Got an old laptop from a friend I’d like to rejuvenate, the plan is to set up a light distro so it wouldn’t be as slow as it is right now with windows 10.

Now, I’m aware windows updates can fuck up a dual boot system, so i have a few questions about how to minimize the threat of that happening.

What i think of doing is running a few scans to check the disk, then setting up Linux Mint, because it is beginner friendly, and (relatively) light weight.

What I’d need help with is trusted guides and also tips for setting up dual booting, I’m sure I’ll need to do disk partitioning and I’ve done that before but I’d still want to make sure I’m doing it correctly.

Any help would be welcome.

  • BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world
    7·
    2 months ago

    If the laptop supports dual drives (not unheard of but not the norm) it’s way safer to dual boot from different physical drives.

    Whatever OS you choose make sure they have a guide for dual-booting. Any Linux OS should be capable of dual-boot but not all will support that configuration equally.

    As a failsafe I would also make a rescue USB, especially SystemRescue because of the findroot option.

    • BlackRoseAmongThorns@slrpnk.netOP
      1·
      2 months ago

      I’d really like to not open up the device and mess with it, kinda need it for use soon, so i cant afford the time.

      Also, i agree, but just disabling the ability to boot through windows should be enough for now, by the time I’d need more control, i can safely say the old files aren’t needed, and can ditch the windows partition.

  • wuphysics87@lemmy.ml
    4·
    2 months ago

    If it isn’t for professional reasons you absolutely can’t avoid, I would switch wholesale. As a once famous song said “Freedom isn’t free. It costs folks like you and me. Andif you don’t put in your buck o five who will?”

    • BlackRoseAmongThorns@slrpnk.netOP
      2·
      2 months ago

      It’s not for professional reasons, it’s all personal, plus studies, I’m not switching wholesale because i might need to access the old files (extremely unlikely, but I don’t want to make decisions based on that), and the laptop has enough stirage for me to be happy with the partition i made, which is ~200GB

      • wuphysics87@lemmy.ml
        2·
        2 months ago

        I can appreciate that. Especially if the files in question are of sentimental value.

        I would suggest transferring your files to a new drive anyway because of bit rot.

        Being the typical helpful (pushy and self-important) Linux user, I might add there is no reason you can´t transfer them to Linux 😜

    • BlackRoseAmongThorns@slrpnk.netOP
      4·
      2 months ago

      Swimmingly :)

      The laptop is way faster and apparently installing clang is super simple, so developing on linux is expected to go smooth.

      I’m going to go with what one of the commenters said and disable the windows booting option and install an NTFS reading program to reach the files in that partition.

      I’m very glad i did this, it was planned for months and now I’m very excited :D

        • BlackRoseAmongThorns@slrpnk.netOP
          2·
          2 months ago

          Had a linux moment yesterday, piped “clang --help” into grep to find something, it wasn’t there but the piping itself was awesome.

          Don’t have anybody else to tell lol

          • Danitos@reddthat.com
            1·
            2 months ago

            Thanks for telling me lol. I remember sharing your enthusiasm when I started.

            If you don’t mind me sharing, here are some tools I use the most in the console:

            • htop: resource monitoring and process killing. Mint has a GUI alternative
            • btop: better resource monitoring, but worse process killing than htop.
            • lazygit: amazing interface for git. Seems hard to get started, but IMO, not at all. There are GUI alternatived.
            • tmux: multiple consoles and console manager. A bit hard to get started.
            • nano: text editor. Reeaaaallly simple to use, prefer it over emacs and vi/vim.
            • grep: you already know this one.
            • cronjobs/crontab: allows you to run periodical commands. Say, a cleanup script all days at 7:08 AM.

            Also, some GUI programs I love:

            • KDE Connect: device pairing with your cellphone and PC. Includes remote mouse input, multimedia control and file sharing.
            • Steam: Almost all the games I play on Steam run flawlessly on Linux.
            • Stellarium: astronomy/planetary app.

            Pick your poison lol. If you don’t mind, we can start talking via ptivate message.

  • daisyKutter@lemmy.ml
    2·
    2 months ago

    A couple of days ago I setted up my pc with dual boot; I recommend to install Windows first and then install the distro you want with a swap partition of at least 16Gb and on the linux install options choose GRUB as bootloader

    • BlackRoseAmongThorns@slrpnk.netOP
      1·
      2 months ago

      Thanks, a few questions, what is a swap partition, and why is it needed?

      Also i have a ton of free storage so the linux install will probably have over 200gb in its partition

      • neanderthal@lemmy.world
        4·
        2 months ago

        A swap partition is akin to the page file on Windows. The kernel will use it to move memory pages it doesn’t anticipate using in the near future to it so it can use that RAM for other things. It will also use it in a pinch when there isn’t enough RAM on the system. It isn’t strictly necessary, but it can prevent programs from crashing at a huge performance penalty. It is necessary if you want to use sleep or hibernate or whatever it’s called when it is powered off physically but resumes what you were doing instead of booting when you power it back on. That takes as much swap as you have RAM at minimum. If you want that, a good rule of thumb is 1.5 times physical RAM.

        I have servers I administer for my job that have over 100GB of RAM with very little swap, like 4GB. The applications and machine are tuned and sized so the physical RAM is at ~85% and swap is barely used. The swap is mainly for non application stuff like IDS agent, backup agent, monitoring agent, etc.

        If swap becomes a problem, you can adjust the kernel vm.swappiness parameter as needed. It might take some trial and error to get it right.

        Source: I’ve been working with Linux professionally for almost 20 years now.

  • Diplomjodler@lemmy.world
    2·
    2 months ago

    I did that once and it wasn’t a nice experience. Windows will always find ways to screw things up and you’ll constantly be dealing with their shitfuckery. Outside of gaming there aren’t really many reasons to stick with Windows and even gaming works great except on titles where it is explicitly sabotaged by the publishers. If you’re dealing with an older laptop, this likely isn’t a consideration anyway. If you’re unsure whether Linux is for you, my advice would be to install it in a VM first and see if it works for you. Chances are, you won’t miss Windows at all.