I did google it, and found a bunch of articles about dual booting with windows 7. I didn't know if it was still possible or if it would be smart to try for someone with no experience with Linux, so I thought I'd come to a sub where there are tons of people who use Linux daily and could give me some advice about whether I should try it or not. Thanks for the input :)
shadowSprite
Thanks! I've been interested in Linux for awhile now. I don't plan on sharing files between the two OSes, and I'm religious about my backups. If I don't have at least 3 or 4 backups I don't consider my data backed up :)
I have no idea. I've known it for years. All my computer knowledge is self taught so random things I'm fairly knowledgeable on and then there's things that are common knowledge I've never heard of. I'm doing my best out here! I was a sheltered kid who grew up into an adult that doesn't know anyone tech savvy!
Thank you! This is all good advice. I've never actually used a VM but will have to do more research on installing and using one. When you (and everyone else here) say shrink the partition from inside windows, do you mean from within the disk management software? I'm familiar with that, having added extra drives on my other computers. I actually have 3 computers, 2 laptops and a gaming rig I built, but they both have Nvidia GPUs and I've heard so many bad things about Nvidia and Linux and I don't want my first Linux experience to be fighting it out with those. If I like Linux I'll probably switch one of my other computers over to Linux either entirely or on one of the second drives (both my other computers have 2 different drives).
"Ray Fisher was attempting to use the Glory Hole on his boat but the current was too strong."
I'm dead...
Thanks! This is all good information and I appreciate you taking the time to write it all out for me!