this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2026
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Linux
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Your options to try out Linux without disrupting your Windows experience are:
WSL, which is using a Linux kernel that is running in a VM (WSL 2). This will let you run some Linux applications on Windows.
Live Disk, This gives you a full Linux environment but may lack persistence (your settings are loss on reboot) and performance issues (using a USB drive as a system drive is slow).
Linux on a VM, This gives you a full Linux environment with persistence and good performance but you won't have access to your hardware, like your graphics card, to do things like gaming (You maybe able to use passthrough, I haven't used Windows VM software in quite a while).
Dual Boot, The full Linux experience. Requires another hard drive or a willingness to resize your partitions (which could* destroy your Windows install).
The installation step is trivialized on some distros, just a simple series of dialog boxes. Like installing Windows was in the 00's before you had to watch streaming ads and give it access to your medical records while creating your OneMicrosoft Online Co-365-Pilot Teams Drive Pro account.
*I have literally never had a single problem resizing partitions in 20 years of doing this, but it is technically possible if you lose power or are really unlucky with the cosmic ray lottery.
e: To your question directly: As long as you're not trying to mess with Window's system partition you should technically be able to resize/create partitions, create a new file system, copy files, and add a boot entry from inside of Windows. Ubuntu was the last big project to have a sustained effort to attract new users, WUBI was a big part of that project. Now, there just isn't as much interest.