Getting ready to go Mint

[NoahVale]

Greetings all,

I've been using computers since the MS dos days. My how things have changed since then! I have contemplated trying Linux for some time but never took the plunge. I now find myself in a perfect situation to try something new. The hard drive in my laptop completely failed and needs to be replaced. I've decided to go ahead and replace it and install Linux Mint. This will be a clean install, so I hope it will go well. I've researched all the popular Linux distributions, and have decided that Mint Cinnamon Edition may be the best starting point for me. I'm sure I'll be having a lot of question in the future, but for now I'm actively reading “Newbie Questions” of this forum as well as the “Mint User Guide” that I downloaded from the main page. I look forward to trying Mint, and I hope I find it stable and user friendly to someone who is not a professional programmer. My thanks to everybody here for their willingness to share their experience and expertise, and to those working to make Linux better and better.

Noah

[Moem]

Hello and welcome! Most of us here are not programmers; I'm certainly no programmer and neither is my mother. But we both happily use Mint. So don't worry too much, you will probably do fine!

[austin.texas]

Moving to Mint is a great decision!

Hello, NoahVale.
Welcome to Mint and to the forum !


(Original artwork by hexdef101)

1. Getting Started for Newbies - by karlchen
2. A guide on how to post on the Linux Mint forums
3. Linux Linx 2017
4. Ubuntu Help wiki
5. Linux Search Engine
6. SuperGrub2 - a tool everyone should have!

[WharfRat]

Hello NoahVale

Welcome to Linux Mint and the Linux Mint forum

[catweazel]

Welcome aboard!

[jimallyn]

Welcome aboard, NoahVale! I have done some programming, but I really feel like I don't need any programming experience to use Linux. Several of my family members are using Linux, and none of them have any programming experience at all. Not sure how that rumor that you had to be a programmer or geek of some kind to use Linux got started. It's not true now and it wasn't true back in 2002 when I first started using Linux.

[MScott]

Hi NoahVale

I think you and I may be in similar situations, I hope your experimenting is successful and you can make the switch with few hiccups. I think MInt is very user-friendly, and not really any different than moving from one MS OS to another. Mint is pretty intuitive.

If by chance you have secure boot in your BIOS - disable it. Also, Mint seems to be compatible with UEFI but it may be helpful to switch to Legacy Mode or CSM for a simple setup with few roadblocks to an easy install and bootup. Also, just because it throws some people, after installation when asked to remove the install media (usb, dvd), be ready to go into the BIOS and make the change (boot order, device) back to the hard disk rather than your bootable media, save settings and restart.

HTH

Oh, I'm guessing but maybe Noah is using programming and running commands in the terminal interchangeably???

[kc1di]

Welcome to the Linux Mint Forums,
Good to have your here