Want to install Linux Mint onto new Dell Windows 11 laptop

[Bob Proulx]

bsimpson nvastro.com wrote:
> I've just bought a new Dell laptop that has a 1TB drive, 16GB of
> memory,

Sounds good.

> and has Windows 11 Home edition installed.

I think we see the problem!  And there is a solution.  Delete it and
move on with a better operating system!

> I booted Windows and shrunk its partition down to about 400GB to
> make room for Linux.

Not the solution I would have chosen but okay. :-)

> I've done this before on a previous laptop, but I've noticed this
> time that the C: drive is encrypted with BitLocker, and there are
> several "Recovery" partitions.  Not wanting to inadvertently trash
> the Windows installation, I thought I'd ask what pitfalls to avoid.
>
> Presently the drive is partitioned this way:
> 200MB    EFI System Partition
> 394.23GB C: NTFS (BitLocker Encrypted)
> 537.11GB Unallocated
> 990MB    Recovery Partition
> 19.73GB  Recovery Partition
> 1.49GB   Recovery Partition
> 15MB     Unallocated

I have no idea anything about why there are three recovery partitions
rather than one.  But I would advise that if you want to really be
safe you would need to have MS-Windows produce recovery media for you.
They stopped producing actual media years ago and leave that task to
the end consumer now.  Somewhere down the MS-Windows menu tree will be
an option to write bootable media for use as a complete system
recovery.  If it were me I would go find that option and write
recovery media now while the system is still fresh and working.
Having that in hand would allow you to recovery in the case of a disk
failure.

Note that UEFI systems share the ESP EFI System Partition among all of
the operating systems.  It's a FAT format of one of the several FAT
format types.  The new incoming system will have to share the ESP with
MS-Windows.

Also UEFI boots with half of the information on disk in the form of
files in the ESP and half of the information in form of variables
saved in non-volatile RAM on the motherboard.  This second part I
really despise because it means it is no longer possible to just move
the disk from one system to another and have it boot.  Now the EFI
VARS will always need to be set in the non-volatile RAM in order to
configure a system to boot.  I usually boot rescue media such as the
Debian/Devuan netstall image, use the Rescue option, and then rewrite
the EFI VARS from there using grub-install.  Use the "efibootmgr"
program to list and modify the boot settings directly.  But otherwise
grub-install will set the efi vars as well as update the boot loader.

Note that I have four machines that boot UEFI, one being dead so I
can't look, two that have buggy UEFI firmware, and only one that seems
to have fully working UEFI firmware.  The two with buggy firmware will
only ever boot the fallback image.  Which makes those systems
difficult to multi-boot since there can be only one fallback image.
Fortunately I never multi-boot so it hasn't been too much of a
hardship for me.

But the point is that without knowing anything two out of three of my
UEFI systems need the rEFInd booting as the fallback loader and then
rEFInd will allow me to choose the system at boot time to boot.  In
order to multi-boot.  You might need rEFInd too.

> When I press F12 at the start of bootup I get the following EFI boot devices:
> Windows Boot Manager     <Default>
> UEFI RST 2550 Micron 1024GB  2332427B5956
> UEFI HTTPs Boot

That looks like a view displaying the what the efibootmgr would
display in a different way.  Note also that most of my UEFI booting
systems will not allow me to ever remove the Window Boot Manager
option.  On my systems that option cannot be removed.  I have tried.
I can only order other boot options ahead of it.  If I ever remove
those other boot options then the Windows Boot Manager on my systems
immediately get reset as the Default again.  Even though I don't have
a Windows image to boot.

Another hint.  Due to problems in some cases the os-prober has been
disabled in Ubuntu and I think in Mint too.  The os-prober is what
would normally find the Windows partition and add it to the boot menu.
But if it is disabled that won't happen anymore.  It's probably okay
if you enable os-prober as you probably won't be doing the things that
are problematic.  You can read about the issues and make the
appropriate changes if you are in that situation.

> I've booted Linux Mint 21.2 from a USB thumbdrive to check if it
> would run OK, but didn't proceed with the install.  It did hang when
> I tried to shutdown.

I doubt that it hanging at shutdown is a showstopper for you from
running it on the system.  Lately I have been complaining about
systemd hanging at shutdown on multiple systems.  I frequently need to
power cycle the system in order to un-wedge systemd at shutdown time.
Mint is using systemd and therefore suffers from it too.  It's very
likely the problem is just systemd hanging at shutdown time.  Later
when it is fully installed it will be a different story and it might
work or not and you won't know until you are there.  But you can
always power cycle it if needed.  Or use one of the workarounds.

> Then when I booted Windows it required the
> BitLocker key to continue.  Once entered, it continues to reboot
> successfully.
> ...
> Windows did not require the BitLocker key when I booted Windows
> again.)

Pretty sure windoes will have stored the key in the TPM module, if you
are running the Pro or Enterprise versions of Windows.  But not the
Home version.  I am not sure exactly how that all works but I think as
long as nothing changes that Windows will use the TPM to decrypt the
drive.  The drive is encrypted and useless if removed from the machine
and separated from the key in the TPM.

Which means the next important thing you should save off is the
encryption key.  Somewhere down the MS-Windows menus is a way to save
the key to a file and a way to print out the key.  That's a good thing
to do while everything is still working.  Because I was reading a blog
a while back of someone who's motherboard failed, taking the key
locked away in the TPM with it, and they were unable to gain access to
the drive contents.  If they had saved the key off then they could
have decrypted the drive on another system.

And also having backups are a good thing too.

> Hopefully you might understand my hesitancy with proceeding with the
> install, and so I thought I'd ask the group for advice for setting
> up this laptop to dual boot Windows and Linux.

Since I really don't know anything about Windows I will just stop here
having left the above comments and then step back out of the way and
let someone who knows something say something useful.

Bob