I'm trying to set up a server for my Factorio game, and I'm in the process of installing Linux Mint for the first time since using Ubuntu back in 2009, so I'm a bit rusty. I booted from a USB stick and reached the part about installing multimedia codecs, but it got stuck for about 10 minutes. I aborted the installation and tried again, this time without selecting the codecs, but I ran into the same issue. I found some tips online suggesting it might be related to NTFS formatting. I have two SSDs formatted as NTFS, with at least one still holding a Windows installation since the PC hasn't been used in five years. Do I need to reformat to a different file system before proceeding with the installation? I've seen advice about unplugging the drives due to potential bugs, but if I do that, I won't have any storage to install Linux. Any advice would be appreciated, thanks!
3 Answers
Linux can't install on NTFS drives directly, but the installer usually gives the option to wipe everything clean if you missed that, you can use GParted to format them yourself beforehand. If you're having trouble during formatting, perhaps it could help to unplug the SSD you're not planning to use to avoid any confusion during the process.
First off, Linux generally prefers non-NTFS file systems. For Linux Mint, EXT4 is the recommended default. You shouldn't need to reformat the drives beforehand; the Mint installer should handle the formatting during the installation. If you can, please share details about how you've set up your drive choices or post a picture of your disk selection screen for better troubleshooting.
Is Mint still sticking to ext4 instead of using btrfs?
I have two 500GB SSDs too, and they show up fine in the terminal with lsbkl. I haven’t touched any settings beyond language and keyboard layout yet.
Oh, I found some tips in an installation guide that might help! Also, it's recommended to connect via ethernet for stability during installation. And don't forget to remove the USB stick after it finishes installing!
I tried using GParted to format the drives to EXT4, but I got an error when attempting to create the new file system.