I am currently up late doing anything but sleeping. Later, during the day, I will have officially taken the dive into Linux! I am very excited to do so. Does anyone have any tips, anything that a new user should know? That would be greatly appreciated.
Installing programs can be hard. To avoid one small but fundamental confusion:
Mint is a type of Ubuntu, which is a type of Debian. You want to install the version of things for Mint. If they don’t have a version for Mint, use the version for Ubuntu. If they don’t have a version for Ubuntu, use the version for Debian.
If you’re using mint and can’t find help with a specific problem online, mint is really closely related to Ubuntu. So, hypothetically, “Wifi issues Ubuntu” might give you help where “Wifi issues mint” comes up empty. Also, if you dual boot, turn off fast start-up on the windows side. It messes things up.
Also might be worth mentioning at the present time Mint is based on Ubuntu 24.04, that can help narrow things down, but also help if you need third party packages.
Thank you!
Watch a tutorial on the Linux file structure. Fascinating and helpful to know where things go and what they’re for.
Tinker with settings via the settings interface. Make it yours.
Steam works.
Epic games works, it’s just called hero.
Roblox works, it’s called sober.
Don’t forget to put ublock back in your Internet browser.Most questions are answered already, search engines will get you there.
Edit… If dual booting, highly recommend a separate drive for Linux. Unplug the windows drive for setup then set the Linux drive as the primary boot drive. Grub will pick up your windows drive after you reconnect it.
Fellow new user here, I installed Mint on a spare laptop about 9 days ago.
Things I’ve struggled with (but eventually overcome) include getting WiFi to work and getting Bluetooth to work (the latter was particularly tricky).
If I’m honest, I’m not 100% sure what I did to sort either of them, I just tried every suggestion I could find on forums, and eventually (unexpectedly!) it was working.
I’ve watched a few videos about setting up, that I’ve found reasonably helpful, so in case you want them:
Not knowing too much about it, I can’t say for sure that these are good advice, but they helped me.
Oh, and it also took me a wee while to get my installation USB stick sorted out, as it needs to be tested for its integrity and for some reason this wasn’t all that straightforward. Hopefully it was just me being dumb though 😁
This video helped with that: https://youtu.be/pc3G2U2Fujk
Additional tip - if you’re using the terminal (which you may well be if you are trying to sort things like WiFi and Bluetooth) something it took me a while to realise was that crtl+v doesn’t paste, but ctrl+shift+v does.
Thank you so so much!!
No problem, good luck, and if you get stuck, I’d be happy to try and help (mostly by pointing you to links where I found info!) 😁
I know almost nothing about computers, I’m searching up issues with wifi, and I see things like ethernet and you have to connect to a hot spot or something, how did you get wifi set up? And how did you get bluetooth set up?
Edit to add: From my research, I know how to find the button and connect, but apparently it doesn’t show for some people, so I need to activate hotspot on my phone and connect it to my computer, then download required drivers (wireless driver?) and then I will be good to go. Does this sound right?
Hi there - sorry about the slow reply. I’ll try to pull together the info I found, but in general:
- Yeah, you need to have the right driver for your wifi card
- To do that you first need to be able to identify what wifi card you have (will expand on this when I locate the info that helped me)
- Then you’ll need to have an internet connection to download the correct driver
- This could be the tricky part, because if your PC’s wifi isn’t working you’ll need another way to connect to the internet. This lack of wifi will also prevent you connecting to your phone’s wifi hotspot - it’ll need to be a physical connection at least at first.
- Your two options are likely to be: 1) To physically connect your PC to your phone with a cable, and allow the PC to use the phone’s mobile data as an internet connection (assuming that’s possible, might depend on your phone); or 2) Connect your PC directly to your router with an ethernet cable - this assumes you have such a cable, have access to your router, and that your PC has an ethernet port.
EDIT - here’s some info on that: https://easylinuxtipsproject.blogspot.com/p/temporary-internet.html
- Once connected you can move on with downloading the right driver - then you install it, probably restart the PC, and fingers crossed your WiFi card will be working
Probably best to be prepared for it not to work the first time - that was certainly my experience! :-)
Will try to track down the info I found on identifying the wifi card and getting the driver - in the meantime though, you can be trying to sort out a physical internet connection. Good luck!
Update 01 (please, anyone with more experience correct me if I’m wrong here):
Ok, so although this isnt how I did it (it was a terminal command, that I haven’t yet been able to find again) here’s how to ID your WiFi Card - click the main menu (the Start menu, if was Windows), and type “sys” so that you see an option for System Information.
Click that and choose PCI from the menu on the left. Scroll down the list and you should see entries for Ethernet and Network. Look in the Brand and Device columns to find your model of wifi card. For example, here’s mine:
The info you need is underlined above - note that on mine the “(rev 01)” part matters too, not just the BCM43142 part.
Then you need to find the right driver for whatever your card is. I’ll go look to see how I found mine :-)
Update 02:
Actually… Ok, so I really wish I’d found this guide (below) before, it looks a lot easier to follow than the various scraps of info I pulled together a couple of weeks ago! I’d say try working through this first, as it seems to be written by someone considerably more knowledgable than me! :-)
https://www.reallinuxuser.com/how-to-install-wifi-drivers-in-linux-mint/ (I’ve no connection with the author, I literally just stumbled upon the link while trying to find the stuff that helped me)
I need to go just now, but hopefully that helps - if not please do say, and we can keep trying! :-)
Nothing to worry about, linux is easier than windows
