Installing Mint 22.1 Linux to your computer.

dos2unix

Well-Known Member
Joined
May 3, 2019
Messages
3,525
Reaction score
3,285
Credits
31,524
This will be the first of a series, that covers multiple distros. Why did I pick Mint first?
No particular reason, it's a good, popular, well rounded distro. I will not make any attempt to grade these installs, I am just showing you how to do it. This tutorial assumes you already have MInt 22.1 USB created, and that you have a blank formatted disk in your computer. I will not be covering how to do dual boot, or any advanced things like that. This is just the basics. Maybe I will do the advanced stuff later.

Put lets put your USB drive in your computer, and boot up. This is the tricky part. Different computers do things differently.
If there is no bootable OS on your hard drive, your computer will most likely biit from the USB thumb drive. If it doesn't, you might see something similar to this.

Screenshot_202501.png

Except yours will say "UEFI USB Device" or something similar. This is called your boot menu. Yours most likely won't look exactly like this one, but it will be similar. Just use your up and down arrow keys to select the USB drive and press enter.




Screenshot_20250209_045408.png

If all goes according to plan, you should see something similar to this. This is called a grub boot menu. Usually this just stays up for a few seconds. As soon as you see it, you can use your up and down arrow keys to interrupt it. For now, we will just use the first option at the top. Go ahead and press enter.

Screenshot_20250209_045516.png
Eventually, you should see something like this. Congratulations, you are officially booted into Linux. You can try different things at this point and make sure the internet works, and your sound works. Or, we can just double click on the "Install Linux Mint" CD Rom picture at the top of your screen. This will install Mint Linux to your hard drive.

Screenshot_20250209_045609.png

This will be your first installation screen. Basically, you are just picking the language you want to use. But the next screen will let you give more details about your language. Once you've selected what you want, just click on "Continue" at the bottom.


Screenshot_20250209_045640.png

Now you can give more specific detals about your language. You can use your mouse to select your language, and which dialect of that language you want to use. If you live n the US, you can just use the defaults here. Once you've selected what you want, just click on "Continue".

Screenshot_20250209_045736.png

Now it will ask you if you want to use multimedia codecs. If you don't know what these are, go ahead and click "Install multimedia codecs". It will then ask you to enter a password. This isn't your login password. But you can use whatever your login password will be. This is the only distro I know of that requires this. I'm not sure why it does this.
Screenshot_20250209_045809.png

Now of this particular computer, I only have one hard drive. I don't see an option to select which hard I want to use if I have multiple hard drives. But in this case I want to use the top option. I want to erase my entire hard drive and install Linux. I will assume that's what you want to do. If you don't want to erase your hard drive, stop now. Remove your USB drive and reboot. Otherwise click on "Install now".
Screenshot_20250209_045835.png

It will tell you what it's going to do, for now we will just go with the defaults.

Screenshot_20250209_045922.png

It will then ask you what time zone you are in. Usually it will detect this automatically, but if it doesn't, just click on the correct time zone and select "Continue".

Screenshot_20250209_050031.png

Now we have to type in a few things. You need to put a user name in here. My name is Ray, so I just used ray, but it can be anything you want for the most part. No spaces. You can also name your computer anything you want. Again, no spaces. Finally you'll need to enter a password. You'll have to enter it twice. This is to make sure you didn't make a mistake the first time. Make sure this is a password you can remember. Write is down if you have to. But you absolutely need to remember this password. Otherwise you won't be able to use your computer after the install. Once that is done click on "Continue".

Screenshot_20250209_050057.png

Next, you should see this screen. The important part is the blue line at the bottom of the screen. Right now your computer is gathering up all the files it needs to install Mint Linux to your computer. While this is happening, there is a little slide show we can watch.

Screenshot_20250209_050206.png

..and the blue bar continues to grow across the screen. This can take several minutes, dpending on how fast your computer is.

Screenshot_20250209_050346.png

Now we get another screen, with another blue bar to watch. Do not click on "Skip" here. Wait until the blue line goes completely across the screen.

Screenshot_20250209_050633.png

Now it's finished installing to your hard drive. Go ahead and click on "Restart now". Once the screen goes black, you can pull your USB drive out. The computer should boot from your hard drive now.

Screenshot_20250209_050749.png

Another thing about Mint, that is a little different from most distro's, is something called a MOK. (Machine Owner Key).
If you don't know what this is, for now just use your your up and down keys and select "Continue boot".

Screenshot_20250209_050828.png

Now you should see this screen. Congratulations, you have successfully installed Linux. Go ahead and type in the password I told you not to forget. Once again.. Remember this passord! Don't forget it tomorrow. Press enter to login.

