Honestly, the most complicated part is getting the install media ready to go.

Once the installer starts, you're just answering prompts like the local username and password you want, language and keyboard layout, and time zone, and it does the rest on its own.

Then the computer reboots, and you end up on the desktop of a fully usable computer. Most distros will have a one-time popup welcoming you and maybe leading you to some Flatpak "store" where you can search for free apps to install.

Remember to do this on a machine you don’t care about, or are prepared for Windows to no longer work. Windows doesn’t play nice with other operating systems.

https://bazzite.gg/

https://www.zdnet.com/article/you-can-try-linux-without-ditching-windows-first-heres-how/

Play with this first if you want

https://distrosea.com/

• Download the .iso file of your favorite distro from their website
• Download Fedora Media Writer
• Plug in external media (flash/thumb drive, etc.)
• Select .iso and thumb drive in Fedora Media Writer and let her rip.
• Restart PC.
• While PC is booting, press whatever your BIOS button is (do a web search for "[laptop/motherboard] BIOS button" or watch the display while booting)
• Look for boot priority in the BIOS and set the thumb drive to the highest.
• Restart
• After booting, test WiFi, BT and audio functionality.
• Follow on-screen instructions to install
• Remove install media and reboot
• Install any and all available updates using your package manager (Software, Discover, Pop Shop, etc.)
• Restart one more time

The end.

It's pretty much just like installing Windows, except minus the parts where they force you to create a Microsoft account and badger you to accept spying and such.

I'm super not tech savvy and I had zero problems installing Mint recently. There's instructions online for getting the install media set up (I used a flash drive), and once you have that it's just following an install wizard really. The hardest part is backing up everything important before you switch.

Not especially hard, depending on your choice. But the choices tho

Yes it's fairly simple to do, essentially the user needs to download an image of a Linux install disc, flash it onto a USB stick (or a Dvd I guess), and then reboot their PC. They may need to press a key at boot to open the boot menu and select the USB (or the bios to change the boot order).

After that, most distros offer a very easy to follow installer which will install the new OS.

Most Linux installs can be done alongside windows (on the same hard drive or it's own drive) but windows tends to break the boot loader with updates. It's gernallt better to only dual boot if you're good at fixing things - otherwise a full Linux install is better.

The most inportant thing is back up all your important data, and only do this if you genuinely want to leave windows. I'd make sure your windows license is digital before doing this too as that allows using windows again if you want to go back.

I'd say anyone can use Linux, it's user friendly and robust. In terms of installing Linux, I'd only do it if you are sure you know what you're doing - installing any OS - including windows - can involved trouble shooting problems.

It's often easier than installing Windows with certain distros.

If you want the absolute easiest install possible, don't need to dual boot, and don't care to do a ton of gaming, Linux Mint is, in my opinion, honestly easier than installing windows. The most confusing part is typically the partition manager, but Mint has an Easy option that handles that for you as long as you're okay with wiping your drive and starting fresh. Otherwise you'll need to read up a bit on the partition manager on order to dual boot, but that's the only difficult part.

Download Ventoy, use that to put the Mint installer on a thumb drive, and follow the instructions on booting to USB for your motherboard. From there it walks you through everything.

*Edit: if gaming is important, bazzite is almost as easy..

Much easier and faster than a windows install

My experience was pretty simple. But you will have to make some decisions.

If you just want to blanket install Linux over whatever you run currently (and wipe out windows or whatever), that's honestly the easiest way in my opinion.

You don't need things like gparted or other utilities to partition drives or anything. You burn a bootable USB stick with the Linux distro of your choice, go into bios and select it as the boot media, and go through the prompts to install once it boots.

This has been my experience with bazzite on both a handheld and an older windows desktop PC.

There are so many helpful guides out there.

Your use case will determine a lot of things. If you just need a PC for media watching and web surfing, out of the box, simple immutable Linux distros will likely give you what you want.

If your needs are more complex (video/photo editing, sound production, CAD, or something) you'll need to research what distro fits your needs.

Easier than windows. Most people don't actually install that, though. It's just there when they buy their computer.

If you avoid complications like trying to dual boot or to use weird distros, it shouldn't be hard.

https://linuxmint-installation-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

The verification stuff is a pain downloading files and programs, but you'll get through it.

You may just want to head to YouTube and look for a really dry video instructions. When I first got started on Linux like 15 years ago, videos were a lot less intimidating to me

I'd YouTube installing Ubuntu and use the YouTube filter option set to like 1 month. There's constantly new videos for intro to Linux YouTube. I say Ubuntu because it's a part of the most common family of popular Linux distributions

Not any more difficult than doing a fresh Windows install.

People have given you good resources, so I'll just speak to the second part: I switched a few months ago, and it has been surprisingly easy. I'm just... doing normal computer things like I used to on windows. Even gaming.

It Is really easy. The only issues are related to hardware compatibility, especially with laptops. But most of them should be fine

The ONLY thing that has given me trouble has been managing an array of external drives as a media server running on my main PC. I know that isn’t an ideal setup- but just saying.

I've migrated not too long ago from Win10 to Kubuntu which is very Windows-like, and the adaptation was quite easy.

However, I have to ask: Are you comfortable typing commands on a terminal or editing configuration files? I ask because while it's gotten much easier to use Linux with just a graphical interface you'll still bump into some annoyances here and there where you'll Google how to fix and it will often tell you to 'run command x in the terminal'

This basic tutorial explains the steps to installing a Linux distro (Ubuntu is recommended as it is easy) in detail, and plain language. Read it several times, until you feel comfortable. Ubuntu is the distro I started with, as drivers are easy to deal with and can be installed during the installation process without fuss (unlike some distros, side-eyes Fedora with slanderous intent).

One detail, Balena Etcher is the application this author refers to when mentioning "Etcher" Installing Ubuntu

Edit, I forgot to include the New User Guide, based on category!