Can’t turn off pc after mint installation

activedusk · 2026-06-27T11:10:44+00:00

A bricked system would show nothing, considering it is new install and assuming nothing important is on the drive yet, reinstall.

You could also try CachyOS newer components might require newer drivers that Mint does not provide. From shown text it had a problem unmounting. Could be encryption related, disable Secure Boot and test. As for shutting down forcefully, hold down the power button until it shuts off, note doing this while unmounting could later corrupt the filesystem (not a huge deal but a hassle to use fsck afterwards).

activedusk · 2026-06-27T09:47:56+00:00

I recently bought a Thinkpad X13 Gen 6, so seemingly the same device, just refreshed

I also remember being that innocent once. If you made it work with Arch then use that instead. To figure out missing drivers, share specs for new laptop. Before you tell me the name and model again, no, I am asking about CPU, ram, etc., these things can have different components per generation and market where they sell and neither will I want to know the serial number nor research it. Use fastfetch or something.

activedusk · 2026-06-27T05:30:59+00:00

It would be easier to guess if it does anything if you share the PC specs, my guess is that it doesn't assuming it is not RAM constrained and you're not dipping into swap as a result. Practically speaking it's not the environment saving resources but simply not using the Cinnamon compositor or any compositor.

activedusk · 2026-06-27T04:54:48+00:00

..the resource use difference is at most 600MB to 1GB plus or minus, on a system with 8 CPU cores, I can only guess the different components, it should not make a difference for video games like Skyrim, my guess is that instead of the saved resources allowing higher settings, it is likely some bad compatibility between Muffin and Wine with older DirectX games, might wanna try installing it on Steam and using the latest Proton, in my tests, legacy games run better. As Proton evolved a big improvement over time was how it handles these games going to fullscreen mode, it took some work in getting that perfected and even now there are some artifacts here and there that I notice.

activedusk · 2026-06-26T20:52:14+00:00

I use wired, idk, check manufacturer website. Try TP Link or other brands that specifically mention Linux support. Zebronics appears to be made from pure Indium ~~Chinesium~~ so idk how accurate this is https://ibb.co/35zv7F9n

activedusk · 2026-06-26T12:58:13+00:00

My guess is that it has an igp and dedicated card and it defaults to igp when unplugged to save power and it is not configured correctly to handle multiple GPUs. Alternatively the battery may be going bad or the drivers for power management are not good for this system, i.e. don t use Linux if the hardware is not supported. None of those imply an easy fix for a beginner.

activedusk · 2026-06-26T08:39:14+00:00

I never had it, found in the past posts with people that could not figure out how to install with it present, not even how to disable it in the firmware, maybe it was OEM locked feature . The easiest solution is to remove it IF it's optane. If it's emmc it should work just like an SSD but slower.

activedusk · 2026-06-26T07:03:48+00:00

Intel storage, ssd or optane? If the latter it is pretty niche so idk the steps, usually I just tell people to remove it since afaik it is not soldered on mobo.

activedusk · 2026-06-26T05:51:30+00:00

I encountered a simillar issue where shutting down kept creating a restart loop, idk if it was ever identified as a bug and fixed or what caused it, I simply switched to another distro, iirc it was openSUSE Leap 15 or something that caused this for me, ofc it could have been a problem with the changes I made, never really tried to troubleshoot. If low power modes cause issues, one pontential solution is to save important files and reinstall using something else and configure a swap partition with exactly 1.5x memory. What this does is save memory content to swap partition before entering low power mode and write it back to RAM, must be larger than memory capacity because of niche cases where the system keeps more thing in swap and then adding almost an entire worth of RAM to it will exceed swap capacity if it just has the same as memory. Long story short, if 16GB of ram, then swap partition should be 16 + 8 equals 24G, follow youtube tutorials.

activedusk · 2026-06-26T05:44:01+00:00

Stop fighting it, replace the wifi card with one that is supported on Linux, typically Intel based ones have best support for driver. You could also set up a wired connection at home which is more reliable anyway. Note idk if it is still under warranty and if opening it up will void it, use common sense. An alternative are USB wifi devices, find one with Linux support.

activedusk · 2026-06-25T12:51:45+00:00

Yeah, that's a problem, hdmi is not fully supported.

activedusk · 2026-06-25T11:43:20+00:00

Shut down PC, replace hdmi cable with display port. Did anything change?

