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The MBA is the first and so far the only Mac on which I’ve installed Mint. I’ve installed versions of Ubuntu and Mint probably somewhere around 10 to 15 times on PCs. My old HP PC never initially finds the correct wifi drivers the first or second time from either the internet or from the installation usb stick; I always have to use the wifi dongle. On the MBA I was hoping to use the wifi dongle from the get go to get usable wifi drivers. That didn’t work as seamlessly as I hoped, but still not a big deal. And as an editorial comment I’d say every linux installation I’ve ever done has been much less problematic than, for example, a Windows installation.

Anyway, glad things worked out well for you.

The Microsoft support article for KB 5050593 says this:

“There are no new security improvements in this release. This update is cumulative and contains all previously released security improvements.”

So from a security point of view you’re fine since you installed the Janusry .NET patch.

FWIW I inadvertently installed the 5050593 a couple days ago and all is well. I can’t recall ever having any problems with .NET patches or previews; they seem to be far better behaved than, for example, the Windows 10 patch Tuesday security updates.

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SingBlueSilver, Microfix

I have a 2017 macBook Air that is no longer supported by Apple. I installed Linux Mint on it as described here:

https://www.askwoody.com/forums/topic/installing-mint-22-cinnamon-on-2017-macbook-air/

It’s a base model and when it was running macOS it was just another computer – I didn’t really like it and I didn’t really dislike it, although it did have a nice display and touchpad. Now, though, the thing just flies! Too bad it wasn’t very impressive when it was running macOS. If had been I just might have been a Mac convert.

Wubuntu sounds pretty good, especially on the wubuntu.org website. However, a bit more digging turns up articles like this from ZD Net:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/why-i-no-longer-recommend-this-windows-like-linux-distro/

There are many other articles from what appear to be reputable sources that discuss various legal and security issues with Wubuntu. Makes me wonder whether Wubuntu is just Ubuntu, which in and of itself isn’t a bad thing, with a Windows wallpaper covering the desktop, which is seemingly pointless to me.

If Wubuntu really is secure, won’t “vanish” because of legal issues, and really does run many or most Windows apps/programs seamlessly (i.e., without spending the better part of a day tweaking various settings to get the programs to work), that would be great. Otherwise, not so much, and I’ll stick with Linux Mint.

Ironic, isn’t it, that the OS that IMHO is far superior to either macOS or Windows is free? Maybe the latter 2 OSs need to spend more time on their OS and less on scraping money from wallets.

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Mothy

FWIW, I’ve got a Dell Latitude laptop with 5th gen core i5, 8 GB RAM and 500 GB HDD (NOT SSD!) and it took several hours to “upgrade” from W8.1 to W10. It also typically takes between 1 and 2 hours to install a patch Tuesday update of a Cumulative update, .NET update, and MSRT. It runs W10 quite well, but the updates are SLOW.

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Alex5723

FWIW: I updated last night to FF 134.0 on my daily driver (Mint 20.3 Cinnamon) and it looks almost the same as before (133.0.3). I’ve got the arrows on the left, the reload circle, the menu bar, and the hamburger. I don’t have the home page house icon, but then I never did as I don’t have a spcified homepage. The major difference is that the FF icon is now in the upper left and the local weather icon is in the upper right – just the reverse of what it used to be.

Frankly, I don’t get why FF is making a big deal out of it; IMHO the changes are trivial.

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Charlie, Microfix

Most people here think it’s a bad CMOS battery, although @Mothy directed me to a linux mint forum that describes a situation very much like mine. I have yet to pursue either approach. I said above that I wanted to save the computer but given that the computer is 15 year old, I may not pursue it.

The PC World article is dated November 26,2024. Is there any newer information?

Edit to add: According to this page
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/release-health/status-windows-11-24h2#3446msgdesc&xcust=2-1-2534540-1-0-0-0-0&sref=https://www.pcworld.com/article/2534540/windows-11-24h2-causes-usb-scanners-and-printers-stop-working.html

the issue has been resolved with KB5048667, which looks like the December 2024 patch Tuesday cumulative update for W11 24H2.

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PL1, Kathy Stevens

Many Dell laptops have easily replaceable power ports. I found what I call a power port assembly on Amazon for a Precision laptop; cost was about $5). It consists of the port and its connected wires that in turn plug into a board on the laptop. If the short is in this assembly the old assembly can be easily unplugged and taken out by removing one screw; putting the new one in is just the opposite. Access to the port assembly is gained by removing the underside cover of the laptop (usually just removing some screws will do it). Easy repair. If the short is on the board and/or plug socket that’s on the board, then you have a bigger problem. But the port assembly replacement might be worth a try.

Yes, the flash drive after the USB Image Writer does its thing has the ISO on it and is bootable. The flash drive should work just like the DVD did.

