Distro selection. A small advice and clarification.

With few simplifications here is ELI5 about linux distros and what to consider when selecting one for you.

1. There is a bunch of sites which will help you to select a distro (https://distrochooser.de/ https://distrochooser.snehit.dev/ https://distrowatch.com/search.php https://www.appropedia.org/How_to_choose_a_Linux_distro) go through them and learn what are the main differences and classes of differences.

2. The most fundamental difference between distros are three fold: Package distribution system (yeah, distro comes from the word distribution), fundamental system parts (networking, file locations, specific tools) and default GUI.

3. You can test many distros without even touching your windows. Just install virtual box and pop an iso installer image and install it on 20-30-40GB VM disk image. Just go with defaults at first. Most likely it will work right away and you can use snapshots or even just simple disk image copy (while the VM is shutdown) to play and break the test VM you have.

4. You can have multiple linuxes installed and running if you have a decent hardware. Most distros will work ok with 4GB of ram. If you dont intensively use web browser inside that Vm it will let you play with a ton of linux stuff with no problem.

5. Most distros are basically repackaged debian, redhat/fedora, arch, etc. They sometimes add a package or two, organize packages a biut differently but the biggest difference from beginner point of view is the initial default config, set of apps and look. ALL that can be changed later with more or less effort if you really want.

6. More popular distros (fedora, suse, ubuntu, arch) are better tested and more honed. If you stick to them you will have less of obscure strange problems where nobody knows what is going on.

7. If you want to move your stuff to other distro it is possible but be aware that not all apps may be looking for config files in a place where your previous distro put them. If you really want you can find the right location and copy your config there but it may be easier to just start from scratch.

8. My personal advice: Test distros in VM. Dont do that testing in multiboot setup especially with windows on the same disk. Dont. If you are beginner, dont. Save yourself trouble and poor experience with random people who may be helping you to save your precious data.

9. As for moving from one city to another, from one country to another, moving from windows to linux brings some problems you will have to accommodate. Try to stick to "how to do this_windows thing in linux" instead of "linux sucks because it does not do this Windows_thing". Similarly with distros but to a lesser degree. Some have slightly different approach to particular things/settings and the whole point of having a different distro is to chaving differences. Not always it is easy to make fedora be set up like ubuntu. But often it is doable. It depends. The differences are there for a purpose.

10. Focus on the most important aspects and the less fancy ones will be possible to beironed out.

11. Be aware that not all apps are prepackaged for particular distro. Dont complain about distro xyz not having freecad or vlc available out of the box. It does not. Try another distro. Be aware that smaller distros may not have enough manpower to accommodate your needs.

12. Changing gui is easier than you think. But before you try to do fundamental change check if you can find a distro which did that for you. I love MATE, I use ubuntu MATE. 98% of my problems are solved. The repos are rich, most of apps are prepackaged for ubuntu etc. If you like KDE, look for a distro which sets up kde the best way for you. Look if it has a decent set of ready made packages.

13. Check if your repo supports flatpack and similar system. Most do, some dont do that well. Do a bit of testing, try some.

14. Use distro testing to learn how to copy files over network. How to set up the network. It will pay you later.

Again, and I want to stress this a lot!:

Use virtualbox for testing, especially if you are windows user. Avoid dualboot setups. They usually work but they give you a lot of headaches if anything goes wrong. And if it goes wrong you are risking your windows install too.

Get a dedicated disk for first linux install if possible (with laptops it is harder though).

And always make a backup first before instaling linux on your disk.

That is a bunch of opinions and advices from an old prick who learned that the hard way so you dont have to.