Screenshot_20250209_050859.png

Now you will see a screen like this. You can go through the tutorial on your screen if you like. I would recommend going through it if you haven't used Linux before.

Screenshot_20250209_051013.png

Once you are done with the tutorial, you can click on the little circular "LM" logo at the bottom let corner of your screen. This is where all your programs are. You're done! Happy Linux'ing! (Is Linux'ing a word?)
 
Last edited:


No mention of bios-- disable secure boot and fast boot ?
 
As far as I know...

secure boot

That works just fine with Mint. (I'm using it just fine. It Just Worked™ out of the box. It did prompt me to enroll a key when I rebooted after installing VirtualBox.

fast boot

Only a 'thing' if you're co-existing with Windows in a dual boot situation.

That's as far as I know but I could be mistaken.
 
We will advise disabling Secure Boot in most cases simply because it heads off the possibility of :
....and also secure boot can be a trouble maker in the process.

No secure boot...one less possible source of a non booting pc


quote: Piotr, post #2
Disabling Secure Boot is always a good idea. It's a known troublemaker and provides no meaningful real-life security. It's primarily a means for Microsoft to enforce its vendor lock-in. Note that you might need to set an administrator password in the BIOS before you can disable Secure Boot.
 
We will advise disabling Secure Boot in most cases simply because it heads off the possibility of

Yeah, I forget which sections but that dude has some questionable stuff on his site, like things to do after installing or whatnot.

quote: Piotr, post #2

That's just one comment among many others.

I mean, you can disable it if you want. You can disable it if you find it causes problems. You can do that. I'd not suggest doing so, unless it causes problems. There are comments at your citation that explain why.

I'd only disable it if you find it causes issues. In my experience (which may not match your experience) it has been painless for a while now. I don't have much experience with older versions of Mint. I think the first version I really used was 19. In other distros, I've used secure boot since it first became available for Linux users. I do not know when Mint first supported it, though it seems likely/logical that it'd have been around the time that Ubuntu supported it. (With Ubuntu, it has been available since 12.04 or something like that.)
 
If you read sufficient posts right here on Linux org, you will note that @Brickwizard wizard almost invariably promotes disabling Secure Boot and Fast boot.
 
If you read sufficient posts right here on Linux org, you will note that @Brickwizard wizard almost invariably promotes disabling Secure Boot and Fast boot.

Indeed and I have no idea why. I think it's probably some misconceptions that stem from when it was not an option with Linux or maybe the earlier days where it took some effort to make it work. These days, it just works. It has been 'just working' for quite a number of years now.

I don't bother to comment about it normally but this is a thread that's a tutorial on installing Mint. So, I figured I'd add my comment. Secure boot is a way to ensure that the stuff that loads is the stuff that you put there. It's a way to be very, very certain that you've not been compromised at the lowest levels. (It is not perfect, but it's very good.)

That's all it is. Your OS has a signature. This verifies that signature. If it doesn't match, it throws up a warning before the OS loads. If you see that warning, it's time to do some checking to see where you were compromised. That's the time where you start looking for rootkits and wonder who has had physical access to your computer.

But, I normally just shake my head and move on. I don't have time or motivation to go around repeating this conversation. This being a tutorial thread, I figured it's worth the effort.
 
Indeed and I have no idea why.
Some distros still do not accept secure boot, There is enough documentation on the web pertaining to problems cause by both secure boot and quick-start, For a newbie by disabling both it's one possible problem out of the way, personal choice I suppose, but whatever if you are multi-booting with windows quick start has to go IMO
 
but whatever if you are multi-booting with windows quick start has to go IMO

Absolutely. (That was mentioned way up there.)

personal choice

I'd only suggest that they disable secure boot if the distro doesn't support it or AFTER it is a problem.

Security is a good thing. In this case, Mint has supported secure boot for like a half-decade at this point.

There is one time when I'd suggest not using secure boot. If they absolutely insist on using an unsupported version of Mint, then the signature may be an invalid match. That'd maybe mess things up. But, they shouldn't be installing out of date versions of Mint. If they absolutely insist on it, it might actually be better that they have issues that urge them to install a supported version.
 
No mention of bios-- disable secure boot and fast boot ?

I did not disable either for this install. Mint seems to support TPM2, secure boot and fast boot all three from my experience.
I know this is a sore spot for some. But they rarely cause any problems on newer distros and I recommend you leave them turned on if your distro supports them.

The only different the legacy BIOS would have made, was in the BIOS screen it would not say UEFI device, other than that, all the other instructions still work for legacy BIOS. I do not have many computers that still support legacy BIOS.
But it's a fair point that many only support Legacy BIOS.

