I have a Windows 11 laptop and recently gotten excited to try Linux. I read good things about Mint being pretty good to go out of the box, and while I can be a fast learner I’m also tired and don’t have a tremendous amount of bandwidth.

So I followed all the installation instructions, verified, flashed a USB, booted into it and started to install a dual boot of it. Made it through installation until it told me my computer had BitLocker on, and I’d need to go turn it off and try again. Fair enough.

Went back into my Windows OS (after booting it went to “diagnosing your PC”). I don’t seem to have bitlocker installed - looks like a Pro version thing which I don’t have. It did show that encryption was enabled, so I turned it off.

Restarted to boot to USB. Nope, “mmx64.efi - Not Found” error.

OK, googled it, renamed it, let’s go.

error: shim_lock protocol not found error: you need to load kernel first

OK… I googled it just enough to see this is going to be a pain.

I tried remaking my USB just in case, didn’t help. It’s extra frustrating because my first attempt to boot into Linux went so well! How did it go from booting into it flawlessly to giving me a series of errors?

Did I anger the Microsoft gods and now they’re blocking my path? Is this a bad omen that Linux is going to be a problem on my laptop in general?

  • entropicdrift@lemmy.sdf.org
    151·
    2 days ago

    Personally I just installed Mint instead of Windows. If you back up your important files to an external drive, then what’s the harm? Even if you need to go back to Windows, that’s just another USB flash drive setup.

    • HumanPerson@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      8·
      2 days ago

      Alternatively, if you have the money, you can just buy a new drive and hold on to your old one. For a while I actually installed linux onto a flash drive and used that. (Not a live boot to be clear)

    • fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      61·
      2 days ago

      That’s great if you’re in the mindset of “just wipe and reload it’s not a problem” But most people who aren’t chronic computer users aren’t like that. Spending 2+ hours resetting up their computer to be just like it was isn’t fun to most people.

      • Übercomplicated@lemmy.ml
        2·
        19 hours ago

        Whaaaaaaaat!?! Nonsense! Sacrilege! I love spending 8 hours at a time reconfiguring neovim from scratch to get full LSP support and 20 millisecond start-up times! Who wouldn’t love doing that!?!!!??!!?! (/hj)

        Edit: half-joking (/hj), not sarcastic (/s).

          • Übercomplicated@lemmy.ml
            1·
            19 hours ago

            You’re right, I wasn’t really being sarcastic. Configuring neovim (or really anything) for exceedingly long times is fun!

            • CarrotsHaveEars@lemmy.ml
              2·
              14 hours ago

              I spent time yesterday writing a start command to initiate Copilot then exit in Vim, run it periodically, just to satisfy our corporate requirement of Copilot usage. It was really fun, and a nice way to give them a “fuck you”.