I think I am over my head in this......

Time4change

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My computer was hacked two weeks ago with 4 trojan horses and 34 hacker malewares.. and so I Decided to go with Linux Mint..and wiped the whole hard drive and installed Linux.. And I can not update anything, keeps giving errors, now I can not figure out the mounting of the USB port, because sudo wants my password and I put it in and it says its wrong. I am so overwhelmed... Does anyone live in Reno Nevada??? I think I am going to throw my computer in the street...any help would be so greatly appreciated!!!
 


No I am 8 time zones ahead of you, nearly bedtime, so tell us quickly what is the make and model of your machine, what windows was it running and which linux you tried to install
 
I have Lenovo ideapad flex 5, and I had crappy windows 11, and I installed linux mint cinnamon
I have attempted mulitple times to update the manager, and it doesnt and it comes back with errors (org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.NoReply: Message recipient disconnected from message bus without replying) all the time trying to just update the manager. And shouldn't there only be one password for my system?
at the command prompt it just keeps saying my password is wrong.. oh and yes I have tried mirrors

and 8 timezones you are across the world then?...
 
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No I am 8 time zones ahead of you, nearly bedtime, so tell us quickly what is the make and model of your machine, what windows was it running and which linux you tried to install
I have Lenovo ideapad flex 5, and I had crappy windows 11, and I installed linux mint cinnamon
I have attempted mulitple times to update the manager, and it doesnt and it comes back with errors (org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.NoReply: Message recipient disconnected from message bus without replying) all the time trying to just update the manager. And shouldn't there only be one password for my system?
at the command prompt it just keeps saying my password is wrong.. oh and yes I have tried mirrors

and 8 timezones you are across the world then?...
 
OK Lenovo are usually good with Linux so...
1 Enter BIOS/UEFI and make sure windows secure boot and windows fast-boot/quick-start are both disabled, then do a full power reboot [not restart]
2, trusting you do not have a corrupt USB then follow my how to install guide [link below] if you think it may be corrupt then use one of the other machines in the house and download from https://mirrors.ocf.berkeley.edu/linux-mint/debian/lmde-6-cinnamon-64bit.iso, re-write the new ISO to the pen-drive and try again'
and 8 timezones you are across the world then?
I am the other side of the pond [that's England to you] I am assuming you're on PST
 
No I am 8 time zones ahead of you, nearly bedtime, so tell us quickly what is the make and model of your machine, what windows was it running and which linux you tried to install
so, I just created the usb of linux mint, but I actually took the computer in to a shop for them to ensure the drive was wiped clean and a good install.. and I just started to read the link you provided and umm maymbe I should do a fresh install all over again but myself vs. someone else. Is there another or should I say faster Linux you recommend?
 
OK Lenovo are usually good with Linux so...
1 Enter BIOS/UEFI and make sure windows secure boot and windows fast-boot/quick-start are both disabled, then do a full power reboot [not restart]
2, trusting you do not have a corrupt USB then follow my how to install guide [link below] if you think it may be corrupt then use one of the other machines in the house and download from https://mirrors.ocf.berkeley.edu/linux-mint/debian/lmde-6-cinnamon-64bit.iso, re-write the new ISO to the pen-drive and try again'

I am the other side of the pond [that's England to you] I am assuming you're on PST
Yup boarder of Nevada and California. I cant thank you enough, I will be working on this tonight! I appriciate you very much! have plesant dreams across the pond..our current weather looks like yours. lol
 
Mint LMDE is a tad faster than Ubuntu based mint22, in the tad faster range also come such as MX linux [business oriented good security level] Parrot home [based on the Parrot sec pentesting distribution [hacking] slightly more secure as long as you do not start chopping and changing the pre-installed apps for others], if speed rather than function if your goal then Linux Lite, Bunsen Labs, &Ani-x are among the many lightweight distributions available
 
Whichever Linux you install , once you are happy enable the inbuilt Firewall and install/run timeshift or one of the other rescue apps
 
And shouldn't there only be one password for my system
Just noticed this bit, no normal we had a sudo [administration] password, and a user password if you don't mind other users having access to the secure inner programming then use the same password for both

its just gone 11 pm my time , I am off to bed [well I am old] I will be back on line between 06-30 and 07-30 my time in the morning [thats about 10-30 to 1-30 pm your time]

Good night
 
There's a LUG in Carson City.
 
Not to worry. There are many here that can help you and we all live in different places. Malware must be run in order to do anything. Sometimes loading a file is enough to get it to run. Linux Mint is quite popular with beginners. I'm currently running Debian. I haven't tried Mint myself. Installing Linux generally involves downloading the installation media and writing it to something you can boot from and booting from it. Then you'll need somewhere to install Linux to, like a hard drive or an SSD. I really doubt some hacker screwed up your USB port. If you're worried about it then you can have someone else write the boot media to a USB flash drive for you and take it home and boot from that. BrickWizard has given you some good advice. Turn off your secure boot and all that before installing. Make sure to boot up from a cold boot rather than a warm boot.

Don't worry though. We're all here to help you. We welcome you to the Linux community.

Signed,

Matthew Campbell
 
...they may even have a member or to who live in Reno.

