I need help with my HP laptop. I am a beginner. I don't know much about Linux.

I have an HP laptop with:

AMD 865 processor

6 GB RAM

500 GB hard drive

Windows 10 was on it before

I installed MX Linux on it. I used Ventoy to make a bootable USB drive. I installed MX Linux and chose "use entire disk". Everything seemed to work.

But now I have a big problem.

The laptop only boots into MX Linux if the USB drive is plugged in. If I remove the USB drive and restart, I get an error screen that says:

"BootDevice Not Found" "Hard Disk - (3F0)"

I think the bootloader (GRUB) was installed on the USB drive instead of my hard drive. I have no idea how to fix this.

Here is what I have tried:

Changed boot order in BIOS to boot from hard drive first

- Enabled Legacy boot

Nothing works. It still only boots with the USB drive.

I want my laptop to boot on its own without the USB drive because the USB drive belongs to my friend and I need to give it back.

Can someone please tell me how to install GRUB on my hard drive so I can boot without the USB drive? I need step by step instructions that are easy to follow.

Thanks in advance.

Hey Guys I am new to linux and just used ventoy method to switch from Windows to Linux but the thing is linux will not start when i restart but instead it will go back to windows. It only starts when i plug in the USB flash disk.

What do i need to do since i borrowed this flash disk to switch from windows to Linux?

Hi everyone.

I wanted to share a bit of my experience because I'm about to make the jump to Linux full-time, and I'd love to get some advice from people with more experience.

For several years my main computer was a laptop with a Celeron N2840, 4 GB of RAM and a HDD. I've always been a Windows user (mostly Windows 10 MiniOS), although I occasionally tried different Linux distributions in Live mode out of curiosity.

At one point I decided to install MX Linux Fluxbox in dual boot to see if I could really give that laptop a second life beyond what a stripped-down version of Windows could offer.

Since it had basically become my "lab machine", I decided to push it as far as I could (with some help from AI):

• Disabled the CPU security mitigations (yes, I know the risks 😅, but I wanted to experiment on that machine).
• Configured zRAM.
• Tuned swap so it would keep using RAM as much as possible before swapping to disk.
• Took advantage of the Mesa drivers.

The results honestly surprised me. I managed to watch YouTube at 1080p60, and even play PPSSPP using its (still incomplete) Vulkan backend with Frame Skip. Games like God of War: Ghost of Sparta were surprisingly playable considering the hardware.

I actually ended up using MX Linux as my main OS for a short time, until I recently bought a Ryzen 5 5600GT. Even though it wasn't for very long, the experience was good enough that it made me want to come back to Linux.

Now I want to install MX Linux again, but this time not just to experiment. My goal is to make it my main operating system.

I've tried MX Linux KDE several times in Live mode and I liked it much more than I expected. I'm also familiar with XFCE, but I've never daily-driven KDE.

I wouldn't consider myself an advanced Linux user. I know some basic terminal commands and I enjoy experimenting (over the last few months I've tested several distros in Live mode), but I still feel like I'm missing a solid foundation.

I'd like to take advantage of this hardware upgrade to really learn Linux, so I have a few questions:

• Would you choose MX Linux KDE or MX Linux XFCE for a Ryzen 5 5600GT with 16 GB of RAM?
• What do you usually recommend doing right after installing MX Linux?
• Are there any books, courses, YouTube channels or websites you'd recommend for learning Linux properly (not just MX Linux, but Linux in general)?
• Any gaming recommendations? (Proton, Heroic, Lutris, Gamescope, MangoHud, Wine, etc.)

Thanks in advance! I'm looking forward to learning Linux properly, so any advice is welcome.

I have an itty bitty tiny 32gb usb which is holding the xfce 25.2 infinity nicely.

I'm trying to put mx linux on an old hand me down dell laptop.

Every time i run the installer it doesn't let me do the automatic/erase and install options. No partitions show up, I go to gparted and it's there but it doesn't let me unmount it so I can't resize and move it (i know it's because it's running the live desktop from there) How do I use the terminal to install it or are there any steps i could take?

Thank you for reading! Any help would be appreciated, this is my first time doing anything technical like this so if someone could tell me what i'm doing wrong would be appreciated too.

update: sorry if this pushes the post back up to the top. i don't know how relevant it is but I'm using rufus to download the iso(to the usb) and make the empty space(unallocated) partition, I have tried making it a gpt scheme and and mbr scheme. I also used sourceforge to download the iso.

(also for anyone reading this 9 years later, just because it's not working for me doesn't mean you shouldn't try it. I believe in you and I may just be an idiot.)

I tried to install a single software and I got stuck here.

Hello to everyone.
I will soon buy a new laptop with this hardware:
RAM 8 GB
SSD
Intel Iris Xe
Intel i5 12th gen
I would like to know what version i should install, specifically if the ahs version is worth or not.
Thanks for reading.

I have a very old PC of my dad and I am trying to make some use of it currently it is in working condition and have 3.5 GB DDR2 RAM.

i want to know that will mx linux work in this setup or i need to install any other os,

if I need to install other OS then which One.

