I have a brand new Dell w/Windows 11 that I haven’t even plugged in yet. I’m going to wipe Windows and install Mint first thing. My question is, is there any downside or reason I should not do this the very first time of turning on the computer? I am literally planning on using the USB stick for Mint first thing. Would there be any reason I’d need to turn it on and let Windows boot up first before wiping it? Thanks in advance for any answers or suggestions.
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In my personal opinion, there’s absolutely no reason to boot Windows. You can verify the hardware compatibility with the “LivCD” before install or with some searching by the model.
I haven’t booted Windows on anything in more then a decade and that one time was for someone elses PC repair, they’ve since been running Linux.
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That’s great - just what I was looking for. Thanks for the reply - have a great long weekend!
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The only thing that comes to mind is to turn off secure boot in BIOS. Otherwise, have fun!
Oh, and one other thing. If you think you might be using a VM at some point, also enable Virtual Machines in BIOS.
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That’s a great point - thanks much for the info - I haven’t done it yet, so I’m glad I procrastinated.
very inspiring, no wonder you know so much, I am still dual booting, mostly because I find Terminal a bit daunting, still happy with Ubuntu, though ready to test drive other distros that are not Terminal dependent
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A “new” favorite is to jump over to distrotest.net and test drive it through VNC with your browser with no install. Though there are limitations vs a LiveCD as in hardware test, connection speed, time limit, etc. You can at least get a feel for the general setup. It’s how I found DebianEdu and am about to replace Ubuntu on wife and 2 home school daughters laptops.
Am currently customizing my new new install of Debian Bullseye after removing Ubuntu Mate.
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So…I’ve installed Mint over Windows and it won’t allow me to use wifi. However, it’s connecting remotely to my Canon printer. Going to hook up to ethernet and see if that works.
@Heather let us know how it goes. it seems as if most distros have a problem with at least one of the WiFi adapter manufacturers. I watch people get it solved in here all the time - usually pretty quickly as well. Are you using Mint w/ Cinnamon?? I have just installed Debian 11 server w/ KDE Plasma Desktop for the NextCloud LMS and I absolutely love the way it looks and feels. I may try LMDE5 next. Cheers!!
Thanks for the encouragement - I’m sure this will be resolved soon. I have another thread going in the forum that is getting a few replies as well.
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Hey, @Heather!
The Mint 20 runs on Kernel 5.4, which is quite old and can lack quite a few drivers/modules.
Meanwhile, I just saw that Mint 21 is out, so you might want to install that one, since it has support for a lot more hardware.
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Thank you, Vasileios!!!
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