I am too ;)

That's the main reson I use SSD's as pen drives, copy a 5 or 10Gb file on a USB3.0 can take ages...

Exactly, I mean, USB3 isn't too terrible compared to SATA3 (well, could use ESATA or Hot-plug), but with only half-duplex and with slow flash drives it get really really slow. Even on a USB3 connector I often max out on 500-1500kbps depending on type and age of the flash drive.

Even my old 64GB Samsung SSD is faster at 30-35MB/s.
Riiiight, because that never happens elsewhere in the world...

I've almost figured it ou!! But I'll reply to your posts first:

sanscript, I'm not sure whether it allows me to switch between BIOS and UEFI or whatever it's called, but that seems like disabling secure mode (or that it would have the same effect), and I've been told that can prevent Windows from being able to boot!

Dark_art_, as it turned out, they only look weird unless I use compatibility mode, so that's an easy way around it. My computer seems to freeze at one point while writing every possible line of text about all of my hardware (it gets to the Logitech Force 3D Pro and then stops for several minutes, but then resumes). I know it doesn't use lettered drives, and I noticed sda1, etc. and I know what the a1 means, except that I'm a little confused about the sd, because I thought it was supposed to be hd for hard drives but mine say sd, and I just looked it up, and evidently that refers to SCSI devices, but aren't they still hard drives and should be called hd?

clarry, well that's terribly inconvenient and idiotic.



And now for the progress (sort of) that I've made. I figured out which partition represents the new one (even though it doesn't show the label!), but I had to click the "advanced partitioning tool" to show them all, including the one that I need to use.

But then there's an option to pick the "Device for boot loader installation", and I can choose it from a drop down list. I can either pick the partition or the whole hard drive. I don't know what to do, because I'm worried that if I pick the partition and I'm not supposed to then it will install that extra bit where it's supposed to install the OS itself, and it won't work, but if I install it to the hard drive as a whole and it turns out that I'm not supposed to do that, then it will put it in the main/root partition (or whatever it's called) and overwrite or somehow mess up the Windows boot loader and then that won't run anymore! Why don't they tell me where I'm supposed to put it?!

That's not what I'm talking about, see the picture
https://i1.wp.com/techsviewer.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/motherboard-supports-UEFI-Boot-Mode.jpg?resize=810%2C449&ssl=1

There you see an example of the boot priority order list.

Example of a boot menu button selection in the BIOS (disable/enable):
https://timeandupdate.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Turn-on-the-Boot-menu-from-BIOS.jpg
This one is from a laptop.

Then again, every board (especially on laptops) are different and may/may not be there...

Well I'll look into all of that but right now I have more pressing concerns: getting Linux installed! I tried again, and this time I noticed that it said my HD is 1.2 TB, and seemed to be trying to partition it into 2 smaller pieces, one with Windows already on it and a new one for Linux. The problem is, I already partitioned it in Windows before trying to install Linux. The whole HD is 2 TB and the 1.2 TB is just the Windows partition (actually it's 1.31 so I don't know why it's being underestimated), but I made a new 100 GB partition just for Linux, so I don't want to partition it again! Besides, someone said that partitioning the drive outside of Windows makes Windows 10 very cranky!

So anyway, I thought I should try the "advanced partitioning tool" again, because that lets me pick a specific partition on which to install. So then I chose sda5 (the 100 GB one), and I said to also install the boot loader on sda5 (I figure that the worst that can happen is it won't work, but that way at least it can't erase anything used by Windows). Then when I told it to install, I got an error that said, "No root file system is defined. Please correct this from the partitioning menu."

What am I doing wrong?! I thought installing Mint was supposed to be EASY!

It depends how much like Windows (or MS-DOS) one expects Linux to be. When you dig deeper into Linux internals, sure there are things you need to re-learn (like that there are no "drive letters" like you mention), but after awhile you don't see them only as different, but also as better.

Like, nowadays I am just frustrated when I am on Windows and I have to deal with drive letters (C: D: E: etc.). When you get used to the "Linux way" where everything in in the same directory structure and not divided into arbitrary and ever-changing "drive letters", this tends to happen.

For instance, if I have a bunch of external hard drivers and USB flash drives in Windows, how do I keep track that I don't accidentally assign the same drive letter to two or more of them? What happens if I connect two or more external medias with the same drive letter to the system?

In Linux I don't have to care of any of that, as long as the USB HDDs or memory sticks have different names. Like, if I have an USB drive called "Photos" and another "GOGgames", in Linux they will be mounted under /media/user/<drive name>/. No need to care what "drive letters" they have, or if they don't have an assigned drive letter,I don't have to deal with random drive letters.


