you already have it installed. The rest will be done automagically.
  And in my experience, most laptops with a single drive can accommodate a second one. But YMMV for sure.
- Please don't recommend Debian...
  
  I use it and am happy with it, not sure what I'd want to use instead, except maybe guix, which I wouldn't suggest to a newbie.

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