No video output on Mint??

[StevieP]

I've always wanted to give a Linux a go and so in order to dip my toe in I thought I'd give Mint Cinnamon a go and so created a bootable USB to give it a try on my Windows 10 desktop!

The trouble is that when I boot from the flash drive my monitor doesn't show any display!?!

If I choose to boot in compatibility mode then I get a desktop but with a message saying it's not running how it should and as a result my CPU usage will be too high!

Can anyone give me any pointers as to what I need to do to get it to display on a regular boot??

 

[StevieP]

Thanks for the reply!

I went for Mint right off the bat because I'd read that it was the most "Windows-like" (ie. a good starting point for someone with zero knowledge of Linus based OS's!) but I'll give Ubuntu a try!

The weird part is that I took the same flash drive and put it in my laptop, that also has an Nvidia GPU, and it booted just fine!?!?! I'm starting to wonder if it's a problem with either the GPU on my desktop or my monitor - had issues in the past with no output but that was when I was using the displayport as opposed to the HDMI-out!

 

[StevieP]

If you want windows like distro choose one with the the KDE DE, you generally have an option on boot or download the respective iso .

May I suggest you try Antergos(Arch based) with KDE or Mageia 6(RedHat based) with KDE.

Yeah....I didn't understand a word of that! Looks like a bit of Googling is in order!

Seriously though, thanks for the reply - it's not that I particularly want a Windows-like OS (if I did I'd just stick with Windows!) - it's that I want to get used to Linux (or similar) OS's as I'm hoping to pick up a Microserver and have a play about with it and try the different things that Linux offers!

 

[StevieP]

Thanks again - I've never even experimented with VM's and so have downloaded Oracle VM and am giving it a go!

I just want to make sure I'm not doing something catastrophic because I'm trying to install Ubuntu 16.04.2L and it's come to the stage where its warning me that if I "Erase disk and install Ubuntu" then it will delete all my programs, documents etc - I resume this only applies to the VM environment I've set up? (I left all of the settings at default so I think it allocated 10GB of "dynamically allocated" virtual hard disk for the VM - is this enough/correct?)

 

[StevieP]

Managed to get Ubuntu installed to a VM (in fact I am typing from within that very VM right now! ) - but the performance is what I would class as a little sluggish!

I can't quite remember what RAM I allocated to the VM - 1GB I think because that's what it recommended - would the performance improve if I were to re-allocate say 4 or even 8GB to it? Also, do I need to be worrying about downloading the latest graphics driver etc or should these be OK with the default install??

The only other question is am I able to view my NAS on my home network with the OS being "contained" within a VM? (I assume so as it would be a little redundant if not!)

I did have a look at Solus and it looked very nice - but there wasn't a "Use" or "Install" option like there was for Ubuntu so I assume it was just running off the virtually mounted CD and after a few minutes it seemed to grind to a halt! Is there a way to install it as I have with Ubuntu? (I chose "Linux - Other 64bit" within Oracle as I couldn't see Solus as an option - is this correct?

Thanks for the continued help - I know my original query has skewed a bit but this is all quite a lot of fun!