Chloetheoe
THIS IS WORK IN PROGRESS AND INCOMPLETE AS FUCK
Okay so, you're maybe becoming more aware of the tech industry as their products get further and further enshitified or you see their increasingly more prominent space in politics and you're thinking about your operational system and maybe you should/could switch to something else?
Linux is an alternative to Windows/MacOS that i've been using as my sole operational system for a few years now and i really like it, and i think it's cool that some people are wanting to try it out or switch to it
But how to do it is a very open ended process, which may shy away newer users. My goal here is to give a little guide into how to get started with this if you're curious
I will make it clear from the get-go though that as much as there are Linux distributions (i'll explain that soon) that aim to make everything as cushy as possible for users, you should be acquiring at least a little bit of tech literacy to use it, which is what i want to try giving with this guide. I will simplify things a lot and use lots of metaphors
Much like learning how to properly sharpen and hold a knife makes you more efficient and proficient in the kitchen, having a basis of tech-literacy makes you able to get more out of your computer
The computer you're reading this from is running an operating system. An operating system is basically a collection of programs that someone puts together so that people can make use of the computer comfortably. This includes things like being able to write/read files, display images, manage input and output from external devices, like interpreting what to do when you move your mouse or click a button
All of that sounds very simple, but computers are basically using lots of math to turn 1s and 0s to do all of these things. These programs matter.
Linux is an operating system kernel -- the computer program at the core of an operating system and it manages and controls really fundamental parts of your system
But if you only had the core, the computer would be pretty boring and annoying to operate. So different people/communities bundle different programs together to make different flavours of Linux to use. These are called "distributions", or "distros"
People are quite opinionated on distros they like or dislike. I have two that i'm quite fond of: Debian and EndeavourOS.
Debian is very stable and quite easy to use. I use it for the server hosting this webpage. EndeavourOS has been very comfortable for me so far and i like it a lot because it is arch-based(Arch is another distribution. So that'd make endeavouros kind of like a distro-distro i think? :D) with very simple installation and the archwiki is very comprehensive with lots of articles about everything. You don't find a knowledge agregator like that everyday and it really helps me when i need it
That's not gonna be as easy as downloading a .exe file and executing, but it's no witchcraft. If you have a distro you're curious to try, they usually have a page on their website with installing instructions. However it's usually something like:
The aim with all of this is to boot your distribution from live media for a litle bit. This means that you're loading the operating system from your USB-Stick instead of from your storage disk(s). This is important because the installing process modifies your storage disk and you do _not_ want to do anything like that while the disk is being used.