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this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2026
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Linux
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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This is a tricky question, mostly because you tagged it as "Noob"... It is technically possible, but it does require jumping through some hoops I would not normally recommend to a novice. Attempting through a VM is probably the safest option, but pointing a VM to an entire physical disk isn't typically something I would recommend, but is likely much safer than doing live partition editing manually and on the fly.
So...I'm not a noob to computers, I run my own jellyfin server, minecraft server, I almost had a comp sci minor in college, but I've just been so in the windows ecosystem that I don't really know what applies for linux and rather than act like I "know computers" I'll be honest, linux is something I know nothing about, windows I can do basically all my troubleshooting on my own+internet access
Yeah, not a bad stance to have. When I switched to Linux (in the middle of a compsci minor), I thought I was the king of the world and that I knew everything about computers.
Then Linux showed me that I know fuckall, not because it was particularly hard, but rather because it's an open library.
You can look at a random config file on your PC and it will explain you highly technical concepts for free.
You can look at the source code of anything you're interested in. Well, or probably rather read an explainer from someone who read/wrote the source code.
And you can easily look at the logs of your applications to debug them.
Every so often, I run into folks that genuinely seem to know a lot about Windows, and I always wonder how. It doesn't explain anything to you. 😅
In that case, I would advise you read the unetbootin wiki about "hard disk install modes" and see how much of it you feel comfortable with. It is a bit of hoop jumping but if you are comfortable with partition editors it seems to be the most straight forward method to me.
Someone mentioned netboot.xyz, but reading their docs I couldn't (quickly) find a way to set it up from windows without having some sort of boot media, and it would require another entire device on the network to boot from, which seems way more expensive than a USB drive.