I heard Mint is supposed to be the simplest distro to get started with but my experience so far (following the setup guide on the website) has been:
- Download ISO
- Check ISO (seemed fine)
- Burn image… crash
- Burn image in administrator mode
- Boot from USB via BIOS… crash
- Boot from USB via Bios in safe mode
- Download multimedia codecs… crash
- Not download multimedia codecs… also crash?
And that’s where I am presently, it runs fine off the USB albeit a bit slow, and I know its connected to the internet because I can browse lemmy on it and make annoying posts on the Linux community. I knew Linux was going to be more work than windows but this feels like a ridiculous level of effort right out of the gate, I worry that even if I somehow get it running I’ll spend 10x more time fixing it than actually using it.
Sure, but it’s a serious issue which is worth mentioning. Lots of Linux fanboys conveniently sidestep the whole “having the most popular GPU on the market will wreck your install” issue.
It’s absolutely something worth mentioning when you’re pushing someone to try Linux, because the “it’s so easy nowadays” rhetoric does nothing to help when it doesn’t turn out to be easy. If you’re genuinely trying to get people to use Linux as a daily driver, it’s worth warning them about some of the common pitfalls so they can go in with realistic expectations.
If they go in all starry-eyed and discover it’s not easy, they’re less likely to try it again in the future. After all, they were lied to the last time someone told them it was easy. Why would this time be any different?
I’m probably still gonna try it later, managed to re-format the laptop back to windows and get it working again… still no issues outside linux related things but I’m open to the possibility that it might just be bad luck with hardware.