Finally found a laptop I cannot install Mint on.

[MurphCID]

I borked the wife's old Ryzen 5700u HP laptop with a failed WIndows 11 update, so I decided to install Mint on it. It shows it is installing, everything is great, and then on the reboot, it just hangs, and never loads Mint. The Mint logo splash screen shows, but it never loads. So I tried other Linux distros, and they install and run just fine. POP!_OS, yep it works. Fedora, yep, MX Linux (my bane) runs great. So the laptop has MX AHS xfce on it, and it runs just perfectly. I did everything I could think to do, EFI, Secure Boot, TPM, etc. Nothing worked trying to install Mint 21.3. I know the flash drive was good since I had just used it on the Thelio to re-install 21.3 when we moved to the new house. I am flummoxed. I have never before found a laptop that I could not install Mint. If it will take MX, etc why not Mint? How odd.

[SMG]

I borked the wife's old Ryzen 5700u HP laptop with a failed WIndows 11 update, so I decided to install Mint on it. It shows it is installing, everything is great, and then on the reboot, it just hangs, and never loads Mint.

There are many versions of Linux Mint currently available. You have not said what you tried installing.

Are you interested in getting it to work? If so, I will move it to the appropriate support forum.

[MurphCID]

My old standby 21.3 Cinnamon. No thanks, I will stay on MX until Mint 22 comes out and then try again. It was just odd this the ONLY laptop I have not been able to install Mint on for whatever reason.

[trike lady]

I usually prepare a new hard drive with LM on a laptop that is used just for this purpose and once tested it goes to its new home. The recent install of LM21.3 was prepared on a Dell E6510 and then the hard drive was installed in a Dell E6440 where it works fine. I had a bad experience with a reconditioned HP laptop and for some reason it didn't like the wireless card and that hard drive is working fine in the Dell E6530. As long as you got it to work is all that matters.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

I usually prepare a new hard drive with LM on a laptop that is used just for this purpose and once tested it goes to its new home...

I do the same thing, only I use SSDs (I stopped using HDDs years ago). I pull the original drive(s) from a new (or new to me) computer and install a new SSD and install Mint. That way, if something goes horribly wrong, I can always replace the original drive(s). If there are going to be any additional drives besides the one Mint is installed, I wait until after Mint is installed before installing (or reinstalling) the additional drive(s).

[bin]

Very puzzling.

Did you try LMDE6?

Are you booting MX in init or systemd mode?

[MurphCID]

Very puzzling.

Did you try LMDE6?

Are you booting MX in init or systemd mode?

Booting init just as per MX. LMDE6 does not load either for some reason.

[MurphCID]

I decided to take that laptop and install Fedora Cinnamon on it and gave it to my daughter's boyfriend as a gift since he is learning Linux at his university. He was impressed and loves the Cinnamon desktop. So another satisfied Linux user, one laptop at a time.

[SenorFrijole]

I have one of those, lol. I bought a cheap Acer Aspire laptop specifically to put Mint on it. It installed, and would run just fine... about 50% of the time. Other 50% I'd get a kernel panic. Tried Ubuntu, Arch and a couple others, every single one of them had the same issue. Even tried different kernels. Wireless adapter just didn't want to play nice with the kernel, I guess.

[MurphCID]

Fedora is running like a champ, and no issues, so I just wonder what specific thing prevented Mint from working on that HP? As I said, I have never had that issue with bog standard Mint Cinnamon. The daughters BF really likes it, so that is a good thing.

[Petermint]

Every computer I tested with multiple distributions had at least one popular distribution fail. I used to keep MX and others on USB sticks ready for those cases but the "always works" distributions failed on new hardware, the same as every other distribution.

What stands out with LM is the better support in forums. There are few "magic solution" Linux distributions with any useable support forums for the times when the magic fades.

Some of the other forums have the approach "If you cannot fix the problem without asking questions, you are not advanced enough to ask questions".

[MurphCID]

I think you are correct, this was the ONLY system I could never install regular Mint on. I have had the LMDE failures, the MX linux failures, and the Fedora issues with other laptops. but never with regular Mint Cinnamon. So you are probably on to something. On the up side the daughters BF really likes the laptop with Fedora. And Fedora Cinnamon looks good, really good.

[vimes666]

Next time you could try to install it on a new disk on another pc. Then after install move the disk to the other computer.

[MurphCID]

I could, but I hate taking those things apart. But, as I said above, Fedora 39 works just great, so we shall see how much the daughters BF likes the laptop.

Another question: Is there any good software out there to control 3-d printers in Linux? I ask because he does a LOT of 3D printing.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

I could, but I hate taking those things apart. But, as I said above, Fedora 39 works just great, so we shall see how much the daughters BF likes the laptop.

Another question: Is there any good software out there to control 3-d printers in Linux? I ask because he does a LOT of 3D printing.

From what I've seen of 3D printers in videos, many, if not most or all, use files of certain file-types from 3D CAD programs that are delivered via a USB stick or USB connected drive rather than being controlled directly by a computer (the same for CNC machines). There are 3D CAD programs that are compatible with Linux, such as the FreeCAD I have installed but haven't gotten around to learning yet (possibly due to my classical mechanical drawing training I had over half a century ago in High School and College, I never could wrap my mind around Sketchup, which is supposed to be one of the easiest to learn and use, back when I was in Win 7 so I've been "hesitant" ).

If your daughter's BF does need Windows to run his printer (or the 3D CAD program he uses) you could dual boot the laptop or set up Windows in a VM. Be aware you might become his IT guy from now on.