this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2025
14 points (88.9% liked)

Linux Mint

2032 readers
9 users here now

Linux Mint is a free Linux-based operating system designed for use on desktop and laptop computers.

Want to see the latest news from the blog? Set the Firefox homepage to:

linuxmint.com/start/

where is a current or past release. Here's an example using release 21.1 'Vera':

https://linuxmint.com/start/vera/

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I am currently trying to escape Windows and want to switch to Linux Mint as my daily driver.

However when I first tried it on a spare laptop everything worked except the WiFi. A kernel update fixed it because it also has ethernet.

My question is can I boot to a live USB on the ethernet laptop, update the kernel on the live USB and use that on the other laptop to install mint with working WiFi?

I tried to use the internet from my phone via Bluetooth but it was so slow it was unusable.

If this is a dumb question I apologise as I’ve been using Linux for less than a day at this point.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

This is a slightly more complex/involved answer, but you could try updating the kernel manually.

I couldn't find a good video or forum tutorial, but you can download the kernel as a tarball from here and put it on a USB (or even use your phone as a USB). From there, I'm not entirely sure what you'd need to do, but it may be as simple as opening Update Manager and selecting the kernel from the external drive (I unfortunately don't have access to my Mint laptop to test for you right now).