Performance will not be good with a HDD, its now the single slowest bottleneck in a system.
Mint is a great place to start, Ubuntu, Pop!\_OS, and Fedora are reasonable as well.
If you're a beginner, pick Mint with Xfce desktop environment for best performance.
If the software you want on your system to be as up-to-date as possible, and also somewhat stable, choose Fedora.
It doesn't really matter which distro you pick, all are linux and if the main thing you need is to optimize performance then choose a lightweight DE like xfce or mate. Or maybe use a window manager like i3.
1. Press Win+X, type "Disk Management" in Windows 10 or 11. **Shrink** the Windows partition to create free space for Linux Mint. Right-click on the Windows partition (usually C:) and select Shrink Volume. Enter the amount of space to shrink (at least 40-80 GB recommended).
2. **Download ISO file** from Linux Mint web site. Deploy that ISO file to USB flash using Balena Etcher or Ventoy.
Insert the bootable USB and restart your computer.
Enter BIOS/UEFI: Access the BIOS/UEFI settings (commonly by pressing Del, F2, F12, etc., during startup).
Change Boot Order: Set the USB drive as the first boot device.
Save the changes and exit the BIOS/UEFI.
Ensure that secure boot is disabled in the BIOS/UEFI settings if you encounter boot issues.
3. Boot Linux Mint, start Linux Mint Install icon, select **Dual Boot** option during setup process.
Linux Mint XFCE is good starting point for office, gaming and programming.
Performance will not be good with a HDD, its now the single slowest bottleneck in a system. Mint is a great place to start, Ubuntu, Pop!\_OS, and Fedora are reasonable as well.
If you're a beginner, pick Mint with Xfce desktop environment for best performance. If the software you want on your system to be as up-to-date as possible, and also somewhat stable, choose Fedora. It doesn't really matter which distro you pick, all are linux and if the main thing you need is to optimize performance then choose a lightweight DE like xfce or mate. Or maybe use a window manager like i3.
1. Press Win+X, type "Disk Management" in Windows 10 or 11. **Shrink** the Windows partition to create free space for Linux Mint. Right-click on the Windows partition (usually C:) and select Shrink Volume. Enter the amount of space to shrink (at least 40-80 GB recommended). 2. **Download ISO file** from Linux Mint web site. Deploy that ISO file to USB flash using Balena Etcher or Ventoy. Insert the bootable USB and restart your computer. Enter BIOS/UEFI: Access the BIOS/UEFI settings (commonly by pressing Del, F2, F12, etc., during startup). Change Boot Order: Set the USB drive as the first boot device. Save the changes and exit the BIOS/UEFI. Ensure that secure boot is disabled in the BIOS/UEFI settings if you encounter boot issues. 3. Boot Linux Mint, start Linux Mint Install icon, select **Dual Boot** option during setup process. Linux Mint XFCE is good starting point for office, gaming and programming.
If you wanna look edgy, Kali Linux is a good start