I tried to view this from a "used to have Windows installed" perspective. Usually, windows requires those things. So I wanted to keep this install as plain vanilla as possible, without changing any settings that I don't have to. I probably have a reverse point of view of many people here. My thinking is that EFI/secure boot/TPM is the default now. Windows and most Linux distro's support those now. So just leave them in the "default" mode. Don't disable them. That's just more unnecessary changes that most people won't need to do. I think some people have the idea that Lagacy BIOS, no secure boot and no TPM is the default now, but I disagree. Still some distro's do require you to turn them off. But it wasn't the case for Mint.

I am trying to keep this as simple as possible. Maybe more advanced stuff in the future.
 
I have noted over time that where third party drivers are included in the mix, secure boot causes problems
and a great number of older machines have compatibility problems with secure boot

So, my general advice is to disable it, bearing in mind that the vast majority of people wishing to install are doing so on older hardware.
 
the vast majority of people wishing to install are doing so on older hardware

I guess my question is... how old is old?
EFI has been around since the late 90's.
Every computer I have seen built since 2006 supports it. (2006 was 19 years ago, believe it or not).
TPM is a problem, it's been around since 2003, but wasn't widely implemented until about 2015.
But even 2015 is 10 years ago now. So, I would say if your computer is less than 10 year old. Leave it all turned on.
If your computer was made before that late 90's, it most likely a Legacy BIOS system only and you don't have worry about turning any of those things off, because it's not available on your computer, So that leaves, the computer made between 1998 and 2005. Those seven years are the ones you may have to disable some of it. But even on these, my opinion is... if your computer supports EFI, use it!! (although you still may have to disable secure boot, fast boot, and TPM) :)
 
Last edited:
But even on these, my opinion is... if your computer supports EFI, use it!!

Yup. If it's a problem THEN turn it off.

Turning it off by default seems to me to be like leaving your front door unlocked because you might forget the keys.

Though, to be fair, my doors are all pretty much always unlocked. But, that's a whole other subject (and, smile 'cause you're on camera).
 
If the Mint team say...Disable Secure Boot because it could cause problems...that's what you do.
1739138317577.gif


1739138434728.png


I know the Mint team know more about it than people on Forums. As for security...my 13 year old Laptop Legacy/BIOS never had Secure Boot and I've never had any Boot problems ever.

My Tower had a new Motherboard put in about 18 mths ago and has UEFI and secure boot which is disabled as shown above.

I noticed that Mint now has...Configure Secure Boot...this must be something new as Mint Cinnamon 21.1 that I'm running doesn't have this but I would leave this blank as I always disable it.
1739139310157.gif
 
I know the Mint team know more about it than people on Forums. As for security...my 13 year old Laptop Legacy/BIOS never had Secure Boot and I've never had any Boot problems ever.

To each their own. There are distros I refuse to run because they do not support EFI. The exceptions are, if I run a VM I will sometimes run those in BIOS mode. I'm currently testing a new Arch distro that doesn't currently support EFI, so I have no choice.

As far as the vendor being the experts, I have opinions about that also. I can't speak for Mint, I'm sure there are plenty of smart people working there. But I can tell you this, there are at least 4 different distro's we have paid literally Millions ( with 6 zeros') for support, sometimes the support helps, sometimes it doesn't. In fact, there have been times they didn't know how to make it work and we figured it out on our own. They literally called us and asked how we made it work. Hmmm... I wonder if they'll pay us for the support? :)
 
The official Linux Mint instructions, as linked from their download page on linuxmint.com tell you to disable secure boot IF there's a problem.

Citation:


Quote:

If after installing Linux Mint in EFI mode, you are unable to boot due to a <span>Secure</span> <span>Boot</span> <span>Violation</span>, you can try one of the following solutions:

Emphasis is mine.

I'm pretty much done here. I'm not a big fan of flogging dead horses.
 
It's always better to avoid problems than create them.
1739141471489.gif
 
Q. Is it necessary to disable secure boot when installing Linux mint

ChatGPT said:​


Disabling Secure Boot is not strictly necessary to install Linux Mint, but it can simplify the process in certain cases. Here's why:


When Secure Boot is Enabled:​


  • Secure Boot is a security feature designed to ensure that only signed, trusted software can run during the boot process. It works to protect against malware and unauthorized OS modifications.
  • Many Linux distributions, including Linux Mint, support Secure Boot, but the kernel or bootloader may not always be signed in a way that is compatible with Secure Boot.
  • In some cases, Secure Boot might cause issues with installing or booting Linux Mint, particularly if you are using a machine that comes with Windows pre-installed, as Windows typically uses a signed bootloader that works with Secure Boot.

