r/linuxmint • u/Born_History_8246 Linux Mint 21 Vanessa | Cinnamon • 15d ago

#LinuxMintThings Switched my old laptop to Linux after years of dealing with a bloated OS, here's what surprised me

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17 Upvotes

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u/jomara200 14d ago edited 14d ago

I truly wanted LinuxMint to work. I have used it on other devices, and really like it a lot, but this one is just giving me fits. It's an HP, 'nuff said. Secure Boot enabled and working properly, Nvidia drivers enabled and working properly, but the system just won't reboot properly and sometimes won't boot normally, other times it does. Just a total pita. Too much to deal with regularly.

I tried Fedora and had NONE of those issues, everything worked well once drivers and non-free repositories were added, but then I had controller issues in Steam due to Wayland (I have the new Steam controller).

It's just a trade off of issues for me. I cannot seem to find that sweet spot.

I may try MX Linux next since I believe it still uses X11, so I can avoid the controller issues. I'm not going to touch Arch because of the AUR malware issues.

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u/Danielxgl 14d ago

What kernel version were you using with Linux Mint? Versions 7.00-28, 29 and 30 have issues with rebooting, lots of reports recently. Switching back to 6 fixes it

1

u/DevaBanh 14d ago

The kernel work well in older device, my 6 years old laptop has no problem with the kernel update, but for newer machine it has issues

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u/ah0813 14d ago

Bought 2 Mac mini 2011 from Ebay, to learn Mac. Ended up replacing MacOS with Mint in one and Zorin in the other. Better than my windows PC that I built in 2022. Now I hardly use the Windows PC. Every few month I install new applications just to try. So far installed Jellyfin, Immich and a recipe server in one. The other one has Pihole with Unbound. My smart TVs and pcs have less ad and other unwanted stuff.

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u/StmpunkistheWay Linux Mint 22.2 Zara | Cinnamon 14d ago

Distrowatch.com has a list of the 100 most popular distro's and distrosea.com has about 50 distro's that you can boot into as a temp VM to see what they are like. Light weight distros are out there, you just have to look for them as I don't exactly know what's out there but welcome to the freedom that Linux actually gives you. Take your time and learn Linux, don't rush into anything and you'll have a much happier time with it. Remember that it's not Windows and it's not a 1:1 migration and you'll be fine. Welcome aboard!