Newbie Post: I have gone "all-in" with Linux Mint 22.1, wiping Windows completely. All good...with two nagging problems.
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Thanks for the info and the feeling of not being alone
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I turned secure boot off a while ago but I did update the BIOS which involved resetting to default and I should check that, thanks.
I'll try disks, but I think the problem is NTFS formatting. Which sucks, but it's understandable.
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That's very fair. I say this only because I've found myself going down a rabbit hole of things not working on my own before, and a reinstall is usually the faster option for me. POP was just one example, a lot of distributions come with Nvidia installed by default.
Mint should work pretty much out of the box, but I remember Optimus being tricky sometimes. I do not recommend Manjaro, and not because it's arch. The last time I used Manjaro, it's automatic updater updated my Nvidia driver and my kernel to two separate versions that didn't work with each other, and bricked my system on me. It's not exceptionally stable even as far as Arch goes.
Arch doesn't have to be scary, I use Garuda and it has made it very user friendly.
I run all updates with one command and that command automatically makes snapper backups that I can pick between on boot, which makes fixing anything that can go wrong pretty easy.
Garuda Cinnamon edition uses the same desktop that mint uses.
Anyway, I do hope you're able to get mint working for you. -
Pop OS is excellent. You wouldn't really know it's created by a corporation. It's basically just the build they run on their hardware but I've not seen anything in it like ads or anything limiting my freedom. My perception of it is that it's just a more friendly and (snap-free) Ubuntu and I concur with those saying Nvidia is smoother on it. It does have a modified gnome but coming in the near future is their own DE called cosmic which seems promising. If it ends up being bad I will probably just switch to fedora even though Debian based distro are more supported
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If you have the default version of Mint installed then your desktop environment is Cinnamon. There are also XFCE and MATE versions, but you have to go out of your way to get those. The default file explorer for Cinnamon is called Nemo, so if you haven't changed it that would be what you are using.
Honestly, I think your best bet is trying Disks or maybe gparted if you like cli apps, and setting a mount point for the device from one of those. Linux doesn't always like NTFS, but you should at least be able to mount and read the drive consistently, although I have to admit I've never used an NTFS formatted external drive, so maybe something weird is going on with that.
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I don’t understand why Mint is chosen by people.
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Seems like a promising answer, I wonder why someone downvoted it. I wish they'd left a comment.
I'll def explore it
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If you want stability and ease of use similar to Windows, I highly recommend Fedora Silverblue, Kinoite or Bazzite. Optimus is working (now, asus gfxctl was broken for two weeks due to a new kernel) every keyboard shortcut is working, and, for some unknown miracle, battery life is better than windows. I'm on a G14.
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Well that's exactly what the issue is, so there's your solution. Easy to confirm with one command.
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It just works for 99.99% of anything a regular user would want it to. I moved my parents who are non-technical and in their 70's over to it from Windows 10. They like it so much they had me install it on their laptop as well.
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You can install other DEs on Pop OS.
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Distro hopped for years and got to a point I just wanted to use an OS and not screw around with it. I also didn't want to spend time troubleshooting odd problems. Mint's been installed on my machines for years and it works flawlessly.
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Mint's default desktop is Cinnamon. The default file manager is Nemo.
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correct. but i have hard time suggesting that to a noobie.
with that being said, if OP is interested in Cosmic DE, which is very much an interesting DE.
OP could install PopOS based on Ubuntu 24, throw KDE on it until Cosmic is baking
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I absolutely agree. I use it at home for lots of different tasks and put it on my parents laptops as well. It might not be the hottest, most modern disto for the cool kids but it's a great experience.