BTW, one very useful command in Linux to see and understand how the hard drives, partitions, mount points etc. are mapped is lsblk.

timppu, Windows usually automatically maps drive letters, and I don't even think it will let you map the same letter to multiple drives. But that makes me wonder what happens in Linux when you have multiple devices that use the same name and then you plug them in simultaneously? And the one thing I have to admit that I never liked about Linux is the weird naming of everything. Because wtf does lsblk mean?



Anyway, here's my progress. The good news is that I got Linux installed! The bad news is that I can't run it. When I start the computer I get options to run Linux or Windows, or I can look at the Linux advanced options. If I run it, I get the same weird corruption glitch that I got when I tried to run Mate from the installation stick without using compatibility mode (I installed Cinnamon, btw). But here's the problem: it doesn't give me an option to run in compatibility mode! But that's the ONLY mode I've ever gotten to work! I thought it might be in the advanced options, but it's not! How can I use compatibility mode for Linux installed on a hard drive?!

The other problem is that I can't seem to get it to connect to the internet (I tried when I was using live compatibility mode). I watched a video and the guy clicked an icon and was shown all of the available networks (just like it shows me in Windows) but when I clicked the icon I just got something about a wired connection (like through a phone chord, which I don't use), but it said it's unavailable, and it said no other connections were available. I'm using a wireless router and a wireless adapter plugged into a USB port, and it works fine for Windows. So how can I get it to work on Linux?

Is Broadcom still not supporting Linux, so you need the translated extra driver for those? I remember activating that one years ago.

Garbled screen may be due to Nvidia... but those who use Nvidia on Linux should come to your rescue soon, hopefully.

You probably will need to use pure CLI (command line interface) to fix your two problems.

A: What's Broadcom?

B: Who doesn't use Nvidia? They make Geforce, which is like the only card anyone uses anymore. I mean, are Radeons even still available? And you're telling me that like 99% of people can't use Linux, because they have Geforce cards?!

C: But I can't get into the command line because I can't get the OS to load, because the screen is corrupt and weird, so I can't see to do anything, and I'm not even sure it's working at all beyond that.

EDIT: Also, how do I run compatibility mode once it's installed? I can run it fine as long as I use that mode!

Plenty of people. Of course Radeons are still available, and so are integrated graphics.
The current Steam hardware survey lists 73.82% having Nvidia cards, and those tend to be "gaming" computers. Integrated graphics make up a large chunk of non-gaming ones.
Had no problem with what was a Nvidia card at the time I tried Mint back then, but that was years ago, no idea how it goes now.
Quick search result: https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=220493

A: Broadcam is a company that makes, among other things, wireless devices that have traditionally not played well with Linux. (I don't know if the situation is improved.) On the other hand, they are the company that makes the system-on-chip used by the Raspberry Pi.

B: I use only Intel integrated graphics (excluding my Raspberry Pi, of course). The problem with Nvidia is that they don't provide open-source kernel drivers, and therefore you are basically locked into specific kernel versions that Nvidia has created drivers for, not to mention that problems are harder to debug, and the driver can't be audited to make sure it doesn't do anything fishy. For this reason, if I do get a discrete GPU, it will be an AMD one (or Intel, if they ever make discrete GPUs).

C: Try pressing Ctrl+Alt+F1, or if that doesn't work, Ctrl+Alt+F2, and see if it gives you a text terminal. Then you can login. Alternatively, there are other methods you could try if the OS is *really* not working, like adding init=/bin/sh to the kernel command line (which will cause the kernel to launch a shell instead of allowing the rest of the OS to boot).

Hard drives can be identified by their UUID, which is a long string of what looks like gibberish, but is supposed to be unique for each drive. The place where the hard drive appears in the directory tree is specified in /etc/fstab. If you try to mount two drives to the same mount point, the OS will let you, but only the most recently mounted one will be visible (though programs can still keep files on the device mounted first open).

As for the name lsblk:
* "ls" is short for "list". The "ls" command, which is one of the most basic commands, will list the files in the current directory.
* "blk" is short for "block". So, "lsblk" is a command that lists the block devices attached to the system.

(I think the ones involved in naming the commands didn't want to type too much, so they gave commands short names, and the short names stuck.)

Apparently you already figured that out somehow, but by that description, what you probably did "wrong" was that you created the partition for the Linux installation already beforehand, from Windows. So basically you created a Windows partition for the forthcoming Linux installation. :)

That is probably why the Linux installer got a bit confused about what exactly are you trying to do, and where to install Linux. Apparently it thought all the hard drive space was already reserved for Windows as all the HDD space was already partitioned from Windows.

This is what I did recently when I installed Windows and Linux Mint 20 XFCE on this laptop where I am writing this (this has one 500GB hard drive):

1. First I installed Windows on a 200GB partition. The rest of the hard drive I left unpartitioned (this is the important bit I think). I didn't create a second 300GB partition for Linux in Windows, which is what you apparently did?

