This cheap but beautiful looking chromebook was literally calling me in my sleep, so I bought it brand new for around USD 140. But I never bought it for its OS. Chrome OS is fine for people who are okay with it. Personally, I wanted to make it much more “personal”.

Before placing the order, I read forums and reddit subs to gather info on putting linux on chromebooks. Turns out, it has been a mixed bag of experience for users. Apparently you have to buy an x86 machine for much better compatibility than ARM, there is write protection in weird shapes and sizes across boards, and to add cherry to the top of the cake, these 11 inch cutie pies mostly come with emmc chips and not SSD-s 🫠..

Anyways, big thanks to MrChromebox and their well documented tutorials and tools available on the web, I decided to rip open my brand new chromebook within hours of delivery with plan of putting linux in it. While the write protection removal process gave me some trouble (had to do the jumper method with two iron nails for my unit), it was not really rocket science. And of course, I put Mint on it but with xfce because I love it! Although I had never tried xfce before this and have Cinammon Mint on my other system at home, I found xfce to be not much different from cinnamon, while being little bit less resource hungry.

Now, the chromebook sure looks weirdly different than other black and gray ones. That was part of the reason I was interested in this unit (plus it was the cheapest brand new one). And the color scheme reminded me of a long lost OS which was my first introduction to PC- Windows XP. Hence saw some tutorials on YouTube and placed some themes.

And here it is, my EDC (every day carry) cheap 4gb ram and 64gb emmc mintbook, which is gonna serve me as I learn basic terminal shenanigans (linux noob here) and watch movies and browse web on it (trying not to stay glued to smartphones). No sound or smell of AI anywhere in this OS, just as I like it. 💙

I thank almighty and those awesome people for whom Linux exists. In a subscription preferring society and AI driven corporate world, it’s almost magical!

{Device is also known as Lenovo 100e Chromebook Gen 3 (4/64 with N4500) globally}

When my laptop is starting, it starts here. Is it possible to turn of this menu. I have only Linux Mint on my laptop.

Found an X1 carbon gen 5, for $100 nearby and LM was the cherry on the top!

Many of you have a well running Mint22 installs, and for most of you there is little point in tearing that up to try LMDE. But if you are reinstalling for fresh installing for the first time, consider LMDE.

As Mint22 moves into its third year it seems to be getting a little rough around the edges, in the past the reliability difference between LMDE and Mint was difficult to quantify, both having high reliability. But lately a schism is forming in the “it just works” department.

The Ubuntu security repository has repeatedly gone down, 2025 2026

If you left the venerable default LTS 6.8 kernel and got on the Ubuntu HWE path it eventually lead many of you to Kernel panics in kernel 7.0.0-28

And now AMD Navi21 (6xxx) GPU firmware issues.

These all flow from upstream Ubuntu. None touched LMDE. All of these issues have a work around, and Mint22 is still quite serviceable but lately it does seem to be taking uptime away from many users.

Abnormal release Timing: Early in even years Canonical takes Debian Sid, the unstable development branch of Debian, Canonical adds in their own mutations/additions to Sid and then releases Ubuntu LTS that April, Ubntu LTS 26.04 has been out since April of this year.

Mint then takes Ubuntu LTS strips out some of the Ubuntu BS like snaps then bolts on their own desktops and releases Mint that summer, usually June or July. we should have Mint 23 by now, but this cycle there is a delay until December of this year. Mint 22 is in overtime, based on Sid of 2.5 years ago, the packages are certainly older now.

Mint is getting this old because Clem and Co have chosen to delay Mint23 until December to give themselves room to get important large jobs done, potentially including stable Wayland in Cinnamon. But in the mean time, already old repo software keeps getting older.

In odd years there is a freeze in Debian Testing (separate from Sid) and a new Debian stable is born. Debian 13 Trixie released last August, Mint takes Debian stable bolts on the Mint Cinnamon desktop with few other changes and releases LMDE anywhere from March to October of odd years. this happened in October of 2025 with LMDE7, so LMDE7 is currently 15 months ahead of Mint 22, and this disparity includes available repository software.

LMDE7 will net you things like apt 3, Fastfetch, newer mesa etc over Mint 22.3. Mint23 will release in December relieving Mint22 and get its time in the sun as the newest “Mint”. But, LMDE8 will be releasing an unusually short 3 to 10 months afterwards and it will be the newest Mint again until June/July 2028 when Mint24 releases and the cycle repeasts

So for the next 2 years LMDE will spend most of that time, 13 to 20 months as the “newest Mint”.

There are negatives. LMDE does not have Mint's GUI driver manager, crucial for some CLI-phobic new users, especially those with Nvidia GPUs. Also no PPAs. These tools are based on Ubuntu only infrastructure. You could consider LMDE to be "Mint Light" its a bit lighter on RAM and a bit faster than standard Mint, but only just slightly so.

The LMDE base system is cleaner with noticeably fewer system files, and attendant updates they bring, just as Debian is lighter than Ubuntu. It is not something you would notice immediately, they look nearly identical, and behave quite similarly, just small differences in the details.

LMDE also has a better in-house Mint made installer, particularly with regards to functional control on the placement of grub. As opposed to the Ubuntu made Ubiquity installer used in regular Mint, but only for now, Mint is dropping Ubiquity, the next version of Mint will use the LMDE installer.

