I have a Lenovo Yoga running Windows 10 on a 1TB SSD and at some point will probably have to upgrade it to Windows 11. I use it for school and have to keep Windows on it for now because of what I’m currently doing. I want to start getting into Linux in hopes of making the switch sometime down the line. Is partitioning the disk and dual booting Windows/Linux a thing and is it possible/easy to do? If so, what distro would anyone recommend? (I’ve heard good things about Mint). Back in the day I had gotten bored one night, installed Ubuntu on an external drive and played around with it a very tiny bit before forgetting about it, but that’s the extent of my Linux knowledge, so kindly keep explanations ELI5 :)
Edit: Thank you everyone! You’ve given me lots of good advice and knowledge, some terms to Google, and some good places to start. I appreciate it! Looking forward to joining the wonderful world of Linux!
A dual boot system is not a big problem as long as you boot in EFI mode and use GPT partitions. I have been running a dual boot system (Windows 10 and Arch Linux) for years without any problems.
You should allocate around 500 MB for the EFI partition. This allows you to install Windows and a Linux distribution and still have reserves if you want to install additional Linux kernels, for example.
If you want to change partitions, first make a data backup on another data medium. Because something can always go wrong. Even if it’s just a power failure.