I heard Mint is supposed to be the simplest distro to get started with but my experience so far (following the setup guide on the website) has been:
- Download ISO
- Check ISO (seemed fine)
- Burn image… crash
- Burn image in administrator mode
- Boot from USB via BIOS… crash
- Boot from USB via Bios in safe mode
- Download multimedia codecs… crash
- Not download multimedia codecs… also crash?
And that’s where I am presently, it runs fine off the USB albeit a bit slow, and I know its connected to the internet because I can browse lemmy on it and make annoying posts on the Linux community. I knew Linux was going to be more work than windows but this feels like a ridiculous level of effort right out of the gate, I worry that even if I somehow get it running I’ll spend 10x more time fixing it than actually using it.
I followed the instructions to use Etcher, etcher itself crashed but it was a pretty easy fix running it in administrator mode and apparently a known issue. Its weird because the live preview works fine. The stick was made on the same machine I’m trying to install linux on.
that definitely indicates some kind of hardware failure
I’ve tried Etcher many times and I feel like I’ve had issues every time, unfortunately. I don’t remember the exact issues, but I recall both having problems with writing ISOs and with booting them. I would highly recommend Rufus instead, which has been much more consistent for me.