Sysadmin Central

The old adage “How do you know somebody is a Linux user? Because they’ll tell you” is about to hold up true.

I’ve been keen to properly dip my toe’s into the Linux space for a good number of years, but haven used Windows since XP and having a career which has spanned over a decade on various Microsoft platforms, I’m rather ingrained in the Microsoft ecosystem.

But I figure with some perseverance, and using some of that technical knowledge (read technical debt) I’ve built up over the years, it’s about time to give it a proper go.

This short series will cover issues I find and how I go about resolving them, who knows I may help convert a few people or I may move back to Windows as my primary OS in time. My chosen distro will be Linux Mint, which has recently released Linux Mint 21.2 Cinnamon

Configuring Dual Boot

The first reasonable step to transitioning to Linux, is to ensure you can easily switch back to Windows if the need arises. There’s no point trying to go cold turkey, only to realise you desperately need something you can’t find a replacement for.

This can be easily handled by setting up Dual-boot, which allows you to choose to run Windows or Linux whenever your machine restarts.

The Install Process

The process is quite straightforward, I made use of the official documentation linked below and would recommend you do the same, I’ll add comments below –

Linux Mint Installation Guide

1. Choose the right edition, unless you really need lightweight I’d strongly recommend Cinnamon which is the latest and greatest.
2. Download the ISO.
3. Create a bootable USB stick, I prefer to use Rufus to do this as it’s tiny and very quick for the purpose. Be sure to select GPT as the partition type.
4. With the USB plugged into the machine you’re going to install Linux on, restart the machine.
5. At the boot screen, press whichever button it indicates to open the boot menu, often F12 or Del.
6. Select the USB stick to boot the live system from the USB stick.
7. You can use this system to have a play about and get a feel for things, when you’re happy to proceed, select the “Install Linux Mint” shortcut on the desktop which will walk you through installing the system.
8. Warning – Be very careful when installing, to retain your Windows installation, be very sure that you select the ‘Install Linux Mint alongside Windows‘ option or select ‘Something else’ if you want to manually create a partition for the new system.
9. Walk through the rest of the install process then reboot, you should enter the GRUB screen which allows you to select whether to boot Windows or Linux, if not modify your boot order in the bios.

After Install

So you’re installed Linux and it’s up and running, it may look a bit odd which we’ll sort in another article but there’s a few basic steps you need to do.

1. Follow the setup wizard that appears, ideally configure backups, check for updates etc as instructed.
2. Enable the Firewall, default settings will work for 99% of people.
3. Perform a Kernel update, this effectively handles the hardware side and was the cause of quite a few issues that I had including a lack of sound output. I’ve covered this separately below.

Kernel Update

It’s possible to do this via the terminal, but let’s keep this light and use the nice GUI –

1. Launch Update Manager.
2. In Update Manager’s drop-down menu, click View > Linux Kernels.
3. Choose Continue if a warning message appears.
4. Click the newest kernel available in the left-hand kernel list.
5. In the list of kernel revisions, select the newest one currently supported.
6. Click Install.
7. Confirm your password when prompted.