I got the T460 refurbished and I really didn’t want to run Windows 10 on it. I last used Linux for any real length of time a good 20 years ago, so I’m pretty inexperienced with it at this point and I had to figure out how to install it myself.

They made it unreasonably difficult to first install an OS from a USB stick. I had to go into the BIOS, turn UEFI to legacy, turn off secure boot, reboot to boot from the USB stick, install Mint, then turn legacy back to UEFI to get it to boot from the hard drive. This took about 2 hours of trying to figure it out by doing a lot of forums reading.

I do not blame the Mint community or the Linux community as a whole. There is absolutely no reason that it should have been that hard to install Mint on that notebook.

I don’t even think getting into the BIOS once time should be necessary, but changing a BIOS setting so you can install the OS and changing it back so you can run the OS off the internal drive is just ridiculous and I find it hard to believe Lenovo couldn’t have just made it easier. I’m fairly convinced this was intentional on their part.

I’m not an IT professional or anything, but I know enough to figure this stuff out with effort, but it shouldn’t have taken that effort. It should have been almost plug-and-play. This is 2024. The notebook isn’t even 10 years old.

Is there actually a good reason for this or are they just kissing Microsoft’s ass?

  • Shareni@programming.dev
    0·
    10 months ago

    I recently installed it on a t480 while distrohopping. I didn’t need to turn off uefi, secure boot has been off since i got this laptop and i never turned it back on. My best guess is that you either did something wrong when making the live media, or during the installation. Next time try using ventoy, it’s a really useful tool.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
      0·
      10 months ago

      I’ll try Ventoy next time, thanks. I just followed the install instructions on Mint’s website which says to use Etcher. Maybe that’s the problem.

      • Shareni@programming.dev
        0·
        10 months ago

        Also, did you manually edit your partitions? It might be related to your bootloader being in /boot instead of /boot/efi. The first one’s for legacy bios, and the second is for uefi.