IIRC when you click on Download on the Mint website, you go to a page that gives you a choice of servers from which to download. There are academic sites (James Madison University, University of California Berkely, Harvard, and many others) and some non academic sites as well. In my opinion the sites are safe and secure. There are other AskWoody members who don’t agree with that and will suggest that you run an SHA verification on the download. I’ve never done that and have never had any issues (I’ve installed some version of Mint on a computer about 15 to 20 times, so I’m comfortable not doing the verification).

Once you have the bootable flash drive, just stick it in a usb port with the computer Off, then turn the computer on. If the computer recognizes the usb drive you should see an indicator light flashing away, if the flash drive has such a light (many SanDisk and PNY flash drives do). If there is no indicator light you’ll still be able to tell if the computer is booting from the flash drive because it will be a lot slower and after booting you should see an icon on the desktop that says something like “Install Linux Mint”. If the computer isn’t booting from the flash drive the boot will look like it always does and you’ll see your desktop that you always see when booting from an internal drive. At that point you’ll need to make the computer boot from the flash drive, but the basic method for doing that is outlined above in one of my other posts.

Assuming the computer has booted from the flash drive and that you’ve started the installation, at some point you will be asked if you want to install 22 alongside 20.3 thereby having a dual boot computer or if you just want 22. If you choose the latter you will be warned that you will lose ALL data and files that are currently on the internal drive since the installation will reformat the drive, effectively erasing everything. So if you want only 22 make sure you have everything backed up – photos, documents, other files, and bookmarks from browsers. You may need to install some of the programs you have manually, but you will get Firefox, Libre Office, and some others installed along with 22. Make a note of which programs you have currently installed, so you can get your new Mint 22 as similar to your 20.3 as possible.

Once you get the computer to boot from the flash drive, you’ll want a good hour to get Mint installed – more or less depending on how fast your computer is. Count on another hour to get fully updated with Update Manager – there may be a hundred or so updates to be installed. There are other suggestions of things you should do on a splash screen that appears when the installation is finished and that will take some time as well. You can do everything at once if you’ve got a few hours, otherwise I’d suggest doing the installation, then coming back and doing the updates and then coming back and doing the other suggestions. Until you set up the firewall (one of the suggestions), keep your surfing to a minimum; i. e., just do the downloads and patching/updating.

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Charlie

Go to the Mint download site and download Mint 22 Cinnamon to your computer. If you’re using a Mint computer the download will probably go to your Downloads folder in which you should see a file named linuxmint-22-cinnamon-64bit.iso. That’s the file you want to “burn” or write to a usb flash drive (assuming your brother can’t or won’t make a dvd for you), and you can do this with “USB Image Writer” which you open from the start menu in Mint. It will ask you what file you want to write to the usb (you want the .iso file mentioned above) and what usb drive you want it copied to (insert the flash drive you want the .iso on before starting the Image Writer program). When you’ve made those choices, click on “write” and it will write the .iso to the flash drive. This will take a few minutes, but when done you’ve got what you need to boot with and then install Mint. No need for Rufus; USB Image Writer is a very simple program, not much to learn, but it does the job. Once you have the bootable usb drive you just have to figure out how to boot from it, but once it does you should see an icon on your desktop that says “install Linux Mint”. Double click and follow the prompts.

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Charlie

How did you install Mint on the computer? Most likely it was from a usb flash drive that had an iso Mint image on it, and if that’s the case then there seem to be only 2 possibilities: either the computer’s BIOS is already set up so that it will boot from a bootable usb flash drive when such a drive is detected, or you had to somehow make the computer boot from the flash drive. In order to do the latter you either got into the BIOS (probably by hitting one of the F keys) and changed the boot order so it would first look for a bootable flash drive (typically when a computer boots it will by default boot off the hard drive (or SSD) where the OS resides) and then boot from it, or you did something like hit one of the F keys repeatedly right after the computer was turned on until you got an option for what to boot from – this would have bypassed the getting into the BIOS.

You should read the installation guide on the linux Mint website. It addresses at least some of the questions you have.

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Charlie

@Charlie: IIRC you were looking for a CMOS battery a while back. Did you ever find one, and if so, where?

I’ve managed to gently pry the CMOS battery in the Acer off a board (it was glued on), but don’t want to unplug it until I find a new battery. I have found only one place that sells the battery, an outfit called Rome Tech
(rometechcases.com) but am hoping to find some other places as well.

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Charlie

My 2 old laptops – the HP and Acer, both referred to above in my posts – both run LMC 22 just fine, the only issue being the slow boot time for the Acer. Both came with and still have the original 4GB RAM. I’ve only found a couple places that have RAM for these computers but since they run well as they are now, I’ve never pursued it; both are used as test machines and as computers of last resort. They both also have 500GB SSDs, which replaced their original 320 GB HDDs. The SSDs make a huge difference in speed.

My guess is that your (@Charlie) old Sony will be fine. You can always put a LMC 22 iso on a usb flash drive, boot up the Sony with it, and see how it runs. It will be on the slow side since it will be running off a usb drive, but you should be able to see if there are any features you use/need that don’t work. If something doesn’t work you may only need a driver and the Driver Manager can probably handle that.

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jburk07, Charlie