GnuTux wrote:
I'd like to weight in with support for
Fedora 20 MATELike MINT, you can install Fedora 20 with the MATE Desktop. It should make your transition from Windows much easier than installing a Linux version with Gnome3.
Fedora 20 now has a nice new version of the installer (anaconda), which is really easy to use. This ain't your Grand Pappy's Fedora. It comes with GIMP 2.8.10 out of the box. Fedora is also slowing down a bit on their release schedule. You can get two years out of a Fedora install these days.
Here is basic guide (with pics) for
Dual booting Fedora 18 & Win8. It's the same procedure for Fedora 20. They mention some issues with anaconda in this article but that was F18 and the problems have long been fixed. These are
screenshots from F19's anaconda installer that are a little more current.
As previously suggested , if you have enough power in that laptop, installing Linux in a Virtual Box might be a good way to go.
http://www.wikihow.com/Install-Fedora-17-in-VirtualboxYou don't need "power" to run a VirtualBox or any kind of virtual machine. 99.99% of the code executed in the virtual box is executed by the "bare metal", and the CPU performance of applications in the virtual machine strictly identical to those running on a native system. Most servers in Known Space are actually running in virtual machines... and I daily run a benemoth of an IDE in a Windows VM machine... where it run slightly faster than in the native Windows systems of my colleagues on the very same hardware(*). What you need is disk space for the machine images. If you use the VirtualBox software, the "Open Source Edition" that you'll likely find on your distribution repository is not as good as the "commercial" but free version (which isn't open source, found at VirtualBox.org).
(*) possibly because it optimizes its I/Os, focused on a 40GB disk instead of spread over a 320GB one, and also because the virtual box being used for that sole purpose, I could jettison all the impedimenta (firewall, anti-virus, many services...)