Depending on the type of use you are going to give your computer, Linux can be a worthy alternative or even better than Windows. However, for those who have never tried the penguin’s operating system, it is normal to have doubts and some precautions not to make the PC worse than it is.
Without getting into exaggerated technicality, anyone can try Linux, and you don’t even have to install the software on your device. There are tools for this purpose, and we’ll comment in this post on the three simplest ways to do this.
Before, an important detail: when we talk about Linux in the context of the PC, we are talking about Linux distributions for desktops, that is, operating systems developed to work on a personal computer.
That said, let’s go to the alternatives.
Test Linux in a web browser
For a quick view of distributions and without worrying about performance, DistroTest.net is the resource at your disposal. Just enter the site, choose the distribution and version you want, and run it. Wait a few minutes for the software to run, but it’s worth it: there are up to 200 different distributions.
Test Linux on a virtual machine
Here, you can virtualize the Linux distribution you want to test, with the virtual machine resources managed by you, which should deliver much better performance than the previous alternative. Download the distribution you want to test and use VirtualBox to run it. It is also possible to install the distribution permanently on the virtual machine.
Test Linux on a USB stick
The closest thing to installing Linux on the hard drive. Create a boot system via pen drive to run the operating system, using the system in live mode, and not installed on the machine. So you can have a pocket operating system complete with persistent storage space.
As you can see, all the alternatives are very simple, where you need to absorb the details to accomplish each task. The purpose of this post is not to teach you how each method works, but to show you that you can test Linux without complicating your life. However, none of the methods mentioned here offer the same stability and performance that we can get when installing Linux on the hard drive.
And yet, another way to test Linux without modifying native storage was left out: Windows Subsystem for Linux. The reason for removing this option is that it is much more complicated to implement than the others.