You’re in luck. I have roughly 30 years experience. And first let me chime in with the other recommendations. Linux Mint is absolutely a good starting point. And making a “live” USB is a fantastic way to get an introduction and heads up on possible hardware issues. They’re rare but they do exist for any OS. However installing software etc to a live distro is not usually an easy thing. If you want to explore the software side beyond what’s on a live image. Try an install to virtualbox. You will get basic practice with actually installing a basic distro. And be able to fully explore the app repositories.
The biggest show stopper for switching to Linux these days is either that you have x rare oddball hardware, or you very specifically need y piece of software that refuses to run under wine, or obscure feature z of software package y.
One final recommendation. If you don’t back up regularly or like you should to external media. You will always run the risk of damaging your windows install should you want to keep it around. It’s a right of passage for many of us that did it back in the '90s. But not everyone wants that kind of stress just starting out. If you have a little bit of cash to spare. Go on eBay and pick up an old used HP Lenovo or Dell business system. You can get a fourth generation I7 with a decent amount of RAM and perhaps a hard disk and a windows license for almost $150. If you want to practice dual booting, it will make a perfect system. And with a $30 or so HDMI KVM. It can even use the same monitor. Keyboard and mouse as your main system. So you can use them side by side and see which one really stacks up. And in the end when you’ve made your decision. The old business system will be ready to make a great network file server. If nothing else. It’s sort of a win-win-win win investment.
You’re in luck. I have roughly 30 years experience. And first let me chime in with the other recommendations. Linux Mint is absolutely a good starting point. And making a “live” USB is a fantastic way to get an introduction and heads up on possible hardware issues. They’re rare but they do exist for any OS. However installing software etc to a live distro is not usually an easy thing. If you want to explore the software side beyond what’s on a live image. Try an install to virtualbox. You will get basic practice with actually installing a basic distro. And be able to fully explore the app repositories.
The biggest show stopper for switching to Linux these days is either that you have x rare oddball hardware, or you very specifically need y piece of software that refuses to run under wine, or obscure feature z of software package y.
One final recommendation. If you don’t back up regularly or like you should to external media. You will always run the risk of damaging your windows install should you want to keep it around. It’s a right of passage for many of us that did it back in the '90s. But not everyone wants that kind of stress just starting out. If you have a little bit of cash to spare. Go on eBay and pick up an old used HP Lenovo or Dell business system. You can get a fourth generation I7 with a decent amount of RAM and perhaps a hard disk and a windows license for almost $150. If you want to practice dual booting, it will make a perfect system. And with a $30 or so HDMI KVM. It can even use the same monitor. Keyboard and mouse as your main system. So you can use them side by side and see which one really stacks up. And in the end when you’ve made your decision. The old business system will be ready to make a great network file server. If nothing else. It’s sort of a win-win-win win investment.