How to install Linux Mint on your Mac or Windows machine

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Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/08/09/how-to-install-linux-mint-on-y.html

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So the hard/annoyingwait part is mostly making your boot media. The rest is dead easy also you will want a wired connection as not all wireless adapters work out of the box and you need to download the driver.

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Thanks for the pointers, Tobin.

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Eugh. I can hardly believe how little has changed. Having to set up a separate partition for swap space has always struck me as needlessly cumbersome. Oh, sure, there are probably ways around it – but they’re not the default, and probably require jumping through hoops, and aren’t thoroughly tested, and will probably screw you up properly somewhere down the line.

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Linux, you say? Welllllll, I dunno… won’t I catch all kinds of viruses using software made by amateurs?

<runs away>

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I had some troubles with Mint, but Ubuntu has been fine for me. I have one of those stupid 2011 Macbooks where the graphics card becomes unsoldered because of heat. So, OSX just crashes at that point. I can configure Linux to stay with the integrated graphics, and I have a working computer again.

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I think they magically do that in the background now unless you want to get fiddly. I know I haven’t had to bother with that the last few times I have had to install Mint.

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Recent versions of Ubuntu default to a swap file instead of a swap partition. http://linuxbsdos.com/2017/04/18/swap-partition-out-swap-file-in-on-ubuntu-17-04/

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Well I recently put Chakra with Win10 on a HP laptop. HP has this boot menu you can’t edit and it’s a bit clumsy if you use both OS on a regular basis. For me I only use Win to update my Garmin and do my taxes so it’s a yearly reminder to me how much I hate Microsoft software.

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I saw a lot of problems with wireless cards and drivers up to about 2010-11, I think.

Very often installing Ubuntu on a friend or loved one’s computer involved downloading a driver from the manufacturer’s web site, sometimes even compiling it.

But I haven’t seen that at all in recent years. I guess the most common wireless cards found their way into the kernel.

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Intriguing. I suppose the other page in their guide might need updating.

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My experience has been similar with recent Debian distros. I’ve loaded Kali on to a motley assortment of a dozen or so second hand netbooks over the last half decade, without once needing to fiddle with wifi drivers.

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For making your boot media, I can’t recommend http://etcher.io highly enough. Dead simple drag and drop interface.

EDIT: which I now see they recommend in the article. Sorry.

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The link to Make: Linux for Makers is broken. Here’s what I could find: https://www.makershed.com/products/make-linux-for-makers

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You get what you pay for, that’s what I always say.

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I’m running Mint 18.2 “Sonya” on a 6 year old “eBay special” Dell Latitude E6520. It also has partitions for Windows 7 and Windows 10, if I need a Windows specific application. I will go literally months without needing to boot into Windows. I’ve promised myself that I will not give another dime to Microsoft.

I’m slowly weaning myself off of M$ and my next $100 off-lease laptop will likely not have a full Windows partition, just a VM.

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My 83 yr old dad uses a bootable Ubuntu disk whenever he does any internet banking. He likes being confident that the computer is only running the software he put on the disk. But he uses Windows for everything else.

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A daily reminder for me. Windows just loves to ‘help’ you in ways that are needless and useless and cannot seem to ever remember exactly how you always want everything positioned. Hell, even the Solitaire game that came with 7 (you can get those games back for 10 if you go hunting), is buggy.

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And when you pay for a shitty OS, you get… a shitty OS. Though I will admit Win10 is miles better than any previous MS system, it still drives me up the wall whenever I have to use it.

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I would rather donate money to Linux Mint, Canonical (Ubuntu) or the Open Document Foundation (LibreOffice) - which I do - then give another penny to Microsoft! I DO pay for my open source software. I support it (and write open source based software myself). Linux Mint is a great day-to-day OS.

IMHO, Linux Mint is a wonderful operating system and it certainly works for me. Both Linux Mint (Cinnamon) and Linux Mint (MATE) are lighter weight (memory-wise) than GNOME3 (used by Ubuntu, Fedora and others) but they are great too. Choice is good. That is not to say that Linux desktop distros are perfect. Far from it, but they are very usable. Windows 7 UI is intuitive to me. WIndows 10 is a strange meld of Windows 7 and Metro. Many people seem to like it but it seems unintuitive to me. Again, choice is good. If you like Windows (or macOS) then use it.

What is NOT good is that you cannot buy a (non-Mac) PC on the high street loaded with anything other than Windows. That is an enforced monopoly. It would be like being forced to have one sort of SIM card but being told “Well you can buy another type AS WELL if you want to!”

If there were well polished PCs running Linux Mint, Ubuntu or Fedora in (yeah I forgot your favourite distro!) then at least some non-techies would buy them. If children can use Raspberry Pi’s then non-techies can use desktop Linux. My family and friends do.

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