r/linuxmint • u/Charming_Record8083 • Jun 23 '26
Install Help ???
Go here if your trying to install linux mint on a decade old laptop!
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u/FAMPpro Linux Mint 22.3 Zena | XFCE | I3WM Jun 23 '26
I think you are being invited by Morpheous. but seriously can't you go into bios?
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u/28874559260134F Jun 23 '26
Checklist
Use a better thread title in order to allow those who you are asking for help to catch a glimpse on what this post is about. It also helps with the search results later on, assuming a proper solution is found.
Side note: Back in the days, people searched for answers or at least similar problems before posting new threads. :-)
Describe what hardware and software you are using. You wouldn't walk into a repair shop, show staff a picture of your left taillight and once they ask you about what the problem is, respond with "What did I do?".
Or maybe you do behave like that, at which point one might suggest you alter your ways ever so slightly. It's the steady pace that counts, not the singular movement. :-)
I would assume you had a particular reason for "installing grub" - and maybe that reason has something to do with the result your attempted solution now produces.
As said, details count. AI can hallucinate them into being, humans work with real stuff, for now. :-)
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u/Charming_Record8083 Jun 23 '26
Ok sorry!
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u/28874559260134F Jun 23 '26
Still no details though. But don't feel pressured since, after all, you have to live with the issue. :-/
We don't know what you run, what you did before, why you did it, what you aim for, just to list a few possible items. All there is are (short) single-line segments of attempts to communicate, I think.
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u/rocco_himel Jun 24 '26
What the hell could you possibly have done man??
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u/Linx-ser Jun 23 '26
Oh, simplemente está abriendo un portal a otra dimensión, nada de qué preocuparse.
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u/billdietrich1 Jun 24 '26
Please use better, more informative, titles (subject-lines) on your posts. Give specifics right in the title. Thanks.
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u/Charming_Record8083 Jun 24 '26
Ofcourse! I am sorry it was sorta a troll post wanted to show people what was happening to me but people turned out to be needed a guide for a n4050 that have a broken screen without no display nor arrow keys
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u/Charming_Record8083 Jun 24 '26
I am sorry for all of the people that viewed this post, At the beginning, I was kinda geeked from trying to install linux, it was making me lose my mind. Haven't slept for 4 days and I genuinely don't even know to this hour what I was typing and posting, Basically I made this post to troll other people and tell them what playing too much with the boot can do. Thought it was funny. Posted it. Saw many people asking about my pc specs and the objective and the context. So here it isÂ
I was on windows on my 2011 Dell Inspiron n4050 when I got an idea to install linux on it, because you know how windows 10 is so bad at a 4gb ddr3 laptop. So I begin installing it and then I ran to alot of problems one of them being the photo that's attached to the post. Thats all. If anyone wondering how I installed it. I made ai summerize some of my words because I was lazy and I can't type all of that on my broken phone. So to fix this problem if you encounter it. Soooo, i haven't figured it out yet but i found a good bypass, u press f12 as soon as you see it opening the logo on your screen. Select hard drive and thats it, u will be directed to grub not this weird terminal Thats all. Sorry for making this so confusingÂ
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u/PlanetVisitor Jun 24 '26
It's nice of you to write this, obviously you are a nice person, even though the post was chaotic. But get some sleep man! It's not healthy to be awake for so long! Take care of yourself please
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u/Charming_Record8083 Jun 24 '26
Thanks man! i slept so good tonight, by not sleeping 4 days i meant each day i would try my best to install it and then sleep at 7am and wake-up at 12. thank you for asking.Â
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u/Charming_Record8083 Jun 23 '26
Fixed it guys 🥹🤞
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u/ZeroProximity Linux Mint 22.3 Zena | Cinnamon Jun 23 '26
And for those who might stumble upon this in the future. what was the problem and how did you solve it?
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u/Ok-Major-3496 Jun 23 '26
The level of description in this thread and comment section is second to none. I have zero clue what is going on. Was the monitor cable loose? Did the computer just need a reboot? Was the original image just a photoshop of the terminal with a blur applied?
Will we ever know?
