Discussion in this thread has expanded from the question in the original post into some other - fascinating - issues like spying and the quality of different types of CD/DVD.
I recall that the OP
Robint said that he was a newbie, and he has commented on the
"yadayada" and
"....conflicting claims."
Even after 3-4 years of using Linux, I still feel like a newbie too. With that warning/caveat, it might be helpful just to set out a simple list of the installation choices which I explored, as a Windows user, when contemplating the move to Linux. In roughly escalating order of permanence, they include the following:
1) burn a CD/DVD of your favoured Linux distro, and boot it up (using your Windows system) to run a Live session from that CD/DVD. This is like taking a new car for a test drive. You can see how it runs, but you can't modify it to your taste. It won't run at top speed;
2) a variant of this is to put the distro on to a USB stick and run a Live session from there (which is likely to require selecting the USB stick in the BIOS as the first boot option);
3) create a bootable USB stick containing your preferred Linux distro, with this strange facility called "persistence". This allows you to run a Live session from the USB stick and also to tweak the Linux settings to some extent. This is still a test drive. The system BIOS has to be set to boot from the USB stick. The 'persistence' arrangement however enables Linux to remember what tweaks you made so they remain in place for the next time you take it for a drive. But it still won't run flat out, and there's a limit to the tweaking you can do.
Comment: I have found YUMI at
https://www.pendrivelinux.com/yumi-mult ... b-creator/ a reliable way of doing this - and you can have more than one Linux distro on the stick and choose which to play with!
3) install your selected Linux distro - with its Grub bootloader - permanently on an external hard drive. This obviously requires, first, the CD/DVD .iso. It also needs some willingness to get to grips with partitioning in order to be able to make decisions about exactly where and how to do the installation. Access to that Linux OS on the external drive is then enabled by re-setting the boot order in BIOS. Linux will run faster (or normally) in such a setup. The merit of this is that first, it does not interfere with your Windows OS or its MBR bootloader, and second, you can boot into and run the Linux distro on any computer simply by connecting your external HDD.
Comment: as noted earlier, it is possible to do this on to a USB stick instead of an HDD. But there is some question about how well a USB stick will cope, long-term, with all the read/write load of running an OS.
4) install your selected Linux distro as dual boot alongside your Windows on the main hard drive of your existing system. The Linux installer can do this more or less automatically. It creates a separate partition, and puts Linux on it. It also overwrites the Windows bootloader (which can't "see" Linux) with its own Grub bootloader. Grub can see and launch Windows or Linux;
5) install your selected Linux distro alongside your Windows on the main hard drive..... but do so using EasyBCD, which is a free Windows program. In essence this requires the manual install of Linux and its Grub on a separate partition, without overwriting the Windows MBR. Then it's simply a matter of telling EasyBCD where to find that Linux OS. You can in fact install more than one additional OS. EasyBCD then presents the choice of OS to boot into each time you start up. This is in fact what I have currently on my Win7 laptop;
6) There are refinements of this dual, or indeed multiboot setup - details of which are not for this post - to enable files/documents etc to be saved on a separate partition in such a way that they are accessible from either Windows or Linux;
7) then there is the option of running Linux in a Virtual Box within your Windows system (or maybe Windows in a virtual box inside Linux?). I know nothing of this and have not tried to go down this route;
8. Finally (!) there is the simple alternative - already mentioned - of getting a separate, cheap, or old computer and installing Linux (only) on that and playing with it there until you feel at home. Choosing a 'lightweight' Linux distro can revive an otherwise redundant older/slower computer that doesn't have the grunt to handle newer graphics-heavy Windows versions.
This list is essentially a simplified summary. Other forum members may spot gaps or want to add more detail. But it illustrates the wealth of choices and options that Linux offers, in where and how it is installed as well as in how you personalise it afterwards.
Best of luck - have fun, and discover the freedom of escaping the Microsoft straitjacket!
But again I bought a bnib 64g usb from ebay and it was faulty at data storage right off, I complained and got a refund - so the practice still goes on, where factory rejects get sold off on ebay and its a matter of chance if you get lucky
WOW