Ask Lemmy

Try installing mint! Make sure you've cleared everything you want from the hard-drive before you start (and decide now if you're going to dual-boot. If so, clear up space so you can do the partitioning you want before you start the process.)

You don't have to code for most any linux distro. command line and config files is not the same as writing a bash script, much less compiling something. That being said I use zorin because its great out of the box. Its based on ubuntu like mint but comes with software that I honestly sorta expect my laptop to have out of the box. That being said it uses gnome and I finally pulled the trigger and added kde/plasma and oh man I should have done that to begin with. kde/plasma is way better. Still annoys me the zorin guys don't move the distro default to kde/plasma.

depending on how complicated it is to swap out the hard disk, i'd swap out the windows drive and put in a new one (preferably an ssd, they make a big difference even in older computers) - this way you'll keep the option to put it back if you're really lost, you can back up stuff there
mint is a good place to start, no need for coding.
you do need to get adjusted a bit, the complaints about "how difficult it is to do things on linux" is often because people try doing stuff exactly like they did on windows, and sure, you can do exactly the same thing but you need to set up, sometimes compile tools for it - or you can search in the software manager or search on the web for "xy linux alternative"
for instance file sharing - yeah linux supports samba (the windows file sharing protocol), it works, but imo it kinda sucks (but tbf it sucked on windows too), so i started looking for alternatives and just allowing an ssh connection allows you to directly connect to machines with your username, and also allows sftp file transfers, and it works so much better

I too have very limited coding ability and started with mint about a year ago myself. I think it's a good OS. The different nomenclature confused me in the beginning, but ChatGPT is pretty reliable troubleshooting issues and I met plenty very helpful people on here that offered to teach me. You will be fine. Just a tip: back up your important data or at least don't keep it on the same drive as your OS, because I broke mine in many, many curious ways when starting out, and had to reinstall a few times xD

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How did you use Windows without understanding coding? lol