I've used Windows my whole life, except for a 2006 Mac OS X I got when I was a kid, and I never thought about switching away from it. However, in recent times, I've grown to care more about FOSS and customizability, and I'm also a bit more tech-savvy than the average person, I'd say. As such, I've of course heard of Linux, and didn't realize how simple it was to install certain distros until my brother installed Linux Mint on an old laptop he repaired. I want to play around with it and see if it's something I'd be interested in, but at the moment I only have one computer, which is my laptop, and I don't think it'd be a good idea to do a full switch over when all my important stuff is on here. As such, I've heard people talk about "dual booting" which from what I understand means having both Windows and Linux on the computer, and picking which to use on start up? This sounds like a perfect environment to play around with Linux, assign it like 50GB of space (Is that enough?) and see if I like it, but I'm very ignorant about a lot of things related to Linux, and don't want to start playing around with something I don't understand. Advice would be appreciated.
Sadly there's a few too many replies for my busy self to respond to. I'll say thanks for the help though, I appreciate it!
Others have commented on the process. It's easier than you think.
One thing that might confuse you at first (after successful install) is that when you change between operating systems, the system clock gets thrown off. That's because Linux and Windows interpret the system time differently (local time vs UTC).
To match Windows behaviour in Linux run:
sudo timedatectl set-local-rtc 1 --adjust-system-clockTo match Linux behaviour in Windows you will need to edit the registry, I'll leave that up to you to search.
Oh really? So that's why my Windows system clock was way off after I installed Linux a few weeks ago?
I ran dual boot for a few weeks until my PSU broke which corrupted my Windows installation (I've been using Linux exclusively ever since) but when I was using Windows during that time sometimes I'd accidentally end up going to bed super late because the system clock said it was about 2 hours earlier than it really was.
Haha yep! Your timezone is in that danger zone where it's not wrong enough to be immediately obvious.
If you make a Windows USB install and boot into it, you should be able to run some Microsoft tools to try and repair the installation. You can search further for it, might be worth looking into if you have anything you want to access on there.