Newbie Post: I have gone "all-in" with Linux Mint 22.1, wiping Windows completely. All good...with two nagging problems.

[melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com]

1. I have NVIDIA Optimus and I haven't been able to get any method of installing NVIDIA drivers to work. I don't necessarily care about the full switching ability of the Optimus, although sure it would be nice. I also have been unsuccessful turning off the Intel UHD graphics (as an option). My computer is an MSI Sword 15 A11UD, with NVIDIA Corporation GA107M [GeForce RTX 3050 Ti Mobile] 3D graphics. I have installed using the Driver Manager in Mint, and also manually. I have checked and I am using the 550 driver, which I think is supposed to be the right one.

2. I am having trouble transitioning to Linux where I am not able to simply navigate to additional hard drives contained in my laptop or attached via usb. I have my torrents on an external drive, and it keeps getting renamed, easystore somehow became "owned" by root and inaccessible, and I had to switch to easystore1 which was created in the same folder. After I switched, easystore1 became owned by root, and I had to switch to easystore2, which had been created.

In addition to this, I can't browse to the external hard drive through plex media server or radarr/sonarr, it just doesn't show on the menu. I know it's a permission issue, but I don't understand how that works.

I was happy up to a point, but my Linux installation is becoming what I was afraid of, a test showing me how little I know, and a time-eater that causes my wife to wonder what happened to her husband.

Please, I want to be free, but I don't want to just say bye to my hard drives and my GPU. Help me, community. You're my only hope.

[zenlix@lemm.ee]

A have never used mint and only used debian as a Workstation. If there is a permissions issue with an application, my first thought is how you installed you application?

When you say, you cant easily get tonthe content of a drive, what Desktop Environment do you us3 and what file explorer?

[thekracken@lemmy.world]

I'm pretty new as well. Try looking at mounting your hard drives with /etc/fstab. You should try to mount them via UUID and put them in the /mnt folder. I'm using mint cinnamon your mileage might vary. https://wiki.debian.org/fstab

[melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com]

I installed Linux Mint from a live USB. I have installed applications via bash, software manager, and some even from the snap store.

I'm not sure what desktop environment Mint uses, I'm pretty sure it's not KDE, and I have no clue about which explorer.

[eugenia@lemmy.ml]

1. You're not the first person to not be able to make nvidia work on Mint. Here's another one I found earlier today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xl6OBIQl_MI

2. Use gparted to assign label names to your partitions/drives, and you might need to edit /etc/fstab. More info here, and there are more such forum posts to read through: https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=344652

Overall, I'd say that Mint is the best distro to start with, but if you stumble on the few bugs they have, start looking elsewhere. I'd suggest you start by trying ubuntu 24.10 instead of mint.

[just_another_person@lemmy.world]

1. You say you haven't been able to install Nvidia drivers, but then say you are using 550 drivers. Are you saying you can't run any games or programs that engage your GPU? Open and terminal and run nvidia-smi and see what the output is.

2. What is the filesystem on these drives? If it's NTFS, they will be mounted as read-only by default and show as owned by root. This is by design to prevent potential damage to NTFS filesystems which are technically a Windows-only thing. You do have the option of changing this behavior, but it will inevitably cause problems because the open driver to run these filesystems on Linux still runs into some MS proprietary filesystem issues. If you have the option of copying the files on each drive to your local drive, reformatting the externals into another more friendly filesystem, then copying the files back, you'll be in a much better place. I would suggest exFat to make things simplest for you, since it sounds like you may be plugging those drivers into other Windows machines, potentially.

[melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com]

Can't disable in BIOS, I even updated my BIOS hoping the new one would have that capability, but no joy.

Yes, video drivers got me using Timeshift a LOT.

[melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com]

1. I have successfully "installed" them but when I've run nvidia-smi it says they aren't loaded. Nvidia Prime applet says ERR.
2. Yes they're NTFS. The computer is using fuse to access it. It seems the root permission things is linked to installing video drivers. Every time I do it it changes the "home" drive and the "root" drives.

[meldrik@lemmy.wtf]

1.
I just installed Linux Mint myself, coming from Nobara and I also had some issues with my nVidia GPU, as I also have a laptop with an integrated GPU (AMD) and a dedicated GPU (GeForce 3070ti). The issue was "Secure boot" being enabled in BIOS. It would somehow block the nVidia driver from initiating correctly.

If you look in the "nVidia settings" app and it look like this:

It means the nVidia haven't initiated correctly. See if "Secure boot" is enabled. Disable it.

2.
What about the app "Disks"? Doesn't that do what you need?

[gabadabs@lemmy.blahaj.zone]

Sometimes, the simplest option is to try a different distribution instead of messing with individual things that aren't working on one. A lot of distributions come with the Nvidia drivers set up by default, such as POP OS. You could also try a fresh install of mint and install the Nvidia drivers using the driver manager application, and see if you're getting the same results.
As far as NTFS, that does have to change. You will keep running into problems if you don't format them into something like ext4. When I first installed Linux, I had all my games on an NTFS drive and very few of them would work at all.

[melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com]

Thanks for the info and the feeling of not being alone

[melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com]

Shoot. I got a lot of stuff on that drive.

[melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com]

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.

[sunzu2@thebrainbin.org]

Had the same issue and then went with popos

The issue is that they are current in transition into their own Cosmic DE which is very badass but it is still alpha. Although, it is possible to daily drive it with some bugs obviously but it will game etc

[just_another_person@lemmy.world]

I'm pretty sure you've got a race condition with the Nouveau driver getting loaded first then. That's the open source Nvidia driver in the stock kernels. Run lsmod | grep nouveau to confirm (if you get lines returned, then it's loaded.

You can sidestep this by blacklisting it and giving the installed Nvidia driver a chance to load first. Instructions here (use the Ubuntu section)

Reboot, and then you should be good to go. If nvidia-smi still doesn't show the correct output, you may need to just reinstall the driver packages again.

[gabadabs@lemmy.blahaj.zone]

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.

[trickdacy@lemmy.world]

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

[yozul@beehaw.org]

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.

[kualk@lemm.ee]

I don’t understand why Mint is chosen by people.

[melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com]

Seems like a promising answer, I wonder why someone downvoted it. I wish they'd left a comment.

I'll def explore it