Help a newbie.
 

Hi all,

I am planning to install Mint on my Windows 7 computer and am wondering if I would be able to run that OS and get rid of the Windows 7? Would this be difficult? Thanking all of you in advance for all of your help.


Bruce

Should not be difficult. If the computer does not have UEFI, it should be as simple as "use entire disc" when installing. If you have UEFI, it must first be disabled and Legacy Mode enabled, unless Mint is UEFI compatible. Check the installation instructions on Mint's website.

It is, and will seamlessly set up the EFI partition and boot-loader for you.
Same install image also handles non-UEFI.

UEFI can along with Windows 8. Computers that came with factory-installed Win7 would not normally have UEFI.

Best to check for that, I have one of the "not normal" ones myself, Win7 + UEFI. In my case Samsung. It probably varies from manufacturer to manufacturer.

Nice catch, rtmistler. Thanks.

More specifically, Windows Secure Market Share--er--Secure Boot, came along with Windows 8 and secure market share requires UEFI. EFI has been around for a while (Apple has used it for a long time), but secure boot forced manufacturers who had stuck with BIOS to move to UEFI.

The Win7 computers in this house--my Lenovo and my girlfriend's HP--are both BIOS computers.

It may be that a first step would be to play with some virtual machine installs of various distro's to decide what to play with. Second may be a usb install. Then when satisfied their system will work OK, consider wiping windows.

I agree. Although I fully support making to switch to full on Linux; I would make sure that you are completely sure that you want to wipe out Windows. Also, I might also make a backup of the license key that you have in case you ever need to go back for some reason.