Not sure if anyone has suggested that, but for what it's worth, I am using NVidia (Geforce GTX 670M) on one of my Linux laptops. I am not having any issues with it, so no it is not like if you have a NVidia GPU, then you can't use Linux. That would certainly be outrageous it if was so.

The reason why many Linux purists seem to "hate" NVidia is because they are not providing open source drivers, but only closed-source. I wouldn't care about that otherwise except that it will mean that when at some point NVidia will not make a new driver for my aging 670M GPU and doesn't port the older drivers (which I am using now) to some future Linux version, then I can't use the official NVidia drivers in the new Linux anymore with my old NVidia GPU.

HOWEVER!!! There are also unofficial open-source, "nouveau", drivers for my GTX 670M. Apparently they are made by the Linux community (NVidia itself doesn't support them at all), and I presume I can keep using those unofficial open source drivers also with future Linux versions, even when NVidia won't provide legacy GTX670M drivers anymore for that future Linux.

I have used both the official NVidia Linux drivers and the unofficial open source drivers side by side in Linux Mint 19, and the differences mainly seem to be:

- The open source drivers are somewhat slower in gaming than the official NVidia drivers. I can still play e.g. Team Fortress 2 in Linux with the open source drivers, but yes I am getting a poorer performance then.

- Sometimes I might see some rare glitches in some games, e.g. I've sometimes seen some odd flickering shadows in Team Fortress 2 with the open source drivers, which aren't present with the official drivers.

For non-gaming use, I don't really see any difference between the official and open source NVidia drivers. In fact, the open source drivers work a bit better with the desktop use because for some reason with the official NVidia drivers my laptop screen brightness is always at 100% when I restart the system (and then I have to lower it manually to like 50-70% which is better for my eyes), while with the unofficial open source nouveau drivers the system remembers after restart to which value I had set the screen brightness before. So there is that. :)

That NVidia desktop has a Driver Manager utility with which I can switch between the official and open-source drivers. It marks the official drivers as "recommended". At some point there was some issue that I couldn't switch between them, I think the utility locked me to one drivers (I don't recall if it was the official or open-source drivers) and didn't let me switch to the other drivers anymore (they were greyed out in the utility), but googling for it I found where the issue was and fixed it. Shit happens but you just need a bit more toilet paper then.

It was some time ago, but Linus Torvalds has things to say about Nvidia.

Yep. The consequences of nvidia's hostility towards open source are real.

By contrast, we can fix things and run custom kernels (any version) with intel & amd drivers built in. We can port them to BSD. We can make distros where amd & intel GPUs work right out of the box, because it's legal to include and distribute the latest official drivers. I think anyone who seriously cares about free & open source software should just avoid nvidia.

If nvidia supported official open source drivers in the linux kernel like intel and amd do, I doubt HeresMyAccount would have gotten that garbled screen. I'm guessing in non-compatibility mode the system uses nouveau and it's not working right with their current nvidia GPU.

When you run the command "lspci" in Linux, what do you see listed as "Ethernet controllers" or "Network controllers"?

EDIT: Ok so if it is not an internal wifi adapter but an USB adapter, maybe "lsusb" output would be good too.

In Windows -> Control Panel -> System -> Device Manager -> Network Controllers, what is the name and model of your USB wifi adapter? When you figure that out, the next step would be to google for e.g. "ubuntu drivers the-name-of-your-USB-wifi-adapter", and see what is suggested. The good news is that most probably you are not the only person on earth ever trying to get that USB wifi adapter to work in Linux.

I also bought an USB wifi adapter earlier, and I had issues even finding proper Windows drivers for it because the vendor had conflicting naming for that adapter, having a different model number in different parts of the world (when I googled for the exact name and model on the package, it pointed me to a wrong wifi adapter model; I finally figured out the correct model by checking the photos of each adapter and selecting the one from the vendor pages that looked like mine, albeit named differently).

