But why? Because if you’re able to set up Wi-Fi in advance of installing the operating system it will be able to download updates and apply them before writing the distribution to disk.
If you’re given the choice to either install Linux directly or boot into a live operating system without making any changes to your hard drive, you should take the latter option.
Your PC will reboot again, this time opening an options screen asking whether you want to install or start a live version of the distribution. Give priority to your USB-mounted flash drive, save any changes you’ve made and then exit. If you’ve entered the BIOS, navigate through its screens, which vary depending on manufacturer, until you find an option for setting your boot device. Start or reboot it and press the button that either directs it to start from an external drive or opens the BIOS. Once the process has completed, eject the drive and then plug it into the machine on which you want to install Linux.
Step 5: Configure your BIOSĮxtracting the ISO and writing it to your USB flash drive should take less than five minutes. Rufus will warn you that any files currently on your USB stick will be destroyed, and might also ask for permission to download supplementary files from the web that the PC on which you’ll be installing Linux will require to complete the installation. You can leave everything else as it is and click START. Once locked in, its name will appear in the left-hand “Boot selection” menu. Now click the SELECT button on the row below and navigate to the ISO file you just downloaded. Plug in a USB flash drive and ensure Rufus has detected and preselected it in the dropdown menu at the top of the interface. Frequently, each will be available for a variety of processor architectures, so make sure you choose the appropriate distribution for your PC, which will almost certainly be marked as either x86_64 or AMD64. Once you’ve chosen a version of Linux, download an ISO of its desktop, workstation or client version. You don’t need to install Rufus, so download it from rufus.ie and launch it from Windows’ Downloads folder. All of the distributions on test were installed in this manner, either from the live OS or a specific install menu that appears at boot. Rufus is a small, free utility that extracts ISOs onto USB drives and sets them up for booting. Fortunately, it's quite straightforward once you're familiar with the various functions you'll be using. The process of installing Linux on a new machine can be a little involved, and will require some specialised utilities and a little know-how.
In Windows 10, this option sits in the ‘Backup’ settings menu, then under ‘Go to Backup and Restore (Windows 7)' – you can use this tool to also restore files from, or revert back to, Windows 7, if you have an install disc or previous system image, but as Windows 7 is at end-of-life, we don’t recommend doing that.
If not, you can create a backup ‘image’ of Windows 10 on a USB drive or, if you’re feeling retro, you can burn a backup to a CD. If your computer has multiple storage drives, then you can use the backup function in Windows 10 to create a backup in one of those. Backing up Windowsīefore you commit fully to a Linux OS, you might want to back up your installation of Windows 10 – that way you can revert back to it if need be. You can choose Linux Mint for an easy start, but the likes of Zorin OS, Ubuntu, and Fedora offer difference Linux experiences, some which are similar to Windows and others far removed from the look and feel of Microsoft's OS.
These come with their own user interfaces, features and overall experience derived from the underlying Linux code. Rather it's packaged into a different 'distributions' commonly referred to as 'distros'. Unlike Windows or macOS, there's no one version of Linux.
While we don't recommend that users revert back to Windows 8, you do have the option of leaving the Windows platform entirely – perhaps it's time you gave Linux a go? Selecting your Linux distribution For starters, because it was such a change, a lot of applications and programs weren't supported from the outset.įor anyone that isn't happy with Windows 10, there are alternatives. Simplified menus, new iconography, and a handful of features that really blasted the operating system into the 21st century made it a pleasure to use for the majority.īut, as is usually the case when a company launches such a significant overhaul, there were objectors. It was close to a complete overhaul, bringing the platform in-line with other desktop and laptop operating systems (dare we say it – macOS and, to some extent, Chrome OS).
The user interface for Windows 10 was one of the biggest shifts Microsoft users had ever seen.