How to get Mint working

[Fred]

So I have a productive Linux environment now. I'll let you in on a couple of problems I ran into:

1. My bootable media wouldn't boot. It always booted to the hard disk and wouldn't boot from my usb thumbdrive. I went into BIOS and chose "USB Key" as the first boot, no luck. "USB Floppy" didn't work either. The one item I was ignoring was "usb hard disk" so I put that at the top and presto! It boots.

2. My welcome screen was unusable. No icons on it, nothing. And the text was super tiny. After much research, I learned how to edit the grub file and add the "nomodeset" flag where it says "quiet splash". Once I did that, everything went perfectly.

I'm going to read freak's instructions on installing Purebasic. 'cause I haven't fought with my computer enough today.

The README or INSTALL file should be up to date, feel free to report if something goes wrong ! Good luck with your Linux journey, I will probably follow you soon as Win11 doesn't support my computer and there is no way I throw it away just for this

[deeproot]

The README or INSTALL file should be up to date, feel free to report if something goes wrong ! Good luck with your Linux journey, I will probably follow you soon as Win11 doesn't support my computer and there is no way I throw it away just for this

Ran through the INSTALL file for a test of PB 6.20 beta 3 on a machine that previously only had a very old version of PB. Everything was good except when attempting to install QT dependent packages - it failed on "qt5-default" saying it was not available. Also looked at INSTALL for 6.12LTS and it was the same. The QT part in the mk-soft Simple Install on the forum does not include qt5-default and worked with no problem. I was then able to compile and run a big QT test project - no warnings or error messages. I'm no expert with these things but think maybe it is not needed (obsolete?) and not included in Debian Stable repositories. Something worth checking

I run all 3 of the main OS options but now using Linux more for day-to-day things. I use several machines and all are old refurbished ones that didn't cost much. None of them will support Win11 and I hate the idea of throwing away any perfectly working computer. Even my 19 year old, 32-bit, travel Thinkpad works great with the latest Linux and most important runs Purebasic very well

[PBJim]

I use several machines and all are old refurbished ones that didn't cost much. None of them will support Win11 and I hate the idea of throwing away any perfectly working computer. Even my 19 year old, 32-bit, travel Thinkpad works great with the latest Linux and most important runs Purebasic very well

I agree, we also have a range of desktops and servers in the offices the majority of which are around 8 - 10 years old and they all work perfectly well. As I see it, Microsoft, along with other big tech firms, care absolutely nothing about the environmental impact of the obsolescence they create, nor the electronic waste or resources demanded for supporting their bloatware products.

You can run Windows 11 on older machines by using an installation switch at the first screen. I run it inside a VM on a ten-year-old server. It runs like a dog but then Windows 11 is a dog even on current machines.

[mk-soft]

In my installation instructions, qt-default is also specified for computers without a development environment.
However, this no longer exists.
I will update my instructions in the next few days...

[AZJIO]

2. My welcome screen was unusable. No icons on it, nothing. And the text was super tiny. After much research, I learned how to edit the grub file and add the "nomodeset" flag where it says "quiet splash". Once I did that, everything went perfectly.

You can copy ready -made themes for GRUB2. I use my own "Green Land"

Code: Select all

set theme=/boot/grub/themes/greenland/theme.txt

And the text was super tiny.

You can compile the font with a given size. You can download my large font. If there are problems using the font, then just rename the unicode.pf2 file and replace mine instead and it will be used.

You can use the Qemu emulator to see how the boot screen will look like. On Linux, try my gui_qemu program.

video

If you want to try installing multiple Linuxs, then specify not the physical disk as the boot disk, but the disk on which you install the OS, then when updating Grub2, the configuration file will not be rewritten when updating each OS. One OS will update the file, not every one.

1. My bootable media wouldn't boot. It always booted to the hard disk and wouldn't boot from my usb thumbdrive. I went into BIOS and chose "USB Key" as the first boot, no luck. "USB Floppy" didn't work either. The one item I was ignoring was "usb hard disk" so I put that at the top and presto! It boots.

You should have a hot key that causes a boot menu (F2, F9, F10, F12). During loading at the bottom of the screen, the inscription "Boot F9" means that you need to click F9 to go to the menu. Theoretically, you will see a flash drive as one of the boot options. You can find a hotkey on the Internet to enter the boot menu for your laptop model.