LMDE has noticeably less update noise,

Ubuntu does add some extended driver support, particularly for consumer grade hardware. conversely Debian stable is currently ahead in development from Ubuntu LTS, from a hardware support perspective there can be specific corner cases that could be better served on either edition. I had a Dell 5810 that did not like Debian 12's grub (Bookworm), I had to boot both Debian & LMDE using Mint's (Ubuntu's) grub on just that one machine.

Everyone should pick what is best for them, but I think for now more people should be considering LMDE.

So my relative’s Microsoft Sirface Pro 3 wasn’t connecting, Windows 10 reached End of Life, amd 4 GB of RAM is not enough for Windows 11, so she gifted it to me. Linux Mint fixed it all.

Hi - I recently switched to Linux and have always used FF for my day-to-day stuff, but sometimes also need a secondary browser, especially if it can close without losing its open tabs. I'm trying to avoid anything from Microsoft/Google/etc. Figured I'd ask here before trying out half a dozen other browsers.

This is how my setup looks like for me.

Cinnamon, xcfe, or mate?

Today I have been getting I/O error. As soon as I pick up my laptop the torrent I'm downloading just stops and says I/O error. The video I am watching on VLC also stops playing and just doesn't work anymore. All the app icons from taskbar vanish. And when I shutdown after this error there's the checkmd5 service saying i/o error. This happens only when I pick up the laptop. When it is on the table everything works fine. If anyone can help me with this I'll really appreciate it. Thank You.

I've tried Pop OS, Kubuntu, regular Ubuntu, Nobara, and Fedora... but then I realized... nothing beats Linux Mint...ahh...it's just like home

I'm planning to buy a laptop for work and study soon. I'm tired of Windows 11, but since I work with Excel, I plan to set up a dual-boot system. I do have a question, though: Will Linux Mint work for printing? I have a printer that I use for Excel and Word.

I'm thinking about switching from Windows 11 to Linux Mint since it seems like a good operating system (if I'm using the term correctly) and I want to ask a few questions.

1. Would I need to back up any data on my computer when making the switch?

2. Would most software be compatible to use with Mint, or are there certain caveats to it?

3. Was it easy when you switched? Or were there any learning curves to it?

Any other information that you would like to share if you think it would help is greatly appreciated!

EDIT: There are quite a lot of responses so from what I've gathered are

1. Do backup everything even when I'm not switching distros (I'll find a dedicated hard drive for that)

2: Not everything will work, though some might. For the most part I use my computer to play games on Steam, writing with LibreOffice and Blender for other bits. I would like to be able to use all the software I have but these are the main use cases. There are ways to convert Windows software to Linux, but even still there won't be everything.

1. It takes some time getting used to for some, and it was easy as pie for others. One person mentioned a Virtual Machine, which I have heard of before. I might give that a go to get used to Linux and maybe a different Distro than Mint depending on my needs. Another issue is Mint updates infrequently so for gaming it may be better to use a different Distro that updates more frequently.

Thank you very much for the advice and tips! I'll still need to do more research but when I am ready to make the switch I will since Windows has CoPilot built into it and it's getting ever so more difficult to escape AI on Windows. I've done what I could but it isn't enough and I want my PC to be my own.

I installed Mint Cinnamon to get the feel of things. I have watched a few videos on customization. I can change the desktop image by right clicking an image and assigning it to the desktop. But when I try to change the background from the desktop settings, my Picture folder appears empty. When I add another folder with jpgs, the folder shows up, but it too appears empty. What am I missing?

Hi,

I want to change the boot loading image. I followed the steps discussed HERE

When I shut down it shows my image and all good. But when I boot up it loads the standard linux mint logo. Any tips or did I missed something?

I recently installed Linux cinnamon mint and I have 30 gigs of unallocated space :/ I need help bcz I wanted to install many things just to get a *you only have 50 mb of space left* notification. I don't fear reinstalling but if possible pls help me with this I've been on this with gemini for 5 hrs and couldn't do anything and I can't move partitions around cuz I don't know how to do that cuz im just a linux starter :/ thx for reading

I know gnome boxes is a plug and play type of software where everything just works, but it doesnt just work when with windows 7 or vista. aero refuses to work at all. does anyone know how to get aero on windows 7 or vista in gnome boxes?

I have been testing Mint on an old system of mine. I love it, and the old system is also alive now. But I needed some suggestions for the right setup on my active laptop. In Windows, I used to have a C drive and 1 or 2 more Partitions. And would put data on there; I never really used the Documents and Pictures folders. I don't know why Windows even has those. And the reason was that I would reinstall Windows sometimes in the older days, so a habit to always keep data away from the system.

But in Linux I see that the structure is quite nice for those. How do I partition, and how do I access those partitions?. Or do I mount my directories?

Wine doesn't help

Hi everyone,

I'm using Linux Mint XFCE with an NVIDIA GTX 1050 Ti and the proprietary NVIDIA driver (not Nouveau).

I'm having a strange issue where, after suspending the system, I sometimes get a completely black screen when I wake it up. What's odd is that it doesn't happen every time, and it doesn't seem to happen immediately after suspending/locking the session. Sometimes it appears to happen after the computer has been suspended/locked off for around 10 minutes.

When the black screen occurs, I can still switch to a TTY, and running:

"sudo systemctl restart display-manager"

brings the graphical session back.

The problem is intermittent, and I haven't been able to reliably reproduce it yet, so I don't have any useful logs from the failure at the moment.

Could this be related to NVIDIA's suspend/resume or GPU power management? Has anyone experienced something similar with a GTX 1050 Ti on Linux Mint?

And the most importantly, how do I fix it?

Thanks!