2w ago

"They just have to read the documentation"

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Throw Mint Cinnamon or the latest version on the computer, solved. Ubuntu can.. be speshy sometimes on my older spare laptop, but it is not really their fault, more my computer is a bit cooked. Some puppy linux distros are cool, but also a tiny bit complicated for beginners.
- That was the reason I decided to install Mint Cinnamon.
  It's been impossible to install for a week now. And I'm not even 100% IT illiterate. After ~3 days of struggling, I decided to do the walk of shame and post on the Mint forum, admitting my failure. It's been unsolved for about a week now. >100 fails and errors, crashes, freezes.
  I can't even imagine where I would (not) be had I chosen Kali or Arch.
  
  Tbh you might have failing RAM or something. Have you run Memtest?
  
  Yes, I have done a few things already, including memtest. I'll copy from the forum:
  The things I have tried:
  Updating my BIOS.
  The ISO I downloaded has been md5 checked, all fine. I have also tried 2 other ISO files from 2 other mirrors - same.
  Three (3) USB drives to install Mint, ranging from 8 GB to 24GB.
  Installing with or without multimedia codecs.
  Turning on secure boot before install (I was desperate, found a forum post with a similar error message, later I found out that it was for a different reason).
  Turning off secure boot before install (I found a different forum post where the exact opposite was recommended - later I found out that it was for a different reason).
  Installing in compatibility mode.
  Offering a sacrifice to Xebeth'Qlu, tormentor of souls.
  Running gparted before install, deleting the previously half-installed partition, formatting it myself to ext4, then running the installer.
  Splitting the aforementioned partition into a 16GB swap partition (I have 16GB RAM) and leaving the rest of it as ext4 (mounted at "/").
  Running chkdsk -f on the SSD containing the MBR+Win10, then rebooting the PC twice, according to one of the error messages in my post below (then trying to install again).
  
  Might sound like a dumb Q but have you tried testing any of the live environments or are you jumping straight to the install, and if you have played in the env. for a bit, have you tried installing any other distro? (Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian etc)
  
  If by live environment you mean the one running from the USB (before I start the actual install) then yes, the install itself starts from a live Mint, running from the USB already. Sorry, I'm not sure if that's what you meant.
  
  Yup thats exactly what I meant. If you play with it on the USB for a while, do you notice any problems at all or is it only after install?
  
  I have played around before trying to install a few times, but I'm not sure if that exhausts the question: I brought up two terminal windows to ssh into my Raspberry Pi and to manage logs on the other, while I had a browser up to look up netcat usage examples. It didn't freeze or crash during regular activity, if we're looking for that.
  
  I mean it sounds like if you were going to encounter an issue in the live usb environment you would've then. I'm honestly a little stumped myself then. If you can run it off the USB, have verified your SSD and RAM are both physically functional with memtest and SMART tests, I can't think of any other basic troubleshooting other than trying another distro like Fedora. Theres a possibility you might have some sort of hardware that either isnt supported or is failing in such a way that it doesnt affect windows? I have never seen such a thing but maybe its possible. If you want to DM 1:1 on like, Matrix or something to discuss more I'm open to that. If not I hope you find something that works out though.

188 comments