The vendor also offered Linux drivers for it but as they seemed to be for some older Linux version, I kept searching and finally found open-source drivers made by some Linux user. They have worked for me in Linux ever since.

I think the exact procedure how I found the Linux drivers for my USB wifi adapter were something like this (no I didn't know right off the bat how to do this, but google was my friend, someone there explained how to act in a situation like this where you have some unknown USB device on your Linux system):

I connected the USB wifi adapter to my PC.
In Linux, I wrote "lsusb".
From that list, I checked the device that most likely seemed to be the connected wifi adapter, and wrote down its hardware ID (something like e.g. "0b05:1841"). That is basically the string with which Linux identifies that piece of hardware, in this case the USB wifi adapter.
If you are unsure which entry is your USB wifi adapter, run "lsusb" without and with the wifi adapter connected, and you see which entry got added to the list. That's the one.
Then I googled for "ubuntu" "0b05:1841" "driver" and from there I ended up finding the correct driver and instructions how to install it. (Remember that Mint is basically Ubuntu, so instructions (and drivers etc.) meant for Ubuntu usually work as-is in Mint; using "ubuntu" instead of "mint" probably gives you more search results; or then just use "linux" instead of either "ubuntu" or "mint", to get even more search results)
Yeah it would have been nice if it had worked out of the box, but then it didn't work out of the box in Windows 7 for me either. It was a bit of work for me to figure out and find the correct drivers both in Linux and Windows for it. I don't recall if it came with a CD-ROM with Windows drivers, but maybe I didn't have an optical drive at that point, and I wanted the newest drivers anyway from the vendor.

However, the internal wifi adapters on those laptops of mine where I have installed Linux Mint, they have worked fine right ouf of the box. I don't know if it is because they happen to be Qualcomm Atheros wifi adapters, maybe they are better supported in Linux... But I think the main issue here is that you are using an external USB wifi adapter, not necessarily the wifi chipset used in that adapter.

dtgreene, well I don't think I own anything by Broadcom/cam/whatever. Well that's a dumb thing about Nvidia, but I can't imagine an Intel card being able to do what my card can do (it has real time ray tracing and even AI for image processing - I think it uses neural networks). About the Ctrl+Alt+F1/F2, when do I press this? Is it while it shows the menu to boot either Linux or Windows, or is it while I'm booting Linux and it's printing like 10000 lines of text, or is it after Linux finishes booting and the screen is already corrupt? And if it's after the screen is corrupt then won't it stay corrupt even if it's showing a terminal, and then I wouldn't be able to see what I'm typing, right? And how can I add "init=/bin/sh" to a kernel command line if I can't even get into a command line interface (or any other interface, for that matter)?

I checked your link and read that page. What is "grub"? And it says to edit the grub kernel, but it doesn't say how to get into it, especially since I can't even load the OS in the first place. How can I possibly do anything until the OS loads?



timppu, you've certainly typed a lot, an thank you for the information. I actually read it all, but I don't think I can reply to everything so I'll go back through and reply to the most relevant parts, or the parts that are most important for trying to solve my problem: first of all, the drive mapping stuff is kind of interesting but I don't know enough about the specifics to offer any insight or opinion so I don't really have anything to say to it. Next, I've already gotten the partitioning and installation stuff done, so that's out of the way.

Now I'm just trying to get it to load and display correctly (which I suspect is going to require compatibility mode or something similar, but I can't seem to get into it using the installed version). I remember seeing a line about nouveau when I was booting. In fact, it froze just after that line for a long time, so I thought I'd write it down. I think this is exactly what it said:

[1.059494] fb0: switching to nouveaufb from EPI VGA

Anyway, if I want to run a command in Linux and get the text for you, I guess the way to do that would be to reboot in the Linux live mode, run the command, copy and paste it into a text document and save it on the Windows drive (I can do that, right?) and then reboot in Windows and paste that text here, so I can't do that while I'm replying to you, and it may take a while and unfortunately there are other things that I have to do today, but I'll see what I can do about it.

