I tried doing what the screen had recommended, and entered "fsck /dev/sda6". It started finding a lot of problems, necessitating me hitting 'y' many times until it finished fixing things.
Hi Hans and all, and a quick welcome to newcomer Robert (
@StarBaseONE2) who has recently joined us here.
Following the instructions the error report gave you was a good idea... really. But the instructions don't really give you enough info as I had tried to give you (albeit somewhat after the fact, I guess). Using the
-y option,
fsck -y /dev/sda6, would have automatically answered "yes" to all the errors it found... that was the point in telling you that... to save you some trouble with possibly a lot of interactions required. The other thing I cautioned was against running it if the partition was mounted which you may or may not have done. But hopefully you will file these things away in your new Linux knowledge-base... this is how we all learn best: by doing.
You aren't wasting our time, by any means. We enjoy helping you and everyone who needs it. But time is a precious commodity and we all live and work by different schedules and on different timetables. So we just have to muddle along as best as we can to meet here, make comments or suggestions, and then get feedback and make corrections.
Starting over with a thoughtful structured goal will really help you this time around, I think. Dual-booting, as you have found, is somewhat more complicated. It would be much easier to dedicate a computer to Linux only. And there are sometimes issues with hardware compatibility with Linux, which is something we should definitely try to consider as you move forward again. When you ask if Mint is a good choice, or should you choose another, goes along with thinking about those hardware issues.
Right now, I am concerned that you are not cleanly booting on your Mint USB, and I wonder if this did not occur earlier (so that you were able to install Mint). The "blinking cursor on a black screen" usually indicates some issue with the video adapter. I have used Mint for many years, and I find it to be one of the best and easiest, so I often recommend it.... but on the other hand, maybe another distro would be better for you. Or another version of Mint (Mate versus Cinnamon, for example).
A fairly good method of determining hardware compatibility is to run a "live distro" as you have done already with Mint, I think, before you installed it. You can run "live" with USB or DVD (if you have a DVD-ROM). Now is the time for you to look around a little, if you are so inclined, to try out some options and see what looks and feels best for you, and what seems to work best with your hardware.
But because you are really at a "start over" state... I would suggest that before you install MacOS again, that you do some full Linux installs to your computer. It takes you through the setup of different distros (try 2 or 3, at least, if you can) and will give you the fuller experience of how each can be expected to perform. You could then try to bring in some small collections of music/video/photos to see if you can determine what the permissions issues were... if they come back. Sure, even create a separate partition to hold them, as you indicated. If you do continue to have permission problems, try to let us know what is going on, with as many details as you can. Permissions should not be causing you all the grief that it seemed to be earlier. Avoid using root (or sudo) if you can.... but of course it is necessary sometimes too.
OK, let me finish up for now. The last thing is about the "Data partition" that you want to create. That's a fine idea, but it alone will not cure the permissions issues. The first thing that comes to mind for me is that I expect you also want your MacOS to access this data. So when you create this partition, you need to format it with a filesystem that both Mac and Linux can work with.... strangely enough, I'd probably recommend NTFS (the Windows filesystem). ExFAT will also work, or FAT32 (if no single file will be over 4GB). Linux will readily work with NTFS, and I think Mac will, or it may need you to give it a nudge somehow (remember, I don't know Mac at all). If you want exFAT, I think Linux will need a nudge to work, but FAT32 will work, I think, for both OS'es as long as the file size limits will not hurt you.
Now is also a good time to read all you can (and us too) about using Mac and Linux together. This is new for me, for sure, though I have a fair amount of experience dual-booting with Windows. But in the end, it is your computer and you will have to do the work to set up and maintain the two systems to keep them working in harmony. The Mac part may be a breeze for you, but doing the trial installations with Linux would, I hope, help you to get a better grasp on Linux too before you put the two together.
Cheers
