Try Linux without installing anything

You can run Linux on your PC this afternoon without installing it, without removing Windows and without risking a single file. It starts from a USB stick, uses your screen and keyboard, and vanishes when you pull the stick out.

Nobody should switch operating systems on the strength of a web page, this one included. An hour with the real thing on your own hardware tells you what no review can, which is whether your wifi connects and whether you can stand the look of it.

What you need

A USB stick of 8 GB or more, and you need to be fine with losing whatever is on it, because making the stick erases it completely. About an hour. A PC that passed the two-minute hardware check.

Make the stick

1. Go to linuxmint.com and download the Cinnamon edition. Mint’s guide calls it the most popular one, and it’s the one that looks most like Windows. The download is a single large file ending in .iso.
2. Download and install Etcher, which is the free tool Mint’s guide recommends for people doing this from Windows.
3. Open Etcher. Choose the .iso file, choose your USB stick, and click Flash. Check the drive it has picked before you click, because Etcher wipes whatever you point it at.

Mint’s guide also asks you to verify the download, meaning confirm the file arrived intact and is the real thing. The instructions are there if you want them, and they involve tools most Windows users have never opened. If you skip it, get the file from linuxmint.com and nowhere else. A damaged download shows itself as a stick that won’t start, and the cure is downloading again.

Start the PC from it

Shut the PC down fully. Plug in the stick, press the power button, and straight away start tapping the key that opens the startup menu.

Which key is the annoying part. Mint’s guide lists Escape, F1, F2, F8, F10, F11, F12 and Delete as the candidates, depending on who built your computer, and the right one is often shown on screen for a second as the machine wakes. If Windows loads, you were too slow or it was the wrong key. Shut down and go again. Searching your PC’s model plus “boot menu key” ends the guessing.

Pick the USB stick from the list that appears. A plain text menu comes up next, and pressing Enter on the first line starts Mint.

What you’re looking at

A desktop, with a menu button in the bottom-left corner and a clock in the bottom-right. Mint calls this a live session. It has signed you in as a user named “mint”, and if anything asks for a password, the answer is to press Enter.

It will feel slow. Everything is being read off a USB stick, which is a bit like cooking a roast on a camping stove, and the installed version is far quicker. Nothing you change is kept, either. Rearrange the desktop, fill the browser with bookmarks, break something on purpose. The next start wipes the slate.

Work through the checklist in the hardware guide, then spend a while just using it. Open the menu and look at what’s installed, which includes Firefox and the LibreOffice suite. Visit the sites you use every day. Open a document or two off another USB stick.

When you’re done

Shut down from the menu and take the stick out. The next time you press the power button, Windows starts as though the afternoon never happened.

Keep the stick. If you decide to go ahead, it’s also the installer, and step 5 of the switching guide picks up from the Install Linux Mint icon on that same desktop.

If it didn’t go to plan

A PC that ignores the stick and loads Windows every time usually needs its startup order changed, which is done in the same family of menus the mystery key opens. A message containing the words Secure Boot Violation means the PC’s startup security has objected, and one of the fixes in Mint’s guide is to switch Secure Boot off in those same settings.

If the desktop appeared but the wifi didn’t, don’t install yet. Search for your laptop’s exact model plus “Linux Mint wifi” and see what other owners found.