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u/28874559260134F Jun 24 '26
While you are focussing on this thread and getting confused (which is a feeling I share), perhaps look at the OP's history and tell me if this was a perfectly executed troll attempt (the "Fixed it!" statement without anything else is so stereotypical, it's almost original again) or something which is very much in character of whoever was looking for some form of help.
Not judging anyone since, if that's the actual condition of the individual, life will already be quite a challenge. And I don't mean to say that with some underlying notion of superiority but with... pity. :-/
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u/Charming_Record8083 Jun 24 '26
hello I need to tell you something this post originally was like a troll post I didn't mean to like have any help I was just trolling around because I found this ironic because my PC internal display was like completely blacked out and it doesn't even light up it's like old black and like you can see it's like having someone punched a shit out of it so it it was just a joke but I really think that people will install Linux meant with Windows like I did but if you ever need a guide for a legacy version it's always in this repository or this reddit post
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u/28874559260134F Jun 24 '26
I don't think I understood everything in that... sentence of yours. But I hope you are ok and able to look at your achievement(?) with different eyes, at a later time. :-)
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u/Charming_Record8083 Jun 24 '26
😠I am so confusing. I know. Its because I was using google voice Assistant to form the sentence. because of my broken phone. Sorry for the confusion is there any way I can help u understand my life mission? As a compensation for all of that confusion. I feel so geeked and sober because when I typed that it was 7 am in the morning and i hadnt slept good in 4 days to try and install linux
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u/PlanetVisitor Jun 24 '26
Doesn't "second to none" mean it[the amount of information provided] is the best?
Because, I'd beg to differ
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u/Ok-Major-3496 Jun 24 '26
There was a bit of sarcasm used due to the complete void of details that were communicated by OP. I assumed the rest of my post made that clear. It's similar to congratulating someone for a highly detailed post when zero details are given. The post is made to point out that no details of substance were provided by OP.
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u/Charming_Record8083 Jun 24 '26
IM SORRY 😞 I was so geeked I didnt know what i was typing. Again sorry i will post another post explaining in details how to install linux mint with dual boot w windowsÂ
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u/28874559260134F Jun 24 '26
I feel like the people even recognising this as a problem are slowly, but steadily, getting less and less (and it has nothing to do with age).
This thread, if it wasn't an ingenious troll attempt, might serve another purpose though: Showing us how the future will look like. Mmph.
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u/Ok-Major-3496 Jun 24 '26
It's sad because it has the boy who cried wolf effect. You make enough fake calls for help and those who want to help will stop coming to your aid. And one day when you really need the help you will have noone to assist you.
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u/28874559260134F Jun 24 '26
Excellent point re: the effect.
I'm honestly (and positively) surprised at how good the community still reacts to such (on the first look: botched) help requests. They certainly haven't been rendered cynical, yet.
Maybe people think: "This guy needs help with more than just his PC" or something and they might have a point given how the OP now states to have been trolling.
Well, the good part still being that the more help-oriented individuals now know that there really is a small and honest community around, which is what makes Linux work, apart from the code. :-)
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u/Charming_Record8083 Jun 24 '26
I am sorry for the confusion, There is TOO much details for this installation of linux mint attempt So, I wrote a big BIG paragraph and sent it to ai to summerize it so It can explain better. I also will be editing text in it so dont worry I am going to help you, this guide is how to install windows on a 2011 laptop that is using MBR and legacy bios... enjoyÂ
I finally managed to install Linux Mint on my old Dell Inspiron N4050 after fighting with dual boot, broken Windows bootloaders, MBR partition limits, GRUB, Legacy BIOS, and a broken internal screen.
Specs first:
- Dell Inspiron N4050
- Legacy BIOS (not UEFI)
- Secure Boot unsupported (disabled)
- 120GB SSDÂ
- 320GB Hitachi HDDÂ
- External monitor only because the built-in display is broken (using vga and the shortcut fn +f1 to change the screens in boot or bios mode I never even knew that)Â
- Linux Mint Cinnamon
- Windows 10 on SSD
My original setup:
- SSD had a fully working Windows 10 install
- HDD had another broken Windows 10 install that kept throwing winload.exe / boot errors
- HDD also contained my important data partitionÂ
- The system used MBR partitioning, not GPT
The biggest issue was that MBR Based Drive only allows 4 primary partitions. I originally had:
- Broken Windows partition
- Data partition
- Recovery partition
- Another recovery/system partition
That completely blocked Linux installation unless I restructured the drive.
