Installation Medium
Installing Linux is actually relatively easy, most times, these days. Usually the hardest part is actually preparing the installation medium, with modern computers. These days most people use USB thumb drives for their medium, and this comes with some nice simple tools to do it, depending on what operating system you use. We'll run through known options here.
Windows
These tools are available for Windows.
USB Writing:
- Ventoy: Amazing tool to allow you to simply copy ISO files to a filesystem on USB, and multi-boot whatever you can fit. There's manual instructions for SecureBoot setup for this to work if you use it.
- win32diskimager: Functional, free, opensource tool that just works and works well.
- rufus: While a "good" tool, this tool comes with some caveats. It defaults, and "recommends" ISO mode, but this mode seems to cause more issues than good. These days, it's simply best to use it's "dd mode", instead.
- AnyBurn: Can write to optical media, or USB.
- ISO2Disc: Freeware application to write to optical media or USB.
- balenaEtcher: Simple, functional tool. Their privacy policy is the worst I've ever seen, including "Social Identification" numbers in their policy.