Comments on: Linux Mint 17 “Qiana” Released – Installation Guide with Screenshots & Features

By: Don

Don — Sat, 20 Feb 2016 19:40:53 +0000

First THANKYOU for the clean, concise and accurate procedures presented here. Im a former 90s/ early Y2K (remember that?) IT guy, Computer Consultant in the day. Fell asleep for 15 years. Installed 1st dedicated Linux Mint Cinnamon Ver 17.3 desktop last night. Great Instructions! One observation is very few sites reference ver 17.3, even the LinuxMint user docs are still 17.2.
One issue was with Bios grub partition in step 6. Then left click on unallocated space, select New and enter the following settings for this partition then click on Add.
1. New size = 20 Mib
2. File system = Unformatted
3. Label = Bios Grub
Upon Step 11 press [Ctrl]+[Enter] keys and hit on Apply pop-up…. The File system automatically set itself to NTFS. This just felt wrong… I deleted the entry and redone. Same thing occurred. Still felt wrong for Bios grub so I changed File system to ext4 and it accepted it. Continued with installation and all so far seems fine. Is this CORRECT? I believe it has something to do with my bios. American Megatrends ver 2.61? I didn’t find anything in bios config which allowed me to specify OS to be installed. How will the ext4 for Bios Grub effect system performance and communicating with other windows drives/ files (when I add them)? Also is there any adverse effects or steps to take if I attempt to upgrade my bios?
Thank you again… Very nice much appreciated!

By: NewToLinuxToo

NewToLinuxToo — Mon, 23 Nov 2015 15:18:17 +0000

@lxhopeful, instead of leaving it as unformatted, you can choose ext4. In some of the other screenshots of step #13 it shows the format as ext4. I first tried with unformatted and was unsuccessful in the install. I went back into gparted and changed it to ext4 and was able to run through the install successfully.

By: Matei Cezar

Matei Cezar — Mon, 12 Oct 2015 13:15:38 +0000

In reply to Pratyay Barman.

No, there’s no need to create a separate partition for /boot on desktops, but, still, it’s indicated to do it!

By: Matei Cezar

Matei Cezar — Mon, 12 Oct 2015 12:57:26 +0000

In reply to lxhopeful.

Since you don’t have any important data to save from partitions, a complete start over is indicated. In case you must save data from partitions use a live CD to mount damaged partitions and proceed with data saving, using testdisk or photorec!

By: lxhopeful

lxhopeful — Mon, 12 Oct 2015 06:01:46 +0000

I got to instruction #13 and stopped. The Swap partition has one of those orange warning icons and the File system = unknown, the label is gone and under Used and Unused there are —.

the info states:
Status: not mounted; there’s no UUID or label and the Warning says:
Unable to detect the file system! Possible reasons are:
-file system is damaged
-file system is unknown to GParted
-there is no file system available (unformatted)
-the device entry /dev/sda3 is missing

Can this be fixed, can the partitions be deleted and I start over. I have not completed the installation as I have already replaced Windows 8.1, I think. That is not a big deal as that was my intent anyway.

Don’t know if this has anything to do with it, but while I setting up swap, I clicked undo a couple of times because I had entered the incorrect amount.

Also the other thing I noticed in screenshot #13 is that the /dev/sda1 (the one set for 20MB) as unknown File System but mine came up as nfts with the orange warning icon.

Is anything major wrong and can I start over. I won’t shut the computer down since there’s no OS at the moment except for the Live USB.