I should definitely have added what LUG meant. I sometimes don't think that the OP may not understand the jargon. Ah well...

Anyhow, I believe they do have a couple of folks who make the drive from Reno. Carson isn't that far away (by US metrics). It's maybe a 40 minute drive if you're in traffic.

(I've spent some time in the area and once owned a house in Henderson, which is a much longer drive to either of those places.)

But, yes... They will be changing their URL at some point but I'm not sure if they've completely made up their mind. The switch to a new account will take some pokery and jiggery, but we'll make it work.
 
@Time4change welcome to linux.org from DownUnder :)

We can certainly help you from here (we are scattered all around the globe), but also further to the above



LUG - Linux User Group

You can find details at the following

https://www.carsoncitylinux.org/

and

https://www.carsoncitylinux.org/mybb/

...they may even have a member or two who live in Reno.

Cheers

Chris Turner
wizardfromoz
ahhhh thank you all so much! I was just thinking maybe it would be easier if I were to watch someone do the steps. I feel like a lame...lol
 
Not to worry. There are many here that can help you and we all live in different places. Malware must be run in order to do anything. Sometimes loading a file is enough to get it to run. Linux Mint is quite popular with beginners. I'm currently running Debian. I haven't tried Mint myself. Installing Linux generally involves downloading the installation media and writing it to something you can boot from and booting from it. Then you'll need somewhere to install Linux to, like a hard drive or an SSD. I really doubt some hacker screwed up your USB port. If you're worried about it then you can have someone else write the boot media to a USB flash drive for you and take it home and boot from that. BrickWizard has given you some good advice. Turn off your secure boot and all that before installing. Make sure to boot up from a cold boot rather than a warm boot.

Don't worry though. We're all here to help you. We welcome you to the Linux community.

Signed,

Matthew Campbell
Thank you very much, it was installed fine, but I am just not able to update anything. And I was going to load windows on the flash drive, thus why i was needing the to locate the USB drive. My apologize for not being clear earlier. My mind is absolutely frazzled from all of this. I lost so many files, pictures and documents. And this system just seems really slow. And I cant do screen shot anymore or use my touch screen is that normal? I am sorry... I will probably have a million questions that I just can not seem to find in any of the forums. Ugggg Kim
 
Thank you very much, it was installed fine, but I am just not able to update anything. And I was going to load windows on the flash drive, thus why i was needing the to locate the USB drive. My apologize for not being clear earlier. My mind is absolutely frazzled from all of this. I lost so many files, pictures and documents. And this system just seems really slow. And I cant do screen shot anymore or use my touch screen is that normal? I am sorry... I will probably have a million questions that I just can not seem to find in any of the forums. Ugggg Kim
Flash drives can be really slow compared to a hard drive. How much physical RAM do you have in your computer? As for finding answers, that's why this platform has a lot of knowledgeable people. You are in the right place. You said you are using Linux Mint which is based on Ubuntu which in turn in based on Debian so apt should be your package manager. apt is a front end (user program) for apt-get. Try which man to see if you already have the man command. man means manual or help pages. Try apt install manpages if you don't have a man command. It might be manpages-dev instead. Then use man apt to read more about your package manager. Make sure your file system is mounted read/write instead of read-only. Use df to find out where your file systems are mounted and mount to see what mount parameters are being used for each of them. You can shorten that list from mount by using mount | grep ext4 if all of your file systems use ext4. Modern Linux file systems will.

When I use mount to look for my root file system I get this:

/dev/sdb1 on / type ext4 (rw,noatime,nodiratime,quota,usrquota,grpquota)

Your results may vary. Note that it says rw instead of ro. It must be mounted read/write to change anything, like installing and updating packages. Then use apt update first to update your system's list of what's available. Then you can use apt install or apt upgrade. /etc/apt/sources.list and the directories under /etc/apt will tell your system where to look for packages. These are text files that you can modify with a text editor like emacs, joe, micro, nano, pico, tilde, or vi.

The which command will tell you where a command is located. So which man tells the system to tell you where the man command is located. Both of these commands should be in /usr/bin/ . System management programs should be in /usr/sbin/ .

Signed,

Matthew Campbell
 
I'd recommend booting back into the live environment, wiping the drive you installed linux to, and redoing the install (as it sounds like ti went wrong somewhere).

the touchscreen may have gotten borked during a faulty install (reference https://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?t=161285)
I think a lot more than my computer is going wrong.. lol Ok, so moments before I wanted to throw the laptop in the street.. (didn't because it is raining and windy) hahahaha.. I reinstalled it from the boot menu.. then... when it came on the screen it said download mint. I tried, and then a huge report came up and said error all files are on a freeze. So, I tried to reboot again same thing. I borrowed my neigbors computer and downloaded win 10 and tool on my usb. and rebooted the computer.... just for it to go right back to linux. and I think just maybe.. crossing my toes... that it might finally be updating. uggggggggggggggg. I am just about done with technology.. cause ya know AI will be doing everything now anyway...
 
and this is what I keep getting, even if I use mirrors to a local host......... someone!!!!!!! please help me format the drive and install Debian or Fedora? PLEASE
 

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