You always have the option of partitioning some free space on your hard drive and dual boot windows along side Linux Mint until you’re 100% confident in erasing windows from the drive. When I first got started with it years ago I had similar fears that something would go wrong with the process or there would be driver issues or I wouldn’t be able to start my favorite software. So I dual booted windows on my laptop for about a year until I realized I hadnt needed to use windows at all.
Seconding the person saying not to dual boot on a new partition. That was how I started with Linux like 10 years ago, and even then Windows would fuck up grub every time it updated and it took me ages to learn how to get boot into Linux again. Plus if you ever decide to ditch windows entirely, wiping that partition and adding it to the Linux one can be a pain in the ass.
If all you have is a laptop and a dream, maybe that’s the way. But if there are any other options…
You always have the option of partitioning some free space on your hard drive and dual boot windows along side Linux Mint until you’re 100% confident in erasing windows from the drive. When I first got started with it years ago I had similar fears that something would go wrong with the process or there would be driver issues or I wouldn’t be able to start my favorite software. So I dual booted windows on my laptop for about a year until I realized I hadnt needed to use windows at all.
I wouldn’t recommend dual-booting via partition. If you have a spare SATA port, just grab a small SSD and use that instead.
Seconding the person saying not to dual boot on a new partition. That was how I started with Linux like 10 years ago, and even then Windows would fuck up grub every time it updated and it took me ages to learn how to get boot into Linux again. Plus if you ever decide to ditch windows entirely, wiping that partition and adding it to the Linux one can be a pain in the ass.
If all you have is a laptop and a dream, maybe that’s the way. But if there are any other options…