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 a message appeared saying "kernel panic, please restart." This is my first time using Linux after only using Windows, so I'm worried that I may have damaged something. Is this expected, and is it safe to try opening Linux again?
2 Answers
Since you were running Linux directly from a USB drive and had already been told to remove the installation media, this probably didn’t damage your laptop. Try turning it on again and booting either into your installed Windows system or the USB session. A one-time shutdown panic can happen during live-USB shutdown, though it isn’t ideal behavior.
You can safely try again. Make sure the USB is inserted before powering on if you want to start Linux, and remove it only when the shutdown screen specifically asks you to. If the same panic happens repeatedly, recreate the USB installer or check the downloaded Linux image, since a faulty image or USB stick could be responsible.
I restarted the laptop and it booted back into Windows normally, so I’ll try the USB session again later.