[Samurai]

I have been dual booting and triple booting since I first encountered Linux in 1994. But I haven't bothered with dual booting since 3-4 years, it has become passé. Now you can create VMs within Mac/Windows host.

Since you already have Win10, just install hyper-v and load multiple Linux VMs of your choice. All you need is extra memory, which are cheap to add. I just added 4GB to my laptop for just 2K.

[sathish81]

If you want to use linux without the hassle of dual booting, you could consider running it as a VM using hyperv or virtual box. Another way would be to run linux as a docker container. Install details of docker here:

https://docs.docker.com/installation/windows/

[tsk1979]

Originally Posted by Samurai

I have been dual booting and triple booting since I first encountered Linux in 1994. But I haven't bothered with dual booting since 3-4 years, it has become passé. Now you can create VMs within Mac/Windows host.

Since you already have Win10, just install hyper-v and load multiple Linux VMs of your choice. All you need is extra memory, which are cheap to add. I just added 4GB to my laptop for just 2K.

Originally Posted by petrolhead_neel

Hi folks!

A question: I want to try something new and was thinking of installing a Linux Distro on my laptop which has a 4GB RAM, 500GB hard drive and 3rd Gen Intel Core i3 processor. I almost know nothing about coding but have been practicing basic things on BlueJ.

I use my laptop for learning new things, trying new things, reading various things that interest me, Team-BHPing(, watching movies, a bit of editing of pics and creating presentations. I upgraded to Windows 10 sometime back but it hasn't quite lived upto my expectations. I have shortlisted the following Distros:

• elementary OS
• Linux Mint

I haven't yet considered Ubuntu as it is quite common and I want something unique.

Another question is should I keep my Win10 by dual booting?

Also, will playing games be a hassle?

Thanks in advance geeks!

Neel

I would go with Samurai's suggestion. Do not bother with dual boot. Just get 4GB extra RAM, and run a lightweight unix distro inside using virtualization. Look for a hardware virtualizer.
You can go for smaller distros such as puppy and instead of gnome/kde use something like xfce4

If you want to stick with something more generic yet lightweight, the lubuntu flavor of ubuntu is pretty light weight, and apt repositories have everything you need.

That said, with 8GB of RAM, you may not need to use linux. Windows 10 performance will be much better. Infact, I if you have SSD on your C: + 8GB of RAM, it breathes a new life into your laptop!

[karuvally]

I use debian. Have been using arch for a couple of years, but found that it is not stable enough for daily use. I am not a Windows hater, but my last favorite release was Windows 2000. I think it is the finest OS Microsoft has produced till date.

[bpnpmr]

I started off with Ubuntu and I have used it for about 10 years now. In the last 3 years, I have done some distro hopping on my other system. On me new laptop I have Linux mint, it's stable and solid. On my older netbook I run Solus.

On my 9 year laptop with i5 processor runs Ubuntu, on this system I have dual boot with Windows xp but I have not logged into widows in the last 6 years.

[alpha1]

I try everything on Linux world and see myself returning to PC Linux OS each time.
Somehow the user friendliness and slickness factor is better in KDE version of PCLOS compared to KUbuntu etc.

[R2D2]

I use FreeBSD on my router firewall appliance. But FreeBSD is not a Linux distro, it is closer to UNIX than Linux.

[vishalrao]

Has anyone tried elementary OS here? https://elementary.io

Note if you just want to download it to try it out for free, enter zero in the custom area of the download amount to get a link ;-)

It's my current favourite distro, apart from KDE neon, though it also has the usual niggles that come with running any linux distro.

Give it a shot!