Hi all, brand new Zorin user here and tech beginner.
I have been attempting to install Zorin OS 17.1 on my Lenovo P15 Gen 1. My reason for doing so is privacy. I want an Open Source OS that does not have any back doors, spyware or client side scanning and linux seems to be the answer. (think of the new "Online Safety Bills" being introduced around the world!)
It has been hard. I am not very tech savvy at all. The Boot settings on Lenovo appear to be quite different to many other computers.
There is a pretty in depth Bios menu for this model and no immediately obvious place where you can select "Boot from USB". Somehow, I manged to do it though and did install Zorin OS onto the computer. Although I don't remember exactly how. I did notice that there were some additional steps in the start up process after the "Lenovo" logo and "Zorin" logos. Some menu with four options that I can't remember exactly what they said but timed out anyway and continued to load Zorin.
Having repeatedly received a notification when starting up Zorin that an important piece of software failed to install (I think a Lenovo driver) every time I started up the computer and loaded Zorin, on this occasion I selected one of the settings on that menu in start up. Immediately after it started up windows 11 and I found that everything was exactly as it was before I had installed Zorin. When I installed Zorin I selected for it to erase everything and install Zorin, so thought that Windows had gone along with all my data. But everything was there. Now when starting up the computer it is Windows that is booting by default and I can't change it.
So basically. How do I install Zorin and remove Windows properly on a Lenovo P15 gen 1?
Ideally I would love to keep my Zorin installation as I have customised it and have some files on there already, but can sacrifice if necessary. I don't want Windows or any proprietary OS (and preferably software) on the computer and just want Zorin running. Perhaps as a back up I would have Windows in a VM, but not on the machine itself whether as the main OS, back up or dual boot.
There are times in life when we muddle through with uncertainty and still make it through. This is a fine thing, we made it through after-all. But it can reenforce the idea that we got lucky.
It is important to believe in yourself and understand that you are capable and able to learn a new system. However daunting it may look at first, like driving a car or taking a new class, we make it through by learning and adapting, not with luck.
When you boot into the BIOS Settings of your computer, there should be a tab marked Boot. You can select which option to boot from in that tab. Zorin OS may show up there simply as "Ubuntu".
Can you check if you can access this?
Hi, thanks for the encouraging words. So basically, when I start up the computer I see the Lenovo screen with it saying "To interrupt normal set up press enter" (or something similar".
I press enter or press F1 and I get to the Set Up screen. Like that shown in this video:
But what I don't understand is why when I selected install "Erase Disk and install Zorin OS" why my entire Windows 11 OS and all my data has been preserved.
And why it now defaults back to that on start up?
How do I install this properly and remove Windows 11 along with everything else? And is there any way to do so by keep my current Zorin set up in tact?
Would it be necessary to remove the current Zorin set up to resolve the failed driver installation notification I keep getting and to remove the additional steps shown in the start up process?
Do you have more than one drive installed in the computer?
This is a very good question and right away, without more information, I am stumped, too.
The "Erase disk and install Zorin" option can and will wipe the drive.
I wonder if looking at the visual cues, you thought Zorin OS installed, but it actually had not. That a driver failed indicates that this may be possible.
Were you able to reboot into Zorin OS after removing the USB and still had your changes intact?
I do have two hard drives. Now this is interesting. On Windows when going into "My PC" it used to show two drives one C: drive and the other D: drive.
D: drive is no longer visible in Windows..
I think Zorin is definitely installed, I removed the USB and for a while Zorin was the default OS that booted on start up, only when I selected the option from the additional menu in start up does it now revert back to booting Windows.
That additional menu was:
Zorin
Advanced Options for Zorin
Windows Boot Manager for (something/somethingsomething)
UEFI Firmware Settings
Maybe Windows and Zorin are installed on different drives?
It looks like that is likely. If D: drive is now the Zorin Drive. I hope it was not holding important documents and personal data...
It has been a while since I used Windows, so I am not sure about accessing the boot management on Windows.
But on Zorin OS, you can access it in terminal with
efibootmgr
From there, you can set the boot priority and order, including Windows OS placement.
Perhaps if you boot only the former D: drive, this will boot you into Zorin OS and allow access to the terminal to run the command.
I just tested starting up booting from the two different hard drives and yes, it looks like Windows and Zorin are on different drives. Zorin is the D: drive, but it works fine when you boot from D:.
So thats good, as I figure I can still keep my set up with Zorin, but now how do I remove Windows on the C: drive and unify both drives to be accessed from Zorin?
Im wondering if its much of a privacy issue keeping windows on an entirely separate drive though... I just saw that all of a sudden a new program has been installed on my Windows 11 OS....Co-Pilot. I don't remember downloading, installing or approving that. I dont like it at all that Windows can just stuff programs on my computer without me even knowing about it. And these online Safety Bills with client side scanning really bother me. I've been told not to trust keeping Windows on the machine at all, only to maybe use it in a VM that is hosted on Linux but certainly not vice versa.
You can remove Windows OS by formatting that drive and clearing the space. You can format it either to NTFS or ext4. Zorin OS can access either, whereas Windows OS can only access NTFS.
You can set your efibootmgr and delete the Windows OS efi entry, removing its bootloader.
Many users load Windows OS in a VM for containment and safety.
Trusting any organization is a matter of personal choice and should be based on merit, evidence and the history of that organization.
This is the grub menu and it is normal. I prefer it to always be visible (It only takes a moment on the screen) because if you ever need to access it and access the Advanced Options (recovery), it is easily accessible.
If you prefer it be hidden and only appear on demand, you can remove the Windows Bootloader with efibootmgr so that the OS_Prober does not kick the grub menu in, then edit the grub file to set it to hidden:
sudo nano /etc/default/grub
Change
GRUB_TIMEOUT_STYLE=menu
To
GRUB_TIMEOUT_STYLE=hidden
