If I had to guess, you were reading the man page of mount and then accidentally pressed s j RET.

Uh, why would it have that effect? I wouldn't be surprised though, because it was probably taking forever to display and I tried typing keys to see if it froze.

Anyway, that's the least of my worries, but it was just a weird anomaly and I didn't know if it mattered.

But what about all the rest? For one thing, without being able to install GParted I can't set up the UEFI, and even if I could, the whole thing may run slow as crap still! I just don't see why it's running so slowly even on a USB 3.1 drive in a USB 3 port, considering that the old USB 3.0 drive that I had installed Mint onto a couple months ago runs fine, but the only difference is that it's 8 GB instead of 16 GB (but it's the same brand) and I never partitioned that one, but just installed Mint straight onto it.

EDIT: I just tried it again and now it feels like letting me see the software in the Software Manager and install GParted. while only using 100% of one single processor to do so. Well, I have no idea what that was about, but I'll run it now. In any case, I'm still getting these lagging symptoms in almost everything I try to do.

The pager lets you log stuff to a file. I still suspect vesafb (and if you want to try a potential fix that *sometimes helps*, try adding video=vesafb:mtrr:3 to the kernel command line in grub) but if you want to investigate the performance issue, then you'd have to try isolate the source of slowness. I.e. bench the CPU and storage separately. Possibly also compare dmesg from fast & slow system. It might also help to observe top in a terminal and see which process(es) are burning the CPU.

By the "vesafb" are you referring to the parameter "xforcevesa" that I use to allow me to boot without having it corrupt the image? Actually, come to think of it, I didn't even use that parameter this time, and it worked anyway, but I guess that must be because I'm in BIOS mode instead of UEFI, because that's the only difference that I can imagine would affect it (after all, the boot process does look different in the two modes). So if that's what you're referring to then I don't think it could be the problem, considering that I'm not currently using it.

However, now I've completed the installation process and I'm about to go back into UEFI mode (or at least attempt to do so, but my computer doesn't seem to be allowing me to switch back, for some reason), so I may have to turn on that option to be able to boot.

I tried running dmesg recently and it printed like 100 pages of junk, so I couldn't make any sense of it, unless you have specific parameters that I should use or something. I'll look into that though if you think it's a good idea.

I'm not sure what you mean by "observe top in a terminal" - what's "top"? Actually though, a lot of the time the processors aren't running much or using much of their power (usually something between like 5% and 10%), but stuff is still running slowly, which is weird, because you'd think they'd use more power to speed it up in that case, right?

'Best' is really going to depend on a lot of factors, from how your hardware 'likes' it (the linux) to how you like to use an OS.

For me i jumped on the Linux Mint band wagon in the Windows 8 era (seeing where Windows was likely going, and W10 confirmed my concerns) and have been running a mixed Win7 and Linux Mint household for the last 5 years or so.

It works and means i have no actual need of W10, which is a great relief!

This was my most recent PC build:

https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=309344

Always TEST Mint first by running it from the DVD/USB where you burnt the iso, this will run in a 'live' session from the media source BEFORE you install anything, and although slow (vs being on an SSD or HDD) will let you know if the specific hardware/laptop is going to be fine after installation (in general).

For me, the 'best' kind of Linux was one that was familiar to use to the majority of my computer background (Windows) and mostly 'just worked' without needing to constantly be tinkered with or updated and offers a robust Windows-like GUI. Linux Mint (17.1 to 19.1 so far) was that 'best' kind of Linux for me (having tried a few like Ubuntu and Manjaro).

No use except for games that will only work on Windows 10. Anyway, this discussion has actually evolved way beyond what the best Linux distribution is, but I don't expect you to know that, so thanks for your opinion anyway, and I happen to agree with you (I'm also using Mint).

Cool. Mint is not perfect, but if you want something 'comfortable' and practical, not many Linux does it better overall in my experience.

I haven't tried many others, but I'm glad to hear that, because I made the right choice.

Regarding the other matter, I've now finished the installation and managed to set the computer back into UEFI mode, but I'm quitting for the day (though I may possibly reply to more posts later), so I'll try booting the USB in UEFI mode tomorrow and see how that turns out. I may not get to it for a while though because I have something else that I need to take care of in the morning.

No.

If there's no other driver that can provide for a graphics mode, then it's automatically going to be vesafb (in BIOS mode) or efifb (in UEFI mode). xforcevesa is something ubuntu specific and I don't have the sources or docs available to me to look up exactly what it does but it probably just configures X to use any available framebuffer device instead of drm. Save it to a file and attach it (or post it to some pastebin).. top (the load it shows is also somewhat useful information)

Processes can migrate between cores especially if they get frequently blocked (then rescheduled) so instead of seeing 100% on a core, you can see a few percent on multiple cores. Of course they can also be just blocked by I/O and be unable to spend any more time on CPU. (And it's not power, it's time)

Well remember that this is going to need to be portable, so it needs to run on any computer, which means it needs the most generic driver that it can get. It won't be able to upgrade the driver once it's complete.