When to Disable Secure Boot:​


  • If you're facing problems during installation, such as the system failing to boot after installing Linux Mint, or if you're using certain proprietary drivers (like Nvidia drivers) that might not be signed with a key trusted by Secure Boot, disabling Secure Boot can resolve these issues.
  • If you want to avoid dealing with Secure Boot-related complications during installation, it’s easier to disable it temporarily in the BIOS/UEFI settings.

When Secure Boot Works Fine:​


  • Modern Linux distributions like Linux Mint often come with support for Secure Boot, meaning you can leave it enabled and still install and use Linux without problems. If your system is compatible, you can run Linux Mint securely with Secure Boot enabled.

Conclusion:​


If you don't experience any issues with Secure Boot during the installation or post-installation process, you can leave it enabled. If you run into problems, disabling Secure Boot might be an easy way to bypass the issue.

AskAI


Understanding Secure Boot


Secure Boot is a security feature found in modern UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) firmware that helps ensure that a device boots using only software that is trusted by the manufacturer. When enabled, Secure Boot checks the digital signatures of boot loaders and operating systems before allowing them to run. This can prevent unauthorized or malicious software from loading during the boot process.


Linux Mint and Secure Boot Compatibility


Linux Mint, like many other Linux distributions, has made strides in ensuring compatibility with Secure Boot. The installation media for Linux Mint includes signed boot loaders that are recognized by UEFI firmware with Secure Boot enabled. This means that, in many cases, you can install and run Linux Mint without needing to disable Secure Boot.


When Disabling Secure Boot May Be Necessary


While it is possible to install Linux Mint with Secure Boot enabled, there are scenarios where disabling it might be necessary:


  1. Third-Party Drivers: If you plan to use proprietary drivers (such as NVIDIA graphics drivers), some of these may not be signed or compatible with Secure Boot. In such cases, you might need to disable Secure Boot to allow the installation of these drivers.
  2. Custom Kernels or Modules: If you intend to compile your own kernel or use custom kernel modules that are not signed, you will also need to disable Secure Boot.
  3. Older Hardware: Some older hardware may have compatibility issues with Secure Boot when trying to install newer versions of Linux distributions.
  4. User Preference: Some users prefer to disable Secure Boot for ease of use and flexibility in managing their system’s software.

Conclusion: Is Disabling Secure Boot Necessary?


In summary, while it is generally not necessary to disable Secure Boot when installing Linux Mint due to its compatibility with this feature, there are specific situations where doing so may be required or preferred based on individual needs and hardware configurations. Therefore, the answer is:


Disabling secure boot is not necessary when installing Linux Mint unless you require specific third-party drivers or custom kernels that are not signed.


Top 3 Authoritative Sources Used in Answering this Question:


1. Ubuntu Documentation


  • This source provides comprehensive information about UEFI and Secure Boot as it relates to Ubuntu-based distributions like Linux Mint, detailing how they handle these features during installation.

2. Linux Mint Official Website


  • The official website offers guidance on installation procedures for Linux Mint, including sections on hardware compatibility and recommendations regarding UEFI and Secure Boot settings.

3. Arch Wiki


  • The Arch Wiki contains detailed articles on various aspects of Linux installations, including explanations about UEFI and Secure Boot which apply broadly across different distributions including Linux Mint.

So the various sources all appear to contain " detailed articles on various aspects of Linux installations, including explanations about UEFI and Secure Boot which apply broadly across different distributions including Linux Mint......
There is good reason why there are such explanations

Being one of the people who gives instructions/advice on installing Linux Mint, I find it more sensible to reduce the chances of a failed install.....That means Disabling Secure Boot and Fast Boot

In general, new people to Linux wish for a smooth transition, especially in the Install process. If they encounter dramas in that process, they are likely to throw their hands in the air and return to windows.
The helpers here do all they can to avoid such situations occurring.
 
The very last thing I wanted to do was to derail any further, Ray's well-written tutorial, but I find myself unable to not contribute - and running 60 to 90 Linux distros at a time on my rig, I am arguably in the best position to provide comments on Secure Boot.

Some of you will like what I have to say, some will not, and some may genuinely find it of interest, and find it to be informative.

I do not have the time to elaborate more on this now as I have my evening meal to prepare, but I will leave you with two articles to consider for now, and elaborate more on the subject on my tomorrow.

https://www.techtarget.com/searchwindowsserver/definition/Linux-Secure-Boot

and this second one requires you to scroll down to the text

https://github.com/rhboot/shim

Good night, and please be civil in the meantime.

Cheers

Wizard
 
Last edited:


Members online


Top