Trouble Installing Mint Linux on laptop

[Xa3phod]

I have a ROG G750JW laptop. I tried to install mint on it and it wouldn't install. When I get to the installation screen it asks me to put in a password for the secure boot, but I don't think the laptop has secure boot. I don't see the option in the bios. When I continue, I get a weird message box with ???????? in it. Something is obviously wrong. I installed a SSD and formatted it into ext4.

 

I also tried to use the live cd to test it out, it boots fine, but I cannot get the wifi to work at all. I tried everything short of installing it. Any suggestions on that?

 

Lastly, should I try dual booting it? If I do install it in my main SSD and I decide I don't care for it, How do I go back to a single windows 10 partition? Do I have to use partition magic or is there some easy to go revert?

 

Thanks for the help.

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

screenshot?

 

what wifi card do you have?

 

Did you turn off secure boot?

 

[Xa3phod]

I will try again tomorrow and take a SS.

 

BCMWL63A. Not sure if that's the model, its a Broadcom.

 

I so not believe this laptop has secure boot. I don't see an option in the BIOS, it doesn't have UEFI.

[Cobiskuit]

Linux Mint has a new way of making Secure Boot work on systems with that enabled, involving a password that is usually set during installation. Might need to re-install, and if you can turn on Legacy Boot support or something like that it may help. You'll want to do that before installation though.
And if this launched with Windows 8, it almost definitely has UEFI or Secure Boot. If you don't see it, it could already be disabled.

[Xa3phod]

It did launch with Windows 8. I'll look for legacy boot option. Thanks.

[Steo]

I looked up this laptop and it seems that someone else mentioned getting a secure boot violation message then needing to disable it.

[Xa3phod]

It does have secure boot. I am disabling it.

 

So, if I install linux and dual boot and decide to revert, do I use partition magic and just delete the linux partition and move it back into the windows partition?

 

What do you think of dual boot?

[Cobiskuit]

I would recommend dual booting if you can spare the drive space. If your computer has two drive bays (some of the gaming laptops do so I throw it out there), I always do two completely different drives and just have one set to boot by default. But it's a great way to try something out and see if you like it. One thing I would mention with deleting it later: Yes, you can delete the partitions and just resize them, but follow this link to also uninstall the GRUB bootloader if you decide to remove Linux Mint. That step can be done before you remove partitions or after, so don't sweat that.

 

Hopefully you enjoy it! I actually moved to Mint a little bit ago after years on Fedora, highly recommend it.

[Xa3phod]

Thanks. I will give it a shot. Aside from gaming, there is really no reason to use Windows for me.

[Steo]

9 hours ago, Xa3phod said:

Aside from gaming, there is really no reason to use Windows for me.

It's been this way for me for the past couple of years, but with projects like Proton and the likes of DXVK, gaming on Linux is actually going really well. I play GTA on Arch a lot and it runs great, probably just as good as it runs under Windows.

[Xa3phod]

If Planetside 2 worked in Linux I would completely ditch Windows. You may get the game to run, but the anti cheat will not work outside of windows.

[Nayr438]

4 minutes ago, Xa3phod said:

If Planetside 2 worked in Linux I would completely ditch Windows. You may get the game to run, but the anti cheat will not work outside of windows.

Depending on the specific AntiCheat, some of them are in the works at the moment for Proton Support. Might be a Month or 2 but it is being worked on from all sides.

[Steo]

VAC was the only thing I could think of that would be a problem on Linux, which sounds ironic considering Proton is a Valve project. I don't play competitive games anymore where anti cheat could be an issue for me, but it's nice to know they're working on it for the people that do.