As a point of interest, you can partition an existing HD, install a new OS on that partition, then when on the newly installed OS, move your files around to the new filesystem and format your old drives / partitions as convenient. Installing a new OS doesn’t need to be a “Backup everything, blow it away and start over” process.
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FiniteBanjo@feddit.online 1 day agoCould, but no need to. It would take some time to make a backup and also clear off one of my hard drives to install the new OS on before making the move, to prevent losing the important documents. Might even want to purchase a whole new harddrive when the time comes, but I’d rather not waste money when I’m saving for a big passion project.
KoboldCoterie@pawb.social 1 day ago
FiniteBanjo@feddit.online 1 day ago
Keeping single copies and formatting every drive are exactly the risk factors I wanted to avoid, that’s how you accidentally trash all your data.
KoboldCoterie@pawb.social 1 day ago
Presumably you’re backing up important files as a matter of course, not only when installing a new OS…
FiniteBanjo@feddit.online 1 day ago
As an artist I have “important files” measured in TB.
forrgott@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Makes sense. Also gives you time to learn about your choices, try out different live USB versions of distros, all that fun stuff.
FiniteBanjo@feddit.online 1 day ago
Yeah, I’ve installed a few different distros already on spare devices I could get ahold of. PopOS! was cool, I liked the feel of Kubuntu better but it wasn’t as reliable for system stability. Another fun method windows users can try is HyperV virtual machines for running different distros quickly. Something that surprised me is that very recently a lot of maintstream distros have been dropping support for x32 devices.
ohshit604@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
A little fun fact you may not know is many of these distributions are typically based off of another. Pick a base distro to learn off of and if you ever decide to switch to another many of the shell commands will be the same.
Debian Based Distros:
Arch Based Distros:
Fedora Based Distros:
forrgott@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Virtual machine is a good place to start I hadn’t even thought of. Live USB is a good follow up, though, as that allows you to check out driver compatibility.
I currently can’t offer much on which distros to try, I’m afraid; for various reasons, my Steam Deck is my daily driver, and SteamOS is good enough for my needs. I have tried Bazzite, but it was more buggy on the deck; that said, it is quite popular. Nobara install images aren’t done cleanly, it seems, and I was not impressed with the community support (basically got told I was imagining things when I asked for help). CachyOS looked interesting, but I want stability over bleeding edge features.
But wish you luck on your journey!