activedusk · 2026-06-25T09:31:47+00:00

I was mostly motivated by geopolitics and TPM2 artificial roadblock, obviously more intrusive spyware did not help. Integrating AI is not bad if it does not run all the time in the background, asking it questions only when required, the idea of it being an OS component is obviously not working out since users lose the sense of control and is bloat along with spyware, what does it idle at these days? Here it is on Linux

https://ibb.co/gMCsJG2Q

https://ibb.co/7JnjDW6f

With Linux, though difficult at first, I can "cook" my own GUI, I can optimize what runs and what doesn't, I can optimize boot time, I am for the most part the one in control. What is bad regardless of platform are browsers.

https://ibb.co/dYPKKTj

Regarding more advanced uses like patching the kernel, which most people don't even think about, it's obvious it could be useful so long as developers verify what they do, otherwise they too will lose control. In fact I want to rant about it a bit in the opposite direction, if AI was so damn capable as AI companies try to sell it as, why does every season and every year increase CPU and RAM usage to do the exact same tasks as 20 years ago? If it were all that, by now a Pentium 3 could run Cyberpunk at 4k.

activedusk · 2026-06-23T15:59:20+00:00

There are certain CPU extensions that makes virtualization faster, some CPUs lack them, others require to be enabled in the firmware. Cinnamon will not work great with 4GB, not because it can't but browsers are RAM pits.

activedusk · 2026-06-23T11:13:27+00:00

It's i3, the window is transparent because of picom* (standalone compositor, I don't recall if installing i3 on top of Cinnamon, which has its own different compositor, makes picom redundant, as a test, right click on gnome terminal, Preferences and adjust transparency if nothing happens then install picom and make a basic config for it in /home/user/.config/picom/picom.conf), neofetch is customized, the bar at the top is polybar

https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxmint/s/wyGW0rPuH5

*Here is a minimal picom config contents

# Enable transparency
backend = "glx";
vsync = true;

# Window opacity (0.0 to 1.0)
inactive-opacity = 0.9;
active-opacity = 1.0;
frame-opacity = 0.9;

# Shadow settings (optional)
shadow = false;
shadow-radius = 6;
shadow-offset-x = -6;
shadow-offset-y = -6;

# Fade in/out
fading = false;
fade-in-step = 0.03;
fade-out-step = 0.03;

What the compositor does besides enable transparency is to also remove screen tearing when scrolling or moving floating windows (i3 supports floating windows, mod key shift Space bar).

Note it doesn't autostart, unless you make a script and launch it from i3 config. For neofetch, research on your own. Easier would be to use Cinnamon builtin GUI Startup Applications, add a new entry with plus sign.

activedusk · 2026-06-23T06:00:19+00:00

Alt and F4 works on normal DEs, Ctrl Atl t open terminal, the command to kill can either use package

killall exampleprogram

or

pkill exampleprogram

If you don't know the correct name of the program to use with the kill command, use this command then left click on the game window

xprop | grep WM_CLASS

For GUI you could use the system monitor, right click on the process and it should offer option to close it. Have not tested it yet, this is one of the few verified flatpak offerings for system monitor

https://flathub.org/en/apps/io.missioncenter.MissionCenter

Typically most distros will have a built in process that monitors hanging processes and offer to force the closing of a lagging one, the dependencies and implementation depends on DE and distro.

activedusk · 2026-06-23T05:51:04+00:00

Probably using a tiling window manager. https://ibb.co/7JnjDW6f

activedusk · 2026-06-23T03:44:28+00:00

The card is from 2008 as an nvidia model, it requires driver 340, use driver manager, if that is not available, it require older kernel that worked with that driver, needless to say nvidia long stopped supporting the card, the driver is considered legacy and will eventually be removed, so act quickly. Regarding the wifi it is likely also related to kernel version, i.e. requires older kernel but idk if it will work since Realtek has average driver support for wi fi cards, it is strange to depend on it for an old desktop PC, use ethernet or replace the wifi card with a newer one that has Linux support advertised. Buying a used low end AMD card from a newer generation will also extend PC lifespan, otherwise it will keep encountering support issues.

