Just to clarify, this almost certainly won’t be better on Mint for several reasons. One, PopOS! and Mint are both based on Ubuntu, so they would likely run into a lot of the same issues. I also have an RX 580, and while I haven’t used either of these distros on that machine, I have run Debian Testing for several years, and since both these distros descend from Debian, I have run similar package versions and would likely have known years ago if a major bug occurred for my GPU.

As said by @Mordikan@kbin.earth below, I would be inclined to check the power supply, and maybe even make sure the PCIe card is properly seated.

I’ve been running with an RX 580 on my desktop with Debian Testing for three years, and I’ve had no problems like this.

I’m running with a 750W power supply, so I’m inclined to agree that the the OP should pop open their PC case and check their wattage. Assuming this is an ATX box, it’s probably just a matter of removing two screws and sliding off the side of the case and reading the wattage. If it’s a reasonable wattage and it’s still giving issues, then try the aforementioned undervolting.

I think that’s true, but permissions might come into play and really cause pain; it’s probably best to just reinstall.

On a more serious note, as others have said, you’ll probably burn through these weird storage limitations quickly.

Also, what do you mean by “sensitive matters” on Mint? Because almost any way you spin it, I feel like it’s not a great idea:

• If you’re talking professional, confidential work with clients, keeping it on the same device where you do anything personal sounds like a terrible idea, and it’s probably worth it to shell out for a dedicated device just for this.
• If it’s more personal things like government documents, medical records, and other things I’ll neglect to name here, running a separate operating system just for those just feels like unnecessary paranoia and will cause you unnecessary trouble. If you’re careful, it shouldn’t be a problem - the major browsers prevent file access through protections against cross-site scripting.

Also, as I said in another comment here, please upgrade that drive before you put a lot of data on it. If you don’t and you run out of storage later (a near-certainty on 256GB), you’ll have to go through the effort of getting everything copied, which may include equipment purchases and several hours of your time when you could jut do it right now while your important files are still small enough to fit on a flash drive right now. Save yourself the future trouble.

Anyhow, I wish you happy Linux usage.

This is less like buying a bigger car and more like upgrading the stereo in the car - 256GB in 2025 is somewhat akin to having only AM radio, and I’ve found it gets annoying real fast when doing anything serious.

I would hesitate to put anything smaller than 1 TB in something that’s supposed to be a daily driver.

Assuming she hasn’t bought it yet, please research that Yoga first. It might work fine, but it could also end up being a miserable experience.

You can check https://linux-hardware.org/ for the model or a similar one.

No, I mean TinyCore literally would run out of RAM during boot.

Like others have said, Debian probably isn’t a bad idea.

I feel like it would be kind of stupid to run a full-on desktop environment even though technically possible, though - I think this is a good use for IceWM.

Also, at worst, you might have a really low power server.

I think less than 64MB is difficult these days - a few years ago, I was backing up a laptop with 48MB of RAM, and to get a minimal Linux terminal running on it, I had to create a custom Buildroot image and throw it on a CD. TinyCore was too much for it.

A more apt comparison would be using the Windows guest to remote into the Linux host via xorg piping, waypipe, VNC, RDP, etcetera, which conveys your feeling of weirdness while being a closer approximation of what this really does.

It’ll definitely be a difficult undertaking, but I plan on really trying to have a 5.25” bay when I build another PC.

That probably won’t be for a couple more years, though. I’m on a Ryzen 5 2600 and RX 580, and I really don’t do that much intense gaming; a GPU upgrade is tempting so I can actually use ROCm for some casual Blender Cycles renders, though. I hope that the already dismal supply of those 5.25 cases doesn’t dwindle even more.

Besides the corrections others have said, I really can’t think of any reason people would intentionally use legacy BIOS on a machine with UEFI for a new install.

Like, I could get doing it for an old install - I know someone who installed Windows 7 in 2015 on their then-new desktop build and later upgraded to 10 but is stuck on legacy BIOS for now with that machine because 7 only ran on that.

I could see something similarly jank happening to someone in the Linux world and then decide not to address it for “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it reasons”, but certainly not for no reason.

I just ripped the Blu-Ray drive from my father’s PC since he wasn’t using it.

Since my machine doesn’t have 5.25” bays, I just have SATA cables dangling out the side of the case. I’ve probably ripped more CDs than Blu-Rays, though.

Do you have data on the Windows partition?

Either way, a good way to do it might be to use dd (or a different disk image tool) to copy your Linux installation partitions to a portable hard drive, and make sure the image works. Then wipe the drive and copy the Linux partitions back to it via dd or another imaging tool.

As others have said, you should probably replace your CPU fan ASAP.

A computer in usable condition does not shut down without user input.

The no restart is kind of awesome. WebGPU progress is also great, even if not on Linux yet.

Reminds me of when I threw Debian Trixie on my freshly decommissioned high school Chromebook - with Bcachefs. Luckily, it wasn’t a daily driver, just a toy; the thing had an AMD Stoney Ridge APU that you had to use special compiler flags on to get working.

I think good, truly easy video editors are a dying breed. I loved Windows Live Movie Maker - rest in peace.

These days, I think it’s worth it just to learn a video editor. A lot of the skills transfer; I haven’t used DaVinci before, but I’ve used other major proprietary professional video editors like Adobe Premiere and Final Cut Pro - the skills transfer. Just search how to do a thing you want to do a few times, and you’ll find it gets easier.

As others have said, I think KDEnlive is quite good; I haven’t had a huge amount of stability issues. From what I remember (granted, I may be out of date), OpenShot felt really jank in general; I used Shotcut for a while but had stability issues and UI annoyances. Comparatively, I enjoy KDEnlive.

You can self-sign and self-enroll secure boot keys. Can’t say it’s an easy process, though - I had a lot of misery with it on my Surface Go 1st Gen. Might be better on my Thinkpad.

Luckily, I’m down to just an iPhone.

I used to use iPad Minis, but I was otherwise more of a Windows guy until 2022.

The only other kind of Apple thing I have is a GPU-accelerated Hackintosh running under KVM, which mostly gets used for adding non-streaming songs to my Apple Music library these days. I do plan to quit Apple Music eventually - I’ve been collecting and ripping CDs by TMBG, which is mostly what I listen to anyway.