I booted Linux Mint Cinnamon 22.3 from a USB stick on my ASUS Vivobook, which has 8 GB of DDR4 memory. When I shut Linux down, it told me to remove the USB drive and press Enter. I removed the drive and pressed Enter, but then the screen displayed "kernel panic, please restart." This is my first experience with Linux—I've only used Windows before—and I'm worried that opening Linux again might damage the laptop. Is this expected, and what should I do?
1 Answer
Since you were running Linux Mint from a live USB, this is probably not a serious problem with your laptop. The system may have tried to finish shutting down after the USB was removed and failed to handle the transition cleanly. Hold the power button until the machine turns off, then start it normally and choose Windows if that’s what you want to use. You can also boot the Mint USB again later; this one-time message should not damage your installed system.
I restarted and I’m back in Windows now, so it seems like nothing was changed on the laptop.