I have a Windows 11 laptop and recently gotten excited to try Linux. I read good things about Mint being pretty good to go out of the box, and while I can be a fast learner I’m also tired and don’t have a tremendous amount of bandwidth.
So I followed all the installation instructions, verified, flashed a USB, booted into it and started to install a dual boot of it. Made it through installation until it told me my computer had BitLocker on, and I’d need to go turn it off and try again. Fair enough.
Went back into my Windows OS (after booting it went to “diagnosing your PC”). I don’t seem to have bitlocker installed - looks like a Pro version thing which I don’t have. It did show that encryption was enabled, so I turned it off.
Restarted to boot to USB. Nope, “mmx64.efi - Not Found” error.
OK, googled it, renamed it, let’s go.
error: shim_lock protocol not found error: you need to load kernel first
OK… I googled it just enough to see this is going to be a pain.
I tried remaking my USB just in case, didn’t help. It’s extra frustrating because my first attempt to boot into Linux went so well! How did it go from booting into it flawlessly to giving me a series of errors?
Did I anger the Microsoft gods and now they’re blocking my path? Is this a bad omen that Linux is going to be a problem on my laptop in general?
Once you fixed that issue did Linux work well dual booting? I’m sure I can get past it but I’m mostly worried that this foreshadows ongoing problems
I have had similar and yeah once secure boot was taken care of it was fine. Unfortunately these bios things are heavily influneced by microsoft and then machines that come with windows have settings to make it hard to not boot the windows parition that was put in. To be clear this is not a linux thing and actually should be a reason you would want to run away from windows.
You already have two answers but let me add one more: completely smooth here. I’d been dual booting for many years and rarely have any issue (besides Windows update occasionally borking the bootloader and having to reinstall Grub)
But these days gaming on Linux is so smooth I really don’t need Windows any more. I still have it on my machine, dual booting, but I haven’t actually booted into Windows in at least 6 months.
I don’t even game or use any Windowed only programs. I watch shows, use web apps for work, and that’s about it. If I can run Firefox and Stremio that’s about 95% of my needs met, ha!
I dug out my old MacBook to see if I can test out some distros on it. If I find one I like and use for a bit I’d be all in on trashing Windows
Great, for office-style work and Netflix there’s really no reason to feel tied to Windows any more these days.
Not the one you’re asking but I’ve been dual-booting Windows and Linux on my gaming desktop for many years, every time a build a new PC, disabling “secure boot” AND “fast boot” in the BIOS is the very first thing I do and I never had problems (I play on Linux but I keep Windows for testing in case I want to report a bug).
Fast boot is even more troublesome, since it’s a Windows specific feature that allows it to not truly shutdown so it can startup faster later, but that can cause locks for other OS that won’t work correctly.
In theory, Linux should be able to support secure boot (not fast boot), but since that one too was made for Windows, there are cases in which it could cause problems, I will always disable it just to be on the safe side.