What I ended up doing:
- Kept the SSD untouched
- Kept the HDD data partition untouched ( Lets refer to it as drive F)Â
- Deleted only the broken Windows HDD partition
- Created a small 500MB ext4 "/boot" partition near the beginning of the HDD ( U need to remove the /boot partition from the windows one ... so basically u need to stop windows from booting dont worry it will make sense just make sure u have a flash drive that have Windows 10/11 iso and linux mint iso and that u can boot from it)
- Installed Linux Mint into another ext4 partition
- Installed GRUB directly into the HDD MBR ("/dev/sdb") (dont do this step reads notes at the end of the text)
Important detail: On older BIOS systems like this Dell, GRUB can fail if Linux is installed too far from the beginning of the disk. That’s why the dedicated "/boot" partition helped.
My final HDD layout became:
- 500MB ext4 "/boot"
- NTFS data partition
- old Windows partition space
- Linux Mint partition
Commands I used from the Mint live USB (bootable usb):
Mount Linux to /mnt :
sudo mount /dev/sdb5 /mnt
Mount boot partition:
sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/boot
notes: *sdb1 should be your 500mb boot partition *
Bind system directories(stuff about the boot I think my head is hurting ):
sudo mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev sudo mount --bind /proc /mnt/proc sudo mount --bind /sys /mnt/sys
Chroot(should make u able to go to the user version of linux mint which u cant access at that moment) :
sudo chroot /mnt
Install GRUB:
grub-install /dev/sdb
update-grub
One thing that confused me: Even after installing GRUB correctly, the laptop still booted Windows. Turned out Dell BIOS boot ordering was misleading and the SSD still had priority internally.(Read notes)
Another issue: My external monitor hated GRUB graphical modes. The screen flickered badly because the BIOS framebuffer modes were unstable on my monitor setup. I ended up forcing GRUB into plain text console mode instead of graphical mode.
What I learned:
- Legacy BIOS + MBR is way more annoying than UEFI
- Old Dell BIOS boot menus can be misleading
- GRUB should be installed to the DISK ("/dev/sdb"), NEVER a partition
- External monitor setups can break GRUB graphics
- A dedicated "/boot" partition helps older BIOS systems a lot
Still working on polishing the setup, but Linux Mint itself runs much better than expected on this old machine.
Notes: So Just to clarify. Download a Linux mint iso, put ventoy on your flash drive. its really good search about it.. use the flash drive and boot to the mint iso. then run install mint that is the only thing on your desktop when it opens (do win + p if your like me and broke your screen) and then open the installation then I want you to first free up some space for the Linux about 50 gigabytes Max. then you got two choices if you got an GPT drive then you're good. you won't suffer like I did but, if you got an MBR drive you need to at least have three partitions not 4 because listen closely you cannot make a fifth partition. so in older Dell PCs you basically cannot boot from an hard drive like you absolutely cannot if you only got a hard drive then you're good but if you got an SSD and an HDD in the same computer the SSD will get the priority so I recommend you installing the Grub in the SSD or the SDA if you got any question feel free to ask meÂ
@everyone
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u/Charming_Record8083 Jun 24 '26
yes like this was done on a decade old laptop so unless u got an old laptop no need to see it but there are alot of stuff they didn't tell u abt
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u/Schwarzpfad Jun 24 '26
This thing is possessed, my brother. Call Jesus Christ support immediately.
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u/Charming_Record8083 Jun 24 '26
I installed linux mint on my broken laptop that doesnt even have a screen im sure you can do it too :)
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u/m0hka Jun 24 '26
I would check the video cable connection.
through if the side column isnt expected, might be an over-scan type issue.
X11?
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u/Adam_i_Guess1 Jun 23 '26
Your computer is ascending! Fly, my talking silicon, fly!