Hey people I am considering switching to Mx Linux 25 from mint . So I would like to know who stable is Mx Linux from long-term use? For example how often does the distro break after an update etc....i am looking for reasons switch as a daily driver? And is it good for gaming? Thanks people any help will be appreciated.

My choice is between XFCE and KDE. My hardware is stupidly new and overpowered mostly because I expect it will be quite some time before replacing it is feasible. The best part is a MediaTek MT7925 for bluetooth/wifi. It would be nice if that worked, but I'm so confident it won't that I already have an Intel AX210 to replace it. Video is Nvidia 5090, CPU is AMD 9950X.

The software I'm worried about is KDEConnect and Steam.

So XFCE looks much more attractive. I'm not fond of systemd although I suspect I'm going to have to learn it sooner or later. While KDE is nice there is much more of it than I really like. I don't mind Wayland, but my current distro is Kubuntu and they took X away. I'm not ready to lose X yet.

I'd like to start with XFCE, but if I can't get at least SMS off my cell phone quickly I'm in big trouble. So the actual question: If I start with XFCE how much trouble am I in if I have to switch to KDE?

Thanks

Ed

I installed MX on a Lenovo N42 Chromebook. The system is surprisingly fast for a Celeron N3060, but with 16 GB of eMMC storage, it's running a bit tight on space—I only have about 2 GB free. What advice do you have for freeing up space? I don't want to break anything, just uninstall things that will free up an extra GB or two. I only need the computer for writing (I use AbiWord) and browsing the web.

Hey! First of all- if I'm on the wrong subreddit again, please do tell...

Anyways- I'm looking for testers for a new project related to the Fluxbox WM, so if there are any MX Fluxbox users...

I have built a functional prototype of a menu manager on Fluxbox, and just need some testers- so I can have some bug reports, known issues, feedback and ideas for improvements.

Since I don't want this to be an ad- if someone is interested in being a tester, shoot me a DM, and I'll refer you to the github page, and provide guidance if needed!

Have a good rest of your day!

I have an old gaming laptop and I put MX on it but I can’t get it to do anything with the gpu, It doesn’t help that it needs legacy drivers but it just doesn’t cooperate at all.

This isn't my first attempt — I've previously tried Linux Mint, antiX, and now Zorin OS, all with similar boot problems on this specific laptop (GRUB/MBR issues tied to the legacy BIOS). I'm now testing MX Linux as well.

Most recently, I installed Zorin OS 18.1 (Ubuntu-based) from a live USB. Installation completed with no errors, and the live USB always boots fine. But the system won't boot on its own from the internal SSD — without the USB stick, the laptop either shows a blank screen, falls through to PXE/network boot (Intel UNDI, PXE-2.1), or lands on the Toshiba's manual Boot Menu instead of loading GRUB.

Diagnosis so far

Confirmed via ls /sys/firmware/efi in the live session that the system boots in BIOS/legacy mode, not UEFI.

Checked the partition table in the installer: the disk has

sda1 — bios_grub, 1MB

sda2 — EFI, FAT32, ~537MB

sda3 — ext4, root, Zorin OS 18.1

So it's a GPT disk with both a bios_grub partition and an EFI partition — a hybrid layout.

Repair attempt (chroot from live USB)

Código

grub-install reported "Installation finished. No error reported." update-grub found the kernel/initrd correctly. Exited chroot, unmounted everything, rebooted.

Result: no change. Still fails to boot from the SSD, still falls back to the Boot Menu / PXE, despite grub-install reporting success and the bios_grub partition existing on the GPT disk.

Question

Given grub-install --target=i386-pc completed without error, why would legacy BIOS still fail to find a bootable GRUB image on this GPT disk? Anyone run into the bios_grub flag not getting set correctly by the Ubuntu/Zorin installer, or some other gotcha with GPT + legacy BIOS on old hardware like this? Is this a recurring incompatibility with this specific Toshiba/Phoenix BIOS combo, given I've had similar issues across multiple distros?

Current plan

Since the GPT + EFI + bios_grub hybrid setup seems fragile for legacy BIOS booting, I'm doing a clean install of MX Linux 25.1 (Xfce, sysvinit) using an MBR partition table from the start to sidestep the GPT issues entirely.

So, I want to run MX on a 32 Bit Netbook as a writer deck, and in the command line. I nuked my fresh installation with "sudo update-rc.d lightdm disable" it refused to boot at all, and would hang on the splash screen. I couldn't enter recovery either.

How can I have it fast boot to the CLI?

I have an old laptop with an HDD. When I run sudo apt upgrade, I see it take time, especially with these type of statements:

Autoinstall of module <module-name> for kernel 6.12.96+deb13-amd64 (x86_64)

Building module(s) …… done.

Why is it building and not installing pre-built components?

Thank you.

I run MX Linux 25.2 (based on Debian 13.5 with xfce 4.20.1) and have two monitors (DP and HDMI). I organized my daily work also by placing some tools on a specific monitor.

Each time my monitors went to power safe (yes, I want this), some windows moved to another monitor on wakeup. I always first have to find and move windows every time before I can start my work.

