Linux Mint problem on HP Pavilion notebook

[royCS]

I have a 2018 HP Pavilion notebook on which I have attemptd to install Linux Mint 19.1 using a bootable USB. In the Boot section of BIOS, Legacy Support was disabled and Secure Boot enabled, With this setting, the installation went thru to the point where the hard disk partitions are defined. Here, the USB drive (/dev/sdb) was the only device available to be partitioned, obviously not he required option. The laptop HDD (/dev/sda) was displayed in a small dropdown menu at the bottom of the page but was unavailable for partitioning. A similar outcome occurred if Legacy Support was enabled and Secure Boot disabled. Any help would be much apprectiated.

[WAWood]

@royCS 

I'm sorry, but we here are not equipped to provide detailed Linux support.

HP only warranties their PCs for usage with the OS that comes preinstalled. IF you replace that with Linux, or add a Linux OS, then you assume full responsibility for maintaining that -- as HP provides Linux assistance only on Redhat and then only to commercial customers.

The primary "challenge" to using Linux on any HP PC is the availability of Linux drivers. Any hardware that does not work will then range from simple (if there are Linux drivers available) to impossible (if there are NO Linux drivers available) to fix.

Since HP does not provide Linux drivers, your best bet for Linux support is to contact the support forum for the Linux distro you are using -- in this case, the Linux Mint Forums: http://forums.linuxmint.com/index.php?sid=e1d864fe510e562a3fca15f38c93b95a

Folks on Linux support forums have experience using a variety of machines with Linux and know a lot about driver and installation issues. You will be able to get sound and detailed help there.

Good Luck

[royCS · Accepted solution]

Hi WAWood,

Thanks for the link to the Linux Mint forum,  one of the guys over there pointed out the way to go. It's very straightforward actually, using Win32DiskImager, easily downloaded from https://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/

1. prepare a bootable USB with the Linux Mint iso

2. set up on the hard disk, primary partitions for "eti",  "BIOS/Grub", "home" and "swap" and install

3. set the remaining selections according to requirements

That's all.  From this point on Linux Mint boots cleanly.  

I hope this info might help others wanting to install a Linux distro on a  HP laptop.using UEFI.  🙂 

[royCS]

I would to make a small  tho important correction to my previous post.''

The partition sequence was eti, followed by BIOS/Grub, and then root, home and swap.