A Layman Learns Linux #1: Mint (with Cinnamon)
Mint is often recommended as a beginner-friendly flavor of Linux, but while it was more than serviceable for most tasks, it didn't take long for me to run into an issue that I was not equipped to solve, at least at this point in my Linux journey.
You read that title correctly, and no, I won’t be discussing dessert or drink recipes today.
If we're not counting SteamOS (Part 1 covers why I was hesitant to call myself a 'Linux user' after nearly three years of owning a Steam Deck), my first proper foray into Linux was through a beginner-friendly distribution called Mint. When I first tried to narrow down my choices from the dozens (if not hundreds) of different distros, I found quite a few recommendations citing Mint’s ease of use and overall simplicity. A handy resource called DistroChooser led me through a survey of various preferences and use cases. My survey results confirmed my suspicion: I should give Mint a try, but there were other viable options for my use cases such Fedora, Zorin, and OpenSUSE.
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| My DistroChooser result |
Before I went any further, I took a few minutes to install a new m.2 SSD. I didn’t want to format my current Windows drive, and thankfully my motherboard had room for an additional m.2 drive (though it was a plain SATA slot, not the faster NVME). The process of installing these little guys is always fun because it’s so simple: you just insert the keyed end (the one with the shiny leads) at a slight angle, then push the other end down and screw it in place. The drive just sits there, parallel to the motherboard. No cables needed! We are truly living in the future. If only high-capacity SSDs were cheaper...
Anyhow, I booted back into Windows for the last few steps. Heading over to the official Mint website, I was faced with a choice between different desktop environments, which would determine the graphical user interface. I eventually opted for Cinnamon since the official website described it as “The most modern, innovative and full-featured desktop”, and that sounded just dandy. I downloaded the latest version of Mint and used balenaEtcher to create a bootable flash drive, a process that took all of 5 minutes, if that.
The next step seemed fairly obvious: restart my computer, mash F11 when the BIOS screen comes up to enter the Boot menu (I have an MSI motherboard; other manufacturers may use different keys), and then select the flash drive. Well, this is where things started to get interesting. A bootable Linux flash drive actually contains a live immutable version of the OS that users can take for a test drive before committing. No changes will actually be saved to the system, but it’s nice for kicking the tires, so to speak. After a few cursory minutes of poking around, I decided that Mint seemed solid enough, so I double-clicked the lone icon on the desktop that read “Install Linux Mint” to do just that.
It was at this point that I may have made my first rookie mistake...by attempting to avoid a separate but still somewhat related rookie mistake. As I was following the installation guide that I found on Google, I saw a step that recommended removing the Windows drive if planning to dual boot. This was because there was apparently a bug in the Mint installer that would place the GRUB (or GRand Unified Boot Loader) on the first drive it saw – in this case, my Windows drive. This could become a problem if I decided to replace or reformat that Windows drive in the future, as Mint might not boot properly. Thus, I quit the installer before selecting a drive to install the new OS, shut down my PC, and unplugged all of my other drives, just to be safe.
Back on track, I booted into Mint from the live USB drive and began the installer again. This time, only my new SSD was visible, as planned, so I selected it and let the process finish. I rebooted my PC and was met with the following error.
Checking media [Fail]
Failed to open \EFI\BOOT\mmx64.efi - Not Found
Failed to load image ||||||||||| : Not Found
Failed to start MokManager: Not Found
Something has gone seriously wrong: import_mok_state() failed: Not Found
It was to exercise some additional Google-Fu. As luck would have it, there was a variety of possible issues. Some folks said to disable secure boot. No change. A forum post suggested reinstalling Mint again. That didn’t do the trick. Then I found this Reddit thread, which seemed to imply that a crucial file went missing during the installation process. Did bailing from the installer early cause the error? I’m still not entirely sure, but a few minutes later, I found a fix which involved renaming a specific file. Audibly sighing, I re-inserted my Windows drive, booted back into Windows 10, found the file on the USB drive called grub64.efi, copied it onto my Desktop in case I screwed anything up, and renamed the original file mmx64.efi. I then shut down my computer and removed the Windows drive again. Expletives were mumbled.
This time, the installer went off without a hitch, and within 15 minutes, I was looking at a fresh install of Linux Mint on my new SSD. A few obligatory system updates later, and the OS seemed ready to rock n’ roll!
Audacity itself seemed to work fine, recognizing my microphone and headphone amp without any trouble. There was some initial clunkiness with adjusting the volumes levels of multiple applications, but I figured out how to access that option in the system settings. Steam, however, proved to be problematic which sure surprised the hell out of me considering that I started this journey precisely because my experience on the Steam Deck was so positive. Well, the irony was not lost on me when the version of Steam — which, again, was downloaded straight from the official Software Manager — launched fine after it was initially installed but refused to do so again after a system reboot. Upon clicking the icon, a window would briefly open and show a loading message before vanishing as quickly as it appeared. I was able to launch Steam through the terminal, but that seemed less than optimal. I decided to install the Flatpak version, which ended up working as it should. This was a small annoyance in the grand scheme of things, but it still left me with an odd feeling.
Now that Steam was installed, it was time to start rebuilding my game library. However, I didn't want to have to redownload everything. I saw many suggestions online that I should not simply point this Linux installation of Steam to my existing Steam library due to the fact that my games were living on an SSD with an NTFS filesystem, i.e. one that doesn’t always play nice with Linux. This wasn’t much of a problem, though, as I was able to easily copy several game folders from my main game drive to the default install directory on my Linux drive.
The first title I launched was Arcade Paradise, a charming indie title in which players spruce up their father's aging laundromat with a back room full of playable arcade games. It ran beautifully, which wasn't much of a surprise considering that it was made in in the fairly ubiquitous and extremely scalable Unity engine. Up next was Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4, and this is where my troubles resumed. THPS 3+4 is a remake compilation of the original 6th gen games built using Unreal Engine 5, and while it is not graphically demanding, Unreal Engine games can be a real crapshoot in terms of performance. This particular game is one that I find extremely satisfying to play at a high framerate, and Mint was apparently not in a state to deliver that experience.
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| I can't perform sick combos unless it's running at 160fps, OK? |
A few minutes of internet sleuthing yielded whole host of potential issues and, going down the list, I attempted a number of fixes. I turned off full-screen compositing —whatever that is — to no avail. There also wasn’t an easy way to turn on variable refresh rate due to the way that drivers were handled at the OS level – that is, automatically installed with system updates. This meant that there was no way to access the AMD control panel where FreeSync/VRR would typically be found. The display settings were also fairly barebones. For example, there were only options for resolution, refresh rate, and either 100% or 200% zoom. Fractional scaling was available as an experimental feature, but that was another potential detriment to gaming performance.