From personal experience: if you’re trying to dual-boot with Windows, I recommend using completely separate drives (rather than separate partitions). Windows is very shitty about overwriting your Linux boot partitions when it updates. Having a separate drive isn’t fool-proof, but it helps.
I haven’t needed Windows in >10 years though, so maybe it’s not as shitty about that, but I recommend caution.
Then do it? It’s a free operating system – just download whatever distro pleases you, give it a spin, see what happens.
I would but I am pretty worried about my files being lost, plus I’m waiting until I get a better device
From personal experience: if you’re trying to dual-boot with Windows, I recommend using completely separate drives (rather than separate partitions). Windows is very shitty about overwriting your Linux boot partitions when it updates. Having a separate drive isn’t fool-proof, but it helps.
I haven’t needed Windows in >10 years though, so maybe it’s not as shitty about that, but I recommend caution.
I’m on a single ssd dual boot setup with encryption (LUKS for Linux / Bitlocker for Windows) for over 2 years. Never had any problems.
I used this guide back then. Hope it’ll help you op.