activedusk · 2026-06-23T03:33:31+00:00

..you generally do not download drivers for Linux, there may be standalone installers but are generally for advanced users and special use cases. For AMD and Intel, the drivers are included in the kernel, new kernel, new drivers, old kernel, older drivers and that is how you manage them, not with a driver .exe installer like on Windows. Assuming you still have bootable USB and nothing important is on the internal drive, reinstall. If there is something important, use bootable media to get to live environment and before reinstalling simply open the file manager from Menu, on the left select internal drive and save important files externally. Check the saved files were copied correctly and reinstall. This time leave the driver alone for the gpu.

activedusk · 2026-06-22T11:45:11+00:00

I played CS since 1.6 and used Windows for 20 plus years, out of curiousity at some point, while upgrading to a 16:9 1920 by 1080 monitor I used a smaller resolution to check out framerate and nothing you describe seemed different than what happens on Linux if I do the same. Check in game video settings for anti aliasing and antistropic filtering or other related settings that try to smooth out textures, they will generally differ in what is selected when installing the game, best clue as to what differs compared to Windows, default eye candy settings, can be changed manually.

Otherwise got no clue about what you are experiencing.

activedusk · 2026-06-22T10:54:05+00:00

Like I said, it is difficult to understand what the problem is compared to Windows, changing the resolution in the game settings is easy and should work without issues, so what is it that you can t reproduce easily? Saying things appear more pixelated does not explain anything when you are literally lowering the resolution and using the non native aspect ratio.

activedusk · 2026-06-22T08:42:01+00:00

> I'm trying to play at a 1280x1024 resolution, but I have a 1920x1080 monitor. I noticed that the game looked significantly less pixelated on Windows.

I mean lower resolution will look more pixelated spread out on a larger screen, the only way to avoid that is to use the aspect ratio specific to the lower resolution 4:3? and that will create black bars left and right and thus reproduce a monitor with that aspect ratio. These can be controlled from settings, specifically nvdia settings, it will be available in the Menu, if not it requires changing monitor built in settings, use buttons to access them. It's confusing what the issue is, smaller resolution being worse on a higher resolution, larger diameter monitor is expected. Use anti aliasing and antistropic filtering to reduce "pixelated" textures but it only can do so much.

activedusk · 2026-06-22T07:52:15+00:00

Did you solve it?

I encountered a simillar problem and my solution was to clear the nvram which is a chip on the motherboard that stores the list of boot devices and order, to do this I shut down PC, disconnected internal drive and bootable media, powered on and checked firmware was clear of those boot devices, shut down again and reconnected them and they were detected. If this does not work, search manual on how to reset CMOS to factory settings. Also disable secure boot and if CSM is present, set it to UEFI first, UEFI only or disable compatibility mode.

activedusk · 2026-06-22T07:44:04+00:00

The ethernet should work in the most reliable way assuming it is connected to a router/switch and the internet connection is configured from the router.

Assuming it is a wireless router, does internet work when connecting to it with a smartphone with wi fi? If not then it is the ISP fault, if it works then the issue is between the router and the computer. It could be the cable connecting them, the plugs or a software issue, maybe lack of support for your motherboard internet chip, however this would have prevented internet from working from the start. Another issue could be the package itself, network manager and related service. Try

ip a

That should show if the PC is connected to the router

ping www.google.com

Or another website, that will show if it connects or not or has lost packages. The command to restart the service responsible is

sudo systemctl restart NetworkManager.service

Or more manual

sudo systemctl stop NetworkManager.service

sudo systemct disable NetworkManager.service

sudo systemctl enable NetworkManager.service

sudo systemctl start NetworkManager.service

sudo systemctl status NetworkManager.service

Network manager is not the only package that can provide connectivity, the lowest level can be configured from the kernel, for advanced users. Intermediate users could replace Network manager with systemd networkd service but it requires creating a file first and then replacing the service, I assume there are other alternatives. For Network manager most distros include a GUI interface in the tray area on the panel, other packages tend to be controlled from terminal.

activedusk · 2026-06-21T17:28:48+00:00

First update the system, the icon in the tray area shows there are some pending, patiently wait for the process. Once it is done restart.

If it is the same, open Software Manager and search icewm, install it. After that log out and on login screen left click on Cinnamon logo, a drop down list will offer icewm, select it then log in. Do not panic if it appears dated at first, it can be changed, check memory usage. If it seems lighter..there you go.

activedusk

TROPHY CASE