As for getting the information in Windows, that I can easily do. According to my device manager I have a TP-Link Wireless USB Adapter manufactured by Realtek Semiconductor Corp. The driver version (in Windows, anyway) is 1030.38.712.2019. But in any case, I don't see how I can get a driver installed until I can successfully boot the OS, so I guess the first step is to fix the screen corruption glitch (but I guess without installing a new Nvidia driver, because Mint would have to already be running to do so), and then the second step would be to try to get it connected to the Internet. Then I can take into account all of the advice you printed below that about the hardware ID etc.

But I'm not sure what you mean at the bottom where you say "I think the main issue here is that you are using an external USB wifi adapter, not necessarily the wifi chipset used in that adapter". Are you implying that it's less compatible with adapters than network cards? Why would that be? I deliberately got an adapter and avoided getting a network card specifically because whenever I want to unplug it, I can do that easily, without having to open the computer and rip the card out.



EDIT: By the way, I was also wondering whether Java is pre-installed or even available in the live version, and if not, how to install Java (I'm using some newer version of 8, I think 8.4 or something, but I didn't like 9 through 13 because for some reason they include the JDK with it and I wouldn't want any user of a program I write to have to also have JDK - in any case, I've been developing for version 8 so I need that installer if it's not already on there, unless the JRE of whatever version is on there is also compatible).

Also, if I want to run it with the live version and if it's not included, would it be possible to install Java (JRE at least) onto a USB stick and then run Java programs through that while using the live version on a different stick?

Well I tried what it said in this link:

https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=220493

As usual, nobody gave me any sort of step-by-step process, nor does the link specify one, so I had to miraculously figure out several things, for example:

- That GRUB is the thing that gives me the menu to choose which OS I want.

- That I'm supposed to have the Linux Mint option highlighted and press the E key.

- That I'm supposed to search for text in there, replace it and then press F10.

I don't know why nobody ever specifies these things, like you assume I know what I'm doing, even though I've never used this before and the fact that I don't know what I'm doing is the entire reason why I'm asking in the first place.

But anyway, after I finally figured out that those are the exact steps to do, I then did them, replacing "quiet splash" with "noapic noacpi nosplash irqpoll" (whatever all of that means). Then when I told it to boot using that information, it got corrupted in the same way that it always does. So what now?

I wrote a beginner's guide for Linux Mint on these forums - https://www.gog.com/forum/general/adamhms_linux_mint_beginners_guide/page1 I haven't updated it for Mint 20.x yet but there aren't usually any big differences in the install/setup process between versions.

Try the solution I wrote there (page 30, under "Workaround for stability issues with the default Nvidia graphics drivers"):

GRUB, the GRand Unified Bootloader (a boot loader) is the first software program that runs when a computer starts.

https://opensource.com/article/17/2/linux-boot-and-startup

No single manual can ever give you everything you need to know - even lexicons/encyclopedias are not telling the whole truth...

adamhm, thanks a lot, and I'll try typing that into it! But as for installing a driver, I'd really prefer to just use the same one it uses for compatibility mode or whatever it uses with the method that you just mentioned by typing those words, except have a way to set it to do that permanently. The reason is because I don't intend to play games in Linux so I really don't need the full capabilities of the card, but I want as generic and compatible a driver as possible, so that when I install Mint onto a USB stick I can plug it into any computer, boot from it and have it run without problems, without having to install drivers for each computer, but I don't want to use the live version because then I can't install custom software onto it.

sanscript, thanks for that also, and I'll read that too. I just glanced through it and it looks like it could be very useful.