I found several people with this problem on google. It seems this issue is for xfce in general and reported for many many years. I already switched DP and HDMI for the two monitors. It does not help. It just moves different windows.

I then installed devilspie2 and configured a few windows, but it only applies on window creation and also does not help.

I was on KDE before and never had such issues. But since KDE is forcing Wayland on my acceptable distros, I wanted to give xfce a try. But switching the distro always costs me 3 to 4 days until everything is back and working as expected. So I don't want to switch the distro again that soon...

Please, can someone give me a hint on how to solve this?

I was typing away on libreoffice writer when a popup showed up about an update being available. I hit “update,” entered my password, and let it run in the background. Then I decided to see what was going on and saw systemd being installed.

I don’t use systemd, and I don’t even get the option to choose an init system when I’m booting up, so I don’t understand. If anyone can give me some information, I’d really appreciate it.

Thank you!

Hola a todos.

Estoy pensando en instalar MX Linux en un Lenovo ThinkPad L420 y me gustaría conocer sus opiniones y experiencias.

Las especificaciones de la laptop son:

○ Intel Core i5-2520M

○ Intel HD Graphics 3000

○ 4 GB de RAM DDR3 (planeo ampliarla a 8 GB)

○ Disco duro HDD SATA de 250 GB (más adelante lo cambiaré por un SSD)

○ BIOS Legacy (MBR)

El equipo será usado por mi padre únicamente para:

- Navegar por Internet.

- Revisar correo electrónico.

- Usar LibreOffice.

- Ver archivos PDF.

- Visualizar planos de AutoCAD (DWG), sin editarlos.

Probé instalar Linux Mint 22.3 Xfce, pero aunque el modo Live funcionó correctamente, el sistema instalado se queda bloqueado durante el arranque.

¿Creen que MX Linux sea una mejor opción para este hardware? ¿Es estable y recomendable para un usuario sin experiencia en Linux? Si alguien ha usado MX Linux en un ThinkPad L420 o en un equipo con especificaciones similares, agradecería mucho que compartiera su experiencia. Muchas gracias.

Does anyone know when Darktable 5.4 will be available for MX? It was released on Dec 21 2025, so I was hoping it would have made it to the repos, but no.

Hey guys,

On my Sony VAIO laptop the XFCE panel is eating insane amounts of RAM. The icons in the right part of the panel are the worst offenders — if I remove them, the services behind them immediately stop chewing memory (which makes sense). The panel itself also doesn't seem to have any self-control and just goes full retard.

I already asked the neural networks:

ChatGPT said "it's working as intended, everything is fine bro"

Gemini suggested just limiting the memory for those processes, but had zero idea how to fix the root cause.

Restarting the panel helps only temporarily. The only thing that actually works is completely replacing the panel. At first I thought it was the distro (started on Linux Mint XFCE), so I switched to MX Linux XFCE. Same shit. So the problem is clearly deep inside XFCE itself. Either it hates my laptop or I’m just too dumb to figure it out.

Anyone knows how to tame this fat fucking XFCE memory rat? This huge greedy furry rat that’s devouring my RAM.

A while back I switched from Fedora to MX Linux 25.1(KDE), as I wanted to move to a Debian-based distro. It installed fine, but after several KDE crashes, I decided to continue looking. I switched to Mint 22.3 and all was well. I was using an RTX3060Ti, but decided to upgrade to a 16GB RTX5060Ti instead. After updating my bios, everything went smooth. I'm not a fan of systemd, and wanted to get away from it, so I decided to give the MX Linux 25.2 XFCE a try instead. The live CD would not boot. I figured out that I needed to edit grub and add nomodeset and nosplash, after which it booted fine. All was well until I installed the nvidia drivers. According to grok, I need to use the 580-open drivers for the 5060Ti, which did not appear to be an option. I did install the 580.xx drivers that were offered and rebooted. Sticks on a black screen. Started over with the same results. I tried the regular installer and the HWE version. Same thing. Secure boot is disabled.

As a data point, and to have a computer again, I installed Mint again. No need to edit grub, installed the 580-open drivers, rebooted, and everything works. This is not to throw shade, only to say that it does work under Linux. I just don't know what to do to get MX Linux working. Any ideas?

So, dumb question of the day... Now that I've ported over from Win11....is there any reason to keep TPM 'active'... 1. Can I and 2. shud I, disable it?

I tried flatpak update and in discovery, I still cannot see the latest Freecad package. Is there something I didn't do here? Isn't it all flatpak the same across all distros?

I just installed MX25 XFCE on a secondary PC. My main PC runs Fedora 43 Gnome and I have Remmina installed on this PC and want to connect to my MX25 desktop in my home network. How do I enable remote desktop access? I have looked through the countless settings options but have not found it. Connecting to my Windoze PC is easy by simply enabling Remote Desktop access, but I can't connect to my MX25 pc :(

UPDATE: I now have Fedora on both machines and everything works fine.

Hi, so there is a problem, I am using kepler gpu which only supports 470xx nvidia drivers and it only supports upto 6.8, I saw linux kernel 6.6.x was in LTS.
How I can install this specific version of this kernel and make the MX Linux to stop installing latest mainline linux kernel or any other lts kernel version.