Done_Fishin

My advice, for anyone who wants to migrate to a Linux distro, is to leave your current Windows Installed HDD's as they are and use "unused or unrequired" media that you may have hanging around or get another drive to use.

Linux learning curve means going back to the beginning, going back to the days when you knew nothing about computers. It's that bad ..

I spent several years "thinking about migrating", several attempts (over the years) at using Live CD's of many different distros. I am slowly getting more confident yet every step I take seems to require journeys into google, trips to forums, questions and experiments. I now have several PC's one of which is dedicated to Windows for ease of access to any info I want to find, leave the info on screen and literally copy info over to the linux PC I am experimenting with.

I have PC's that boot Linux immediately with the HDD on the IDE or other PC's where the Live CD boots from a USB drive.

If you don't want to get frustrated at initial attempts to get to grips with Linux, you'll need to find a compromise until, like me, you feel confident enough to use Linux without a Windows backup.