2. When I started the Linux installation, I just chose the default option that it reserves all the unpartitioned space on the hard drive for the Linux installation, installing it beside Windows. Nothing more needed, easy peasy lemon squeezy.

What someone warned you about not doing Windows partitioning from Linux probably referred to doing stuff like trying to shrink or extend or otherwise modify Windows partitions from Linux. Common sense says that such operations are better to do from Windows itself as Windows knows the best how to handle Windows partitions.

However this was not about that. You just needed to have some unpartitioned space on the hard drive, to which Linux can create a Linux partition and install itself into.

Yes, but then sometimes you want certain device to always have the same drive letter, if you e.g. want to automate stuff with scripts (batch files).

My personal example in Windows is using gogrepo.py. When using it, you have to tell it the path to the drive and directory where your GOG game installers are, including the drive letter. I have to know beforehand what the drive letter will be if I want to put those gogrepo commands into e.g. batch files. Hence, I really need to assign it a certain drive letter, I can't let Windows make up its own when I connect the USB HDD (where my GOG game installers are) to it.

Anyway, I worked around that problem by copying the batch file and related files to the USB drive itself. Then I can present the path to the GOG installer files without a drive letter, so it doesn't matter anymore what drive letter it has.

I just tested it in Windows 7 (one by one attaching two of my USB HDDs and assigning the letter R: to both drives' partitions in Disk Management), and Windows allows that. And even if it somehow prevented that on one PC, what if I assign the same drive letter on one PC, and then use that device on another Windows PC?

Good question so I tested that too. I connected two USB HDDs with the same name "GOG" to this Linux Mint 20 box, and it mounted one of them as "GOG" and the other as "GOG1".

Of course that in itself would be a problem to the gogrepo.py scripting that I explained above (as the script would still look for the path /media/user/GOG/), but at least in Linux you have more to choose from (by naming the volumes differently, like GOG1 and GOG2) than if you would have to choose from letters between e.g. F: and X:.

Note that Microsoft has introduced e.g. UNC or the ability to mount a partition into an empty Windows folder (in Disk Management), so apparently MS has acknowledged themselves that the archaic "drive/partition letters" system is quite limiting. Probably there was even a chance many people (or Windows servers) run out of available drive letters if they have lots of mapped network drives, some extra USB drives etc.

The manual pages for the command can be found with "man lsblk", and it says it is short for "list block devices". If you want some longer alias for that command, you can easily create one, like "listallblockdevices" or "show_how_drives_partitions_and_mountpoints_are_mapped_together", which will act the same way as "lsblk". Command aliases are very easy to create in Linux, the most common one which is usually there already by default is that the command "ll" is the same as "ls -l". Quite often also "dir" is there as well (doing the same as "ls -l"), probably because that is the first command former Windows users probably try in the Linux bash shell. :)

I don't consider "lsblk" any odder than how in Windows you have shortened commands like "regedit32" or "gpedit" or "wmic". You don't know what they mean either unless you are familiar with them.

To note in windows, apart from the annoying default behaviour of assigning the next free drive letter to a new drive, you can actually fix the drive letter for the specific drive. For instance I have several raid boxes which I routinely use for backups. Each one has its own fixed drive letter starting at Z and working back. Only A, B, C are generally fixed p, the others are free to assign. So if your organised then duplicate drives should not happen (unfortunately most people are not organised or do not know about this).
Makes backups real simple, just open freefilesync which already points to the internal drive, and select what is available and run, mush easier to select 1 letter than a path to a named drive.

(Or partition) Yes I know, that's what I'm doing so that I can trust that e.g. my USB HDD containing GOG game installers is always "R:" when I connect it to any Windows PC, in case I run gogrepo.py on that PC. So I'd assign a fixed R: for that USB HDD partition. (However I worked around this issue by copying the gogrepo script and the manifest file etc. to the USB HDD itself and running it from there; then I don't need to care about what drive letter the USB HDD has).

I have quite many older USB HDDs to which I've assigned a fixed drive letter by default, and now if I create a new one and decide to assign a new fixed letter for it as well, I keep thinking "I wonder which drive letter I haven't used yet? P? H? U? L?".

I guess by default i shouldn't then assign fixed drive letters to USB HDDs unless it is a specific case like gogrepo scripting which has to know which drive letter the target has, but then that might produce some problems of its own. Like just this week, at work we had some issue with our client's clustered Windows server system where we tried to add extra capacity to "drive D:", but the problem was that no such drive visible in the cluster. There was only C:. Turns out the reason for this behavior in that specific setup was that there was no fixed drive letter assigned for that "D:" drive. Oh well...