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Simplest way to trash Windows and switch computer to GNU/Linux? Asking for a friend. (lemmy.ml)
submitted 15 hours ago by to c/linux@programming.dev
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I really am asking for a friend since I don't use windows and am clueless about it. Also, my own computers are pretty old and don't have UEFI, so I'm clueless about that too.

My friend just bought a new Lenovo Ideapad Slim 3 with Windows 11 Home preinstalled and it immediately sent her into some kind of Microslop enrollment hell, so (yay) she wants to trash Windows altogether and switch to GNU/Linux. I'm trying to help her through it. I do it myself all the time by writing a Debian MATE ISO to a USB stick, booting from USB, and running the Debian installer. But,

  1. that's already too complicated for a not-really-nerd, and
  2. that doesn't do anything about UEFI since I haven't had to deal with that. IDK if her new computer has UEFI.

I prefer staying with Debian MATE since I'm used to it and the MATE UI is fairly familiar to Windows users, and GNOME is crap imho. But I'm open to whatever if that simplifies installation.

It would be great if there was a downloadable Windows executable that simply does everything. Install it, click it, it downloads a CD image and either writes it to USB or just manages to boot the image somehow. In days of yore you could do that with SYSLINUX or related stuff. Maybe there is something equivalent now.

Added: I appreciate all the responses but should add that I'm not looking for recommendations of distros unless Debain is for some reason seriously harder to get running, like because of UEFI. Otherwise I'm looking purely for installation advice. Distro choice mostly affects usage post-installation and MATE is what I'm comfortable with so I'd rather have my friend stick with that for now. Unfortunately she's in another state, so I can't go help her with the install in person.

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[–] 1 point 12 hours ago (2 children)

Like others have said, let them know what they are getting into, what programs they like to use, etcetera. If they're mostly web-browsing, they're probably fine and only need to be shown how to install updates, but if they need full on MS Office, Adobe products (don't try to sell me on "Abobe is obsolete because of our glorious agentic AI liberators" who are just as bad as Adobe), any other Windows-only software that doesn't run well through Wine, or just anything beyond a web browser in general, they have to be prepared to learn Linux.

Personally, I would recommend KDE over MATE. I'm an XFCE fan myself, but KDE has a lot more features and I think is overall a lot more intuitive and user-friendly to noobs from Windows; MATE's a bit more niche. I had my younger sibling using KDE and Debian 13 on an old laptop for a few months after their main laptop broke.

If you want a Windows program for creating USBs, use Rufus. Otherwise, dd works most of the time. I have occasionally turned to Etcher for particularly tricky ISOs, but I hear it has some privacy issues.

As others have said, I think the last computers without UEFI were from somewhere around 2009-2011; I had a laptop from 2012 with UEFI. For most purposes, you'll probably hardly notice the difference between BIOS and UEFI; only big differences are:

  • You might have a GUI now (most Lenovo products have had it for years, but I think I've seen a couple lower-end ones with BIOS-style TUIs)
  • Instead of boot sectors and MBR, we use GPT (no connection to you know what) and EFI partitions; usually, any competent distro (including Debian, which I use) will set it up for you.
  • If the USB is mysteriously not booting, you might need to disable secure boot. It's not as common of a problem with major distros like Debian, although I feel like I may had issues with the live installers like you're planning to use.
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  • [–] [S] 1 point 11 hours ago (1 child)

    Yeah mostly browsing. She decided on a GNU/Linux switchover after considering taking her laptop back to the store and getting a chromebook instead.

    I expect she'll want to run Libre Office at some point but it should basically be fine. The differences from Microslop are pretty subtle if I'm not mistaken. I confess to using LO myself sometimes (instead of TeX), since I'm lazy these days.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 hours ago

    I will say, the differences from Microsoft in LibreOffice are often not subtle; very simple documents will probably be fine, but you run into a lot of formatting issues on complex existing documents. Unless they already use LibreOffice or they don't have a lot of pre-existing complex-formatted documents, don't put them on LibreOffice.

    Other than that, the use case should be mostly fine then. Just be careful; as I tend to run into myself, it seems it's been so long since you've run Windows that you're going to underestimate the learning curve.

    I just realized a few things to check, though. I don't think CPU or GPU support on Debian should be an issue (and if it is, backports kernel and Mesa would solve it), but check Wi-Fi modem and camera support before you install.

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