Good morning from Wales, UK.

This is my first post on LinuxQuestions.

My ‘Linux background’ is that for around two years a Zorin-based machine has been my principle ‘online portal’ (internet and email), and over that period I have progressively learnt to do more things on this machine, to the point where I now do most of my computing on it.
My remaining use of Windows is mostly limited to (a) ‘heritage’ ie the long personal backlog of stuff I’ve done on Windows computers in the past and (b) some specific areas of interest where IMO the best available software (or software in which I have a large investment of deep learning) is Windows-based.

I’ll keep the question I’d like to ask today general at this stage.
In the past couple of months I have worked on three different machines, two of them quite elderly, to install Linux distros from commercially-prepared installation media, usually USB sticks. In each case I have at some stage found that the installation process as set up on the medium did not ‘find’ what was expected, and so put up error messages, sometimes unable to run through; or in one extreme case did not find anything at all ie couldn’t locate the principal hard drive, though that was working fine in all other situations.
So I want to ask about ‘prep’ for installing a Linux distro, usually to convert a machine from Windows.
Is there any general advice which would be intelligible to to a Linux newbie, someone who has no wish to become a Linux guru, but simply to migrate OS ?
And more specifically, are there any applications, or prepared USBs or DVDs, that can be run on a machine before going to the actual installation medium ?

I have found and read the thread “what should a noob know before attempting to install linux?” My only comment on that would be that no purchased installation package I’ve had has ever come with any detailed instructions.

Many thanks for any info or advice.

Sincerely

Ian Graham

One should always test their download by shal or md5.

Almost every distro has some minimum hardware requirements and usually some recommended hardware.

Almost every distro has a few versions that may allow one to use a cd or dvd or boot to a minimal for netinstall.

I never "prep" a windows machine as such. I delete the partitions. In some rare cases you may have to delete and then reboot to being the installer again.

Thank you

To expand on jefro's response. Pick a distro - I find Mint good for "converts", with Mate desktop if old kit - and download/verify/burn it. Then boot it in live (or "Try Linux") mode. This allows you to try it on your hardware without installing or affecting your hard-disk - make sure video and network work ok. When happy (take your time), install it, usually from an icon on the desktop.

Convince yourself it will work on your kit first.

Thank you for that, too. What you describe is my usual method. The machine I'm writing this on, my usual 'desktop' though in fact it's a Thinkpad, is in Zorin 12. I have also installed UbuntuStudio. My next objective is to get another machine, and then this one, into Zorin 15.3.
But the situation I was asking about is when the process you describe doesn't work. By definition, if an installer throws up an error message, this is most likely to imply it has found something on the new host machine for which it is not prepared or aligned ? (And I think for practical purposes, in my cases, we can exclude simple lack of capacity on the machines.)
My experience seems to suggest this is not that unusual an occurrence, and I simply wondered whether anyone had developed some sort of systems disk (or software application) to try and pre-empt it.

Thanks for your interest.

Ian G.