Switching To Linux From Windows Guide
There might be a lot of reasons for one to switch from Windows to Linux. It could be related to your profession or maybe you are concerned about your privacy or maybe you are just too bored with windows. Whatever the reason, switching to Linux can be achieved quite easily and quickly. You don’t need to know everything about computers in order to do it.
In this guide, I will be using Ubuntu but the same steps apply for any Linux Distribution.
Requirements:
- USB Drive(4GB or above depending on the Linux distro you chose).
- Ubuntu ISO. Preferably instead of the latest one go for the LTS one. LTS stands for Long Term Support. It can be downloaded from here.
- Rufus. Rufus is a Windows utility to create bootable USB drives. It is free and can be downloaded from here.
Steps:
- Plug in the USB drive and launch Rufus. Select the USB drive you wish to format and ISO file that will be used by the flash drive. Rest of the settings can be left as default and format the drive.
Note: Remember that the USB drive will have to be completely formatted so make sure to back up any important data that might be on the drive.
- If you are going to dual boot, you will need to allocate some space in your existing drive. You can either use an entire partition or you could shrink an existing partition. You can search for Disk Management in the start menu for the tool.
- Right click on the drive and you can shrink it depending on how much storage you require for your Linux partition. Although Linux can work in minimum of 10GB space, you would not want anything below 20GB as personal files and utilities will easily use up that space.
- To boot from USB drive, you have to enter the BIOS/UEFI of your system. In windows 10, this process has changed a little. In order to enter BIOS menu, you’ll need to go to Settings->Updates & Security->Recovery and select Restart Now under Advanced Startup.
- After you PC restarts, select Troubleshoot.
- Then select Advanced Options and in Advanced Options, select UEFI Firmware Settings and Restart.
- In the BIOS/UEFI, you’ll need to enable the boot menu and change the boot order under the boot tab with the USB as the first one. Boot order specifies which device the system will use to load the Operating System kernel from.
Note: Nowadays, the boot menu options are not enabled by default and you will need to set a password in order to enable boot loader and access the boot menu.
- Save and exit the BIOS/UEFI.
- Your system will now boot from the USB disk and you will reach the Ubuntu setup screen.
From here you can follow the given instruction steps. If you wish for hassle free installation, go for the default installation. It will include some essential utilities such as browser(Firefox), Libre office suite, media player etc. However if you wish to install all the utilities by yourself, you can go for minimal installation.
You’re ready to go! Hope this guide was helpful. Please do provide any feedback which would help me to improve.
