My latest Linux escapades

I thought my new PC would be well-prepared for Linux–it has an AMD CPU and an AMD GPU, just like Linux distros love.

And in reality, I have installed a few distros with some success:

• Linux Mint, my old standby
• Kubuntu (Ubuntu, but with the KDE environment)
• KDE Neon (for when you want the very latest KDE)
• Pop_OS (to try out the Cosmic DE¹Desktop Environment)

The problem in each case was a variation of one of the following:

• The distro would not see my Windows 11 install and thus not create a proper dual-boot setup.
• The distro WOULD see Windows 11, but would still not create a dual boot setup, either by error or design (some distros will not do this without you going in with a hammer and fixing it yourself).

This would lead to things like having to mash the F8 key when switching OSes, which is a pain compared to a nice Grub menu. I faffed about on several of the distros, convinced I could sort it out. I could not.

I tried a bunch of things to help distros see Windows 11, from disabling fast boot, to twiddling with various BIOS settings, to unplugging USB drives. None of this has made any difference.

I thought about taking the SSD from my old PC with Linux Mint on it and adding it to the new PC, but this has its own problems:

• Probably needing to run some kind of boot repair to get Grub working properly.
• The old system has an Nvidia card and I don’t know how gracefully Mint would handle suddenly running on an AMD system before the right drivers could be installed.
• Also, opening up both PCs and moving the drive is just a hassle, and I’m kind of reaching my hassle limit.

So at the moment I’m at a standstill. I think I might try either Mint or Kubuntu again. Mint I know will not recognize Windows 11, and the manual partioning seems weirdly uncooperative. It is very possible this is a me issue. Or I might try Kubuntu again, which has generally been a smoother experience. I’ve even thought about nuking Windows 11 altogether, but I don’t have replacements for all the programs I use quite yet, so I’d prefer to dual boot for now.

I’ll probably decide on how I next want to faff about in the next few days.

Until then, here is a penguin, but not the Linux penguin.