Also, I don't mean for the following to sound like any kind of argument, but it's just my own speculation, and I don't know about the driver being the problem - maybe it is for some weird reason that I'm overlooking, but it's just that I don't see how, because:

- I already got Linux installed and working much quicker on a a USB drive (but without separating it into 3 partitions), so unless this time it somehow gave me a different driver, even though I used the exact same installer and I'm running it on the exact same computer, I don't see how that could be the case.

- I was using BIOS mode this time, which is different than the UEFI mode that I used before, BUT I tested the old USB installation that I previously mentioned, while still in BIOS mode, and it works fine (and I had never updated the driver on that one, nor even installed the WiFi to enable me to download a new driver).

- Why would a bad graphic driver cause things like the Software Manager to take 10 minutes to grind away at 50% of all 16 processors to accomplish absolutely nothing?

- Icons and things were loading slowly, but it doesn't have problems displaying them once they're loaded, so I'm not sure why that would be a problem.

I guess if all the graphical resources were being loaded extremely slowly into a video card then that could cause a huge delay, and if Software Manager is designed to wait until they're loaded before doing anything else then I guess that could have that effect, BUT it wouldn't cause my processors to all be in such heavy use because it would be the GPU which is overtaxed, right? Also, that wouldn't account for the quicker running of the other USB installation, regardless of whether it's running in BIOS or UEFI mode.

I'm not sure how I could get it to you in a pastebin (I had to look up what that even means), but if you tell me the stuff you're looking for maybe I can grep it or something.

Thanks for the top tip ;). I just tested it, and I'll try it the next time that I'm running the USB drive (I guess that will be tomorrow).

Yeah, I know that can happen, but I was just surprised about how many were being used and how heavily. And yes you're right that it's time, but I said power because I guess my brain's a bit crud right now from too much work on this all at once. I was just hoping to get it working today (and it sort of does, but slowly - I'm still hoping it may improve on its own if I can't fix it manually).

Ok maybe I've lost track of all that you've done but last time it sounded like the slowness was only a problem in your new bios-mode installation.

Right. The slowness only happens with the new installations that I make when I partition the drive into 3 pieces, but I've only tested that in BIOS mode (I just got the UEFI partition finished at the end of the day yesterday and I'll test it today after I eat), but the old drive that I made a couple of months ago runs quickly even when I run it in BIOS mode, but I just did a normal installation for that and didn't cut it into partitions, so I'm not entirely certain that it would run on other computers (though on this one it runs in both UEFI and BIOS mode, but I was booting it from the GRUB on the HD, and I don't think it would boot on its own - also, I'm not entirely sure whether my CSM is fully a BIOS/Legacy mode, or just an emulation thereof, which may have been implied in my UEFI).

One of the reasons I can think of why your computers GRUB partition keeps corrupting itself is you doing something insane like listing both the UEFI hard drive boot partition and the BIOS hard drive boot partition. then blindly copying that /fstab file to your Linux Mint USB instal.



back to Knoppix: yes, try it out. Try burning it to a DVD, and booting from that.
For live-linux installs onto a USB stick, use this https://www.pendrivelinux.com/category/bootable-usb-creator/
I know that it works, I have gotten Knoppix, Fedora, and Linux Mint live-cd's booting off the same USB stick using the pendrivelinux Universal USB Installer

Well I just tried booting to the drive, and not the boot menu didn't even give me the option for PMAP. When I was in BIOS mode it showed that and then when I chose it, it said that it couldn't boot and I should restart, but at least the option appeared, and it didn't when I started the computer in UEFI mode. And I had the USB stick in a back port which is USB 3.
I didn't to anything witht he /fstab file, or list anything like that. At least not manually, but I don't know if it's automatically doing those things for some reason.

Well I can't have anything that's just live because I need it installed so that I can install extra software and make changes, so if Knoppix is only live then I can't use it, unless it's extremely persistent and lets me make lots of changes. But thinks for the link for the USB creator thing. I'll try that.

EDIT: Wait a second though, does it only make live versions? I already have a live version of Linux Mint on a USB, but I'm trying to use it to install Mint onto another USB, so that I can change configurations and install extra software, but the problem is that I can't boot from it directly without going through the GRUB on my HD, and I need something that boots independently.

Or am I misunderstanding what I read on their website, and it actually does a full install which is then bootable? And if so then boot in both BIOS mode and UEFI mode?