I just downloaded rufus and a mint iso, here's a couple screen grabs.

Launch rufus, and plug in your usb stick, it should show up under device.

From there click select on the right side. Browse to where you have the ISO you got from the linux mint website and select it.

Once you get back to the other screen hit start.

You shouldn't need to mess with any settings unless you are using secure boot.

Once that's done, you should restart and boot from the USB stick. Depending on the model of your laptop there are different methods to get into the bios to change the settings to allow booting from usb. If it goes into grub mode it will look like a command prompt with a few selections. Just hit enter on the first option and it will boot into the live usb.

Once you are in the live usb mode, it's basically all gui to install, test, etc.

Nowadays the terminal stuff is not really needed for basic use, so you should be able to get spun up pretty easy.

The process is actually simple.

It can be a little daunting at first because it's new, but don't let that discourage you. You can mostly ignore the whole mirrors thing, just pick one that is geographically close to you to hopefully get a better download speed. Outside of that, all the mirrors lead to the same file just in a different physical location.

Installing another software to make a bootable drive. You can use Rufus, which has a portable version so there's no need to install it. I put a link below, there's one in the downloads list that says portable.

https://rufus.ie/en/

There are plenty of step by step tutorials out there, however since Linux is very open, a lot of guides may give different advice and knowing what to/not to do can feel confusing. (For instance, if you have an SSD in your computer, you really shouldn't use a swap partition unless you absolutely have to due to limited RAM.) In most cases though you can get by with the defaults when installing something like mint.

That being said. You could simply make the boot stick and try out the live version of the OS before committing to wiping any of your drives to install the OS. Just know that running the live version from the boot stick will be slow, it may take a little time for things to boot which is normal since you are running the os off of a USB stick.

If you would like some help I could try to give you some guidance. I would just want to know the specs/model of your computer so I can make sure I lead you in the right direction.

Capitalism baby. Can't have you producing your own stuff when the corporations can sell it to you at 10x the price.

Try using a USB boot stick to boot into Linux and just save whatever you need from the machine and then reformat it. Since this way the machine won't automatically connect to Wi-Fi and potentially cause more issues.

That's the quickest, simplest way without needing to try to diagnose and dig into the system to see what is affected and trying to fix it.

Also what is the computer doing when it boots up? There's not really enough information being given to be able to provide any other advice.

I have been arrested for looking like someone else.

The cop proceeded to take me to an older woman's house to ID me, she proceeded to tell the cop that her grandson had brown (mine was bleach blonde) hair, no piercings (me: eyebrow, nose, lip, both ears, tongue), and was about 10 years younger than me. For reference I am mixed but basically white. But the same shit happened and it was absolutely ridiculous.

Don't trust the police to do the right thing ever.

I absolutely agree with you, I dislike the way they are going about it completely.

I don't use zoom, and probably never will, but as article points out, this is not a new concept, it happens every day.

Without federal protections this is and will be our future and our rights will continuously be eroded away. Humans are income streams that are going to be exploited at every opportunity.

Zoom has already backtracked on this. This article even points out that it is opt out, provided after they received huge backlash.

Doesn't make what they did right, but please read the article before you post saying the opposite of what the article says.

Because your 0$ per month after dropping them doesn't hurt their bottom line.

Corporations generally weigh the risks and the benefit often wins out and they make more money because there are enough people that either reluctantly cave into the fee increase, forgot about their subscription or just don't care that it's going up.

It's fairly seldom (but seems to be increasing over the years) to see so much backlash that a company walks back on what they were planning to do.

They probably will if they get a takedown request.

I'm guessing you are uploading US related material by your comment.

If you are concerned about it, like maybe you have an account that you don't want to lose, then make another account and upload it.

Whoosh

Yup,

Strangest thing to me is that I know quite a few Asians that immigrated here that are super Trumpers. I just can't even grasp how.

Also, interestingly enough, I also happen to work in a very right leaning field, and the majority of the republicans here have been very quiet since the Jan 6 incident. There was only one who was pretty outspoken about it, and he quit recently.

The Boy and The Heron