Linux Mint update: Good news, bad news

First, the good news, which started with Very Bad News.

I got Jeff a Lenovo YOGA 2-in-1 laptop a few months back to replace the aging and decrepit 2017 iPad Pro I gave him when I got a new one in 2020. It has worked OK since, but there have been a few little glitches and weirdness. I was unsure how much was to blame on the hardware, Windows or moon phases.

I got my answer a few days ago when the laptop booted up to an obscure Bitlocker error. I did not realize Bitlocker was even on–it’s activated by default on the Windows 11 install. Researching the error, I was not able to find a reliable solution. Jeff gave the thumbs up to the “nuke from orbit” option. I selected the Windows reset option that blows everything away. It produced an error message with no description other than “an error occurred.” I then offered to install Linux Mint. He said go ahead.

• I prepped a Mint USB stick.
• I inserted the stick and booted from it.
• I chose the Install Linux Mint option on the desktop.
• Linux Mint installed and was ready in significantly less time than it took to get to the Windows 11 desktop after unboxing the laptop–and Windows 11 is pre-installed.
• Mint automatically recognized the Brother printer once it connected to the Wi-Fi. The touchpad was recognized, as was the included pen when using the built-in drawing app, cleverly named Drawing.

Everything is working just fine. The laptop, to me, feels snappier and more responsive. It may actually be a better laptop now with Mint than the bloated mess that is Windows 11. This is good news.

Now, the bad news. On my PC, I dual boot between Windows 11 and Mint. Mint has generally given me no issues, but at some point recently and issue did arise. It may have been an update or something else, I’m not sure. It’s not Bitlocker, at least.

The issue seems to be related to Firefox, the built-in browser (and my browser of choice) and YouTube. At some point, while watching a YouTube video, the whole system will freeze and continue to freeze intermittently. The only way to fix it once it starts showing this behaviour is to shut down Firefox.

The issue might be Firefox. It might be YouTube. It might be something else. I have done no troubleshooting. What I have done is started testing to see if the issue replicates in Vivaldi, my backup browser of choice. So far, it has not happened with Vivaldi. This makes me sad, because I want to keep using Firefox in Mint, but I also really don’t want to spend time troubleshooting this when a) I may spend a lot of time on it when I could be doing something productive or at least entertaining and b) I may find no actual solution. So this is bad news.

But I may do a little troubleshooting, at some point. Maybe.