I want to make the switch but I want to test run first before fully committing. My PC has an M.2 SSD. I was thinking I could buy another one, swap them out and put Linux on that. In an emergency, I can swap the SSD back. Does this seem like a viable/sensible path toward Linux? I don’t really have too many files on my PC that I care about. I don’t want to dual boot. I did that on a laptop back in the day and it was annoying.
If you’ve got two slots and a modern motherboard, you can do the same thing but keep both m.2 devices installed. If you really want to be sure, take out the windows device, install Linux on the second, and then put the windows device back in. You’ll be able to swap back to windows if needed that way without swapping things out
Why would I need to remove the Windows SSD if adding a second? Just to make sure I don’t accidentally overwrite it during install? Is there some other risk I’m not thinking of?
Yeah just in case you overwrite the wrong one during setup.
Most installers don’t try to do too many weird things for boot purposes anymore in the EFI age. Just hit F12 on startup and pick the other option. Or configure grub afterwards to have the windows boot option.
It means you won’t end up with dual boot breaking one of your installs, you won’t accidentally overwrite anything etc.
Entirely optional, but if you were already planning on removing it anyway, it’s not really any extra work