You'll still be able to do that; the Linux kernel will try to load the approprate drivers for whatever hardware it detects on boot so having the Nvidia driver installed won't cause any problems if e.g. you use it on another system with Intel or AMD hardware. Also Intel and AMD's official drivers are open source and already provided with the kernel, so they don't require installing separate drivers like the Nvidia drivers do :)

Strictly speaking, you may not be able to. If it's ever going to work, it will/must need to setup at least the first time you boot up on a new computer. Even Windows needs that.

Besides, drivers/kernel modules will not work with every chipset (or even version) out there.

EDIT: Technically we're both right. If you first install NVIDIA on one computer it will work on others, but if it encounters a new hardware, you need to install that as well.

I haven't read the latest comments but wanted to say: since adamhm is now here, listen to him. His writings convinced me to start using Linux client years ago and whenever I disagreed with him, I shortly stood corrected (which rarely happens to me).

Well it took about 10 minutes to load, but at leas it worked! Thanks, adamhm! Now I just need to find a more permanent solution unless I want to type the stuff into the startup script every time I use it (unless it saved what I typed, but it didn't, did it?)

Now to address your new posts:

adamhm, so I can just install whatever drivers I want and it will only use them if it needs them? Well that's convenient!

sanscript, but the thing is, if I can use this sort of pseudo-compatibility mode, or whatever it's doing when I type those words to use some default generic drivers instead of trying to use the Nvidia ones (I assume that's what it's doing), then shouldn't that work on all cards? I mean, mine seems to be one of the least compatible ones there is, so if I could get it to work on mine then it should work on all or nearly all. And if whatever driver it's using now doesn't work on some card then probably nothing will. Do you get what I'm saying, or is there a flaw in my logic?

Otherwise I guess I could just install tons of different drivers and it will automatically pick the most applicable one, right? But I rather not resort to doing it that way.

Engerek01, yeah, I figured as much when I looked at his long post and skimmed through the PDF he made. He does NOT mess around when it comes to Linux usage, and frankly, that's very refreshing after some of the junk I've found on the Internet when I'm looking for answers. Thanks again, adamhm!

Not quite true (though it does load before the OS does.)

Basically, boot on a Linux PC works as follows:
* First, the BIOS (whether UEFI or legacy) is loaded. The first thing it does is initialize the hardware. If this step fails, you may have a hardware issue.
* The BIOS then looks for a bootloader on the hard drive. (It's also possible to set it to boot from a USB device or even from the network.)
* The bootloader (frequently GRUB on a Linux system, but not always) is loaded (note that this may be a multi-stage process, with the first part of the bootloader loading the rest). It is at this point where the user may be presented with a menu or prompt.
* The bootloader then loads the kernel, along with an initramfs image. (The initramfs image is basically a ramdisk that gets loaded on bppt.) It then tries to launch the executable file /init in the initramfs.
* The initramfs looks for the root filesystem (yes, the kernel doesn't know about the drive it's booted from, so it has to look for it again), mounts it, and then launches /sbin/init (the init system) from there. (The kernel parameter "init=/bin/sh" causes a shell to be launched instead of the init system; this can be useful when things go wrong.)
* The init system (typically systemd on modern Linux systems) then starts the services that are enabled, and in particular starts the X Window System (or Wayland on some systems). It also starts login prompts on the text terminals. (It is this step, where xorg or wayland gets started, where the garbled image likely comes from.)
* The GUI login manager is started, so it is now possible to login. On login, the desktop environment is started.

The time to press Ctrl+Alt+F1/F2 is after the GUI has loaded. Even if the screen is corrupted, you might be able to get an uncorrupted text prompt where you can login.

Some have mentioned adding things like nomodeset to the kernel command line; it is here that you'd add "init=/bin/sh" if you need to troubleshoot things. Then it may be possible to enable the network manually and then install the needed updates, or you might just disable the xorg/wayland server and reboot into a text-only environment to fix the GUI.

You of all people knows it either is or it isn't.

Besides, you butchered a nice intro to the process for a guy that isn't a geek/nerd, and made it way more complicated than it needed to be (yet again) :P