I am NOT the most senior (at age 84) openSUSE user as I determined in another thread. I live in assisted-living. As a result of the windows update and AI usage issues, I am going to give a presentation about people here switching from windows to linux. I am sure there are no linux users here. Most people do have computers though.
I want to be able to tell people they can switch to linux without needing to buy additional equipment and save a lot of money. My questions are related to this issue.
For pc owners of any pc, can you install any linux as the only OS on any pc (wipe clean and reinstall OS)?
For pc owners of any pc, can you install any linux in dual boot mode on any pc?
For laptop owners of any lap top, can you install any linux as the only OS on any pc (wipe clean and reinstall OS)?
For laptop owners of any lap top, can you install any linux in dual boot mode on any pc?
Can a windows install preclude a total disk swap to linux or a dual boot install?
If I convince anyone to move to linux I will have to make good on the install. I need to be aware of any pitfalls.
Dual boot sure, make sure you use grub2-efi (256MB) or systemd-boot (4GB) for /boot/efi, and yes for systemd-boot anything less than 3GB may have space issues.
I would recommend getting some 8GB USB sticks and creating some bootable live images for them to try out without the need to do anything with their current setups.
From a security perspective I would suggest when booted from a live USB to run fwupdmgr security --show-all to see the machine status and also the show-all provides URL’s to the output for more information as to any potential hardware issues.
I am aware of the applications issue. The only reason I keep windows 10 as dual boot is because of a postage stamp collection cataloguing app that I can’t get to run in wine and for which there is no linux equivalent.
I am hearing that linux can be installed in dual boot mode on any pc or laptop that can run windows 10. Is that accurate?
@tckosvic Sure, my on the road Laptop is dual booting Windows 10 and openSUSE Leap 16.0, I have a Dell OptiPlex 3080 Micro dual booting Windows 11 Pro and Tumbleweed (grub-bls), just have to press the F12 key to get to the BIOS boot menu and select Windows to boot, or efibootmgr -n 0 in Tumbleweed to reboot into Windows 11.
No, I have an ASUS convertible (tablet+detachable keyboard) that runs W10 but due to its still 32bit EFI firmware no openSUSE version can be readily installed.
Surely a corner case and maybe a version of *BSD might be installable with some effort, but generally speaking you have been warned.
anything with a 32-bit efi is likely to be problematic. I don’t know that any linux distribution really handles it, other than a fully 32-bit distribution, of which there aren’t many left.
I think I have what I need unless someone has some other showstopper. I will try try get someone to go into dual boot so they can still get access to their w10 apps if needed or having trouble with linux alternatives. I will avoid 32bit machines.
Having done this recently with devices which are over 10 years old there are two issues to consider: with openSUSE the device needs to support second level 64bit chips; with Linux Mint which I successfully installed for someone with first level 64bit chips I found that it would not support an older BIOS on a different machine. So you need both to assess their software needs and to check the hardware to see which distribution will work on their hardware. (Linux Mint will warn during the installation if the BIOS is too old.)
You asked for “any PC or laptap” (probably meaning “laptop”).
But there will always be some of those you and we will even never have heard of. Thus how can you expect to get a definitive, not complicated, answer to this question?
I knew there was no precise answer to this question so that I why I put it in the chat. I did get some things to look to avoid , e.g., 32bit machines, that I had forgotten about.
Again, should the opportunity to change someone’s system arise, I did not want to make all this puffery about linux and then fail for all to see.
Not sure I could get users into the bios without them doing some damage if needing to change boot order to utilize live usbs. Trying to introduce bios concepts might be a challenge. Good idea but the implementation seems scary to me.
@tckosvic Just the BIOS boot menu on the relevant system, assuming USB boot is enabled in the BIOS, it should be the default unless a user has changed. Just try it out to see.
I imagine accessibility is very important at that age. Take some time to get familiar with Orca screen reader and other tools offered in Linux. Speech Note has potential, but the UI is limited right now.
Looking at accessibility options is a good idea that I had not thought of because I use none of the accessibility features. I need to make a review of these so I at least will be somewhat conversant with them.
Are the linux accessibility options equivalent to those of windows or are there some things I should be aware of?
