I think it should be ctrl+alt+F3 to get to the terminal and alt+F2 to return out of it.
That actually worked great up until the point I am supposed to return out of it and then alt+F2 does nothing. Iām not sure if itās hung and thatās why or if startup of services that it listed is supposed to happen after what I typed for instructions. Since Iām guessing that the whole point for that was to stop x-server, me forcing a hard reboot with a power button will undo all that? Then again, I got a message that lightdm service wasnāt running anyway and I get the feeling this whole try will fail because itās assuming Iām running on nouveau drivers and Iām actually on manually installed ones, whatever that means since I didnāt install anything, so maybe hard reboot isnāt a bad idea after all. Any other suggestions other than alt+F2? I tried ctrl+alt+F2 as well to no avail.
LOL
Go for it.
The worst thing that could happen would only be your computer implodes into a singularity and destroy the Earth. What have you got to lose?
If you are using Zorin Core, it is using GDM not Lightdm.
I think the reason it shows your drivers as "manually installed" is that during a fix-attempt, you may have tried an installation. Whenever a user tries to install something that is already installed, the system changes its status to "manually installed" to prevent those packages from being removed with 'sudo apt autoremove."
Ahh that makes sense. Can I just replace lightdm with gdm or is that a whole different thing and not interchangeable?
Also, I tried ctrl+alt+F1 and it punted me to prompt but now saying tty1. Repeated mashing just has me switching between tty1 2 and 3.
If you are using Zorin Core- Gnome D.E., then GDM is recommended.
Yes, you can change to using Lightdm if you want to.
Or to GDM if you prefer.
I have been stuck in that loop, myself. Honestly, I never figured a way out of it and ended up hard rebooting and trying something else whenever I found myself in that predicament.
In the end I did manage to figure it out, and follow instruction to the end, but the install failed due to dkms something somethingā¦I didnāt really understand the problem, but Iām guessing thatās not going to work for me. It was a long shot either way and an entertaining trip.
I did find an earlier version of zoris os, 12.4 which should be compatible with this graphics card but it took some searching to find, meaning theyāre obviously pushing for the latest version. If I go back to that, will it automatically try to update to the new version or I can just stick to the older one? And are there significant downsides to it?
Many of us are still using Zorin 12.4. It is still supported and will continue receiving updates- but not upgrades. No, it will not upgrade itself to Zorin 15.
If you are not in love with Gnome, you might consider using 12.4 Lite. It rocks.
I would personally, but Iām doing this for a family friend, and sheās only ever used windows. Gnome would just confuse her I think, and I picked zorin OS in the first place because I thought sheād have the least trouble getting around because of its similarity to windows 10. Iāll try 12.4 core on this one first and see how it works out.
There is another old laptop I have unsuccessfully been trying to load any linux distro on, and so far only puppy linux made it but now Iām wondering if trying an older version of some of the distros Iāve already tried might work. If yes, then I will try your suggestion.
Zorin Core is Gnome.
Zorin Lite is XFCE.
Oh. I thought xfce was just a lighter version of whatever core was running. Whatās the difference then?
I mean, I thought they looked the same pretty much?
Personallyā¦
I would say that XFCE is much easier to learn and use. Gnome takes a lot of getting used to and is user-unfriendly. I would prefer to prevent myself from going on a Gnome-bashing rant in thread- believe me, it would be easy to do.
XFCE is the XFDesktop Environment. Lightweight, highly configurable and easy to find settings and adjustments. Itās Right Click to find whereas in Gnome, right clicking most things leads to a dead end.
They look the same on the Surface, only, just as either can be made to look the same as Windows on the surface.
I am stating opinions. This is not a scientific analysis. Some take to Gnome well enough, some love it. Some, like me, hate it with a passion that burns like the core of a Neutron Star.
No no, Iām happy to hear from someone with some experience with it. If it is more user friendly, I donāt mind running xfce instead. The important thing is for her to be able to find basic stuff and change basic settings if she needs to without getting confused and so if it looks the same, thatās fine.
If anything needs addressing, meaning anything harder than just clicking around, sheāll let me know, and Iāll be happier trying to fix something easy vs complicated down the road. Lite it is I guess 
In my mind, and the way they present it deliberately, lite was just a lighter version of core without additional stuff installed. I didnāt realize changes ran deeper than that.
It makes sense you would think that. But in this context, "Light" is referring to the Desktop Environments running CPU usage and load more than what packages come with it.
They perform differently.
For example, you could choose a non-systemd distro that is extremely light like Puppy Linux or Antix. And believe me- Antix 19 would be Blazing Fast on that machine.
But I wouldn't recommend it. It lacks many builds that you may need later on and Puppy and Antix both have a Steep Learning curve.
Zorin is still fast- It beats out most competition in its weightclass, in spite of being slightly on the heavy side.
I started out last year (about) on Core with Gnome. Later, like you are doing now, I learned about XFCE on Lite and switched to it and it was like a huge burden was lifted from my shoulders using the desktop.
Gnome has become a Microsoft Clone on Linux. It wants to control what you do, how you do it, what control you have and what your Desktop even Looks Like.
With XFCE, setting up anything was easy and easy to find.
I would highly recommend XFCE for the beginner.
To be fair, sheās an older lady and just wants to check email, browse and do a bit of excel (or in this case its equivalent), maybe change font size so she can see, so I donāt think it would matter to her, but itāll probably matter to me once I have to fix any problems that arise.
Iām getting ahead of myself though as Iām not sure if itās even going to install properly. Iād like to say itāll install and work just fine, why not if 15.2 did, but itās never ever that easy. Back in a bitā¦time to try this out.
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Yeah, see? I knew it. Trying to install it, itās not first giving me a text menu of
install
install with safe graphics
install with nvidia drivers
It goes right away to GUI for install but because whatever drivers itās using are incompatible, I only see like 20% of the actual windows and itās like doubled. In other words I donāt see enough to be able to install that way. and unlike with 15.2, I donāt have the option of trying right away with nvidia drivers. I had a similar issue when trying 15.2 lite and only core ended up working after trying all 3 options.
What happens if you hit āwith safe graphics?ā
I never see that option. The text menu never comes up and the live one, I see like only a background pic and a tiny portion of the screen repeated. I effectively canāt do anything.
When I did 15.2 core with safe graphics, it didnāt work though. Only with nvidia drivers would it show the screen normally albeit low res.
Ah, ok. I misread that post.
This is why we Hate Nvidia.
I know that on 12.4, you could tap the āEā key at the bootloader screen to edit the grub (One time use, only) in order to resolve that. It enters a screen with a text editor- look for āquiet splashā and change that part to āquiet splash nomodesetā.
But without the bootloader appearing? I donāt know. Might try banging the E key all during boot up to see what happens.
E did work. It does give me options. I did manage to find nomodeset as an extra option and it listed quiet splash as already included into install zorin os line. Secā¦
OK tried and the result is:
kernel panic, not syncing, IO+Apic doesnāt work. Boot with apic=debug and send a report and then try booting with noapic option.
Maybe I should have tried live booting first instead of straight install? But Iām not sure that would have been different. Try with noapic?
Yup.
Or other things to try:
āquiet splash nvidia-drm.modeset=1 acpi=force"
āquiet splash nvidia-drm.modeset=1 noapic"
A Sledgehammer.