leadore
Sorry to ask this here, but I can't get a response in the kbin "help" magazine:
Can anyone on kbin.social answer: Why can't I access this or subscribe to this from within kbin.social? Is it blocked? I can get to other lemmy.world communities. This happens with many communities. kbin.social can't see them or retrieve even if I put in the direct url.
The only thing to be careful with about building a brand new computer is sometimes the linux kernel takes a little while to catch up and support the latest hardware for some things. So maybe if any components you're planning to use are very new, look them up and see if they are supported yet.
As for a distro I always recommend Mint. Your plan to try out a bunch of them on a VM is a great idea.
I think the idea is that you won't even leave the Google page at all, they want to keep you on their site and serve you their ads instead of sending you to someone else's site and giving someone else that sweet sweet ad revenue.
It was phased out over time with both types being sold as all new cars used unleaded only. Eventually the old cars that used leaded gas aged out and were replaced with new cars.
Now that you have Mint, next time you want to make a thumb drive for installing a distro all you have to do is plug in a thumb drive, right-click the .iso file, and select Make Bootable USB Stick. (or from the Menu choose Accessories ‣ USB Image Writer)
And here's a nice intro to Mint for you. That site has lots of other helpful stuff too. Enjoy!
I prefer to watch videos via peertube, not youtube, whenever possible. She has a peertube channel so here is the same video there: https://tinkerbetter.tube/w/g8K2zBgwwwE1xukkT6EmSo
Mint has an auto-upgrade tool so you don't have to reinstall each time. It used to be only for minor version upgrades but now you can auto-upgrade to a new major version as well. In any case there are plenty of great distros to choose from.
And yes! whatever distro (and other FLOSS software) you use, support them with a donation if you can! When you consider the value you are getting for free vs. what you'd be spending on proprietary software, it's not so hard to do and feels good too.
It's better to do it ASAP before they're decreed abandoned. Dig thorough everything and also check your State's Unclaimed Property dept (or the one for whatever state you were working in I suppose). And/or do some searching online to find out how to reclaim them.
Wow, you sound pretty nonchalant about losing $150K!
You wouldn't expect to be able to run Windows software on a Mac, why expect to be able to run Windows software on Linux?
Having said that, it's true that you actually can run some windows software through Wine but it's a hack and it's not going to work as well as it would on the OS it was designed for.
But there are also things like Java and Electron applications that run natively on linux and just as well as on windows.
As for Minecraft Java edition, I just downloaded the Minecraft launcher .deb from minecraft.net and installed it, and it runs perfectly. You can't really complain that your pirated stuff isn't work right, lol.
edit to add: An easier way for your friend to try out Linux would be to either run it on a virtual machine within Windows, or boot from a live USB (that's slower though).