Finally, finally running linux mint from a usb stick

Software & Operating Systems Linux
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First off hello to you all from a linux mint desktop!!! :muscle::fist_right::fist_left::love_you_gesture::clap::handshake:

YAY finally got it to work. Yes I know just another noob who found out about linux and all that bla bla jazzā€¦ So why does this topic exist? Good question here is (not) a short anwser. It took me 2 days yes 2 F=%$# days to figure out how to boot mint from a USB stick.

Wow the guy is an idiot, there are ton of tutorials online on how to do that, it takes 20min tops to set it all up :weary::unamused:

I know!! I followed those. I downloaded rufus, did according to the instructions and nothing. It went straight to windows. I selected to boot from a USB hard drive and nothing. So i tried the other program Universal USB Installer (UUI). Again followed the instructions to the T andā€¦ Same thing again. No joy. It boots windows instead of from the USB stick. So at this point I gave up and went to bed. Mad and frustrated as you can imagine.

Anyway did some more searching on the internet and youtube, to see if my laptop (it is 9 years old after all) can actually boot from a USB (btw the laptop is HP Compaq 6830s). And I found that there are some settings in the BIOS that need to be changed in order to allow it to boot from USB. Did all that, tried again andā€¦ yep exactly it boots Windows YAAAYY!!! NOOOOOOOOOOOO

Lucky for me my zodiacal sign is a bull, so Iā€™m stubborn plus itā€™s personal now. After some more fiddling by some sheer accident or luck, i managed to finally boot into linux mint. Here let me show you how. I bet by the end of this youā€™ll just face palm yourself or be rolling on the floor laughing (my bet is both).

First off I need to press esc button then press F9 for boot device options, then select Boot from EFI file, select the USB stick, go to EFI folder, from there go into BOOT folder and finally select the BOOTx64.EFI file press enter and VOILA I get the option to run Linux Mint 18.2 Cinnamon 64-bit, press enter for the last time and after all that it loads the Linux Mint desktop.

So now for a day and a half i am doing some elementary exploring on how the whole thing is set up. Managed to install the proper language pack for my country. Even managed to set up (change) so that Mint knows what kind of keyboard layout i am using (we have a lot of extra letters ČĆŽĐŠ for example), although the Y and Z are opposite, my keyboard is QWERTZ but mint sees it instead of that as QWERTY. But I can manage that, that is to get used to it.

Anyway feel free to laugh to your hearts content. Whole reason why i am running mint from a USB stick and not from a hard drive (dual booting) is because in the upcoming week Iā€™ll be upgrading to a new desktop computer where I intend to install linux as my second OS so i am just trying to get the feel and look of it so that I have some vague idea of it. Plus I did not want to mess this laptop until i have successfully migrated all of the stuff to the new PC (i have a reputation of doing things - breaking stuff - that are otherwise deemed impossible to screw up :innocent:)

So thatā€™s my story please leave any useful comments on how to better my experience with mint, things to try and things not to touch.

2 Likes
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The latest Rufus and a different install drive. Usually pretty reliable. Recommend you avoid the time wasting install on same drive and just purchase another drive for the linux install. 120 gig ssd is optimal and cheap.

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Welcome to the dark side! I too couldnā€™t get a USB stick from Windows to work to save my life. I ended up burning a DVD of Mint 16 at the time in order to get it to install. SInce then I have used the USB image writer in Mint, the one from Deepin, and my current go-to - mkusb, all without failure. For some reason rufus and unetbootin never worked for me.

I also agree, if you can manage it, to use another drive vs dual booting the same drive, as there are many horror stories from people new (and not so new) to Linux that have had issues. I havenā€™t heard any horror stories of using different drives. Perhaps you can save an old drive for Linux on your new machine. I would also recommend keeping a spare 8GB+ USB drive with Linux on hand for any rescue and recovery you may have to do for yourself or others. I keep a copy of LXLE, Mint, Raspbian x86, and clonezilla handy since I have way too many USB drives.

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Your more brave then I am, I never went beyond the DVD drive
When installing packages resist the urge to install a ton of stuff cause itā€™s free.
ā€œOh I might become interested in programming 10 years from now so let me install all this C and Perl stuffā€

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No! This thing youā€™ve done, it is badass. Sure there are a lot of tutorials, but the material point is that you ran into problems, and at any point in the last 2 days you could have walked away. But you didnā€™t. You stuck it out, you worked through it, and you came out on top, and that makes you mighty.

5 Likes
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My biggest frustration with mint is trying to get it to boot on a PC with a 10 series Nvidia GPU. What a nightmareā€¦ was esier to pull GPU, install using integrated graphics and then attempt to install the proprietary drivers. Still no walk in the park and required much fussing around to finally get it to work a expected. Iā€™m still unable to witch video ports on the fly but itā€™s working.

Unfortunately this is a larger issue with 3rd parties not supporting linux well than an inherent issue to linux. Although it would be nice if the built in nvidia driver worked out of the box, at least at a basic level.

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There are two ways to go about this. You can disable the NV GPU in the bios if it allows, install the proprietary driver and then, enable in the bios and then start up normally.

Or you can manually setup Nouveau (not sure if 10 series is supoorted) long enough to get the proprietary drivers installed then blacklist Nouveau.

If your main rig is going to have NV+IGP, you may want to disable IGP or look into
Prime
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PRIME

Optimus
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/NVIDIA_Optimus

Bumblebee
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Bumblebee

1 Like
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Yet another thing to add to the be aware list. Will have to look more into this Nvidia gen 10 GPUs and Mint issue, since iā€™ll be running a 1080Ti.
Question; Is this limited to only Mint or other distroes as well? My alternative to Mint is to go with the Solus (budgie or mate). Will I potentionally run into the same issue even on that distro?

ā€¦ walks away looking at his 10 feet long BE CEARFULL!! listā€¦

@KleerKut and @Freaksmacker, yes iā€™ll be having a dedicated 240gig SSD for Linux so that is allready cheked on the above mentioned list :wink:

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All distros will have similar problem with NV. It is an NV created issue. Nouveau is a OSS driver based onbreverse engineering. NV has seriously stifled their progress with the 10 series GPUs. NV wants you to use the proprietary drivers. The problem is that they will not make a truly OSS shim at the very least and they try to force the *nix OSes to do things the NV way.

On the bright side, being an NV user on Gnu/Linux will force you to learn a few system commands and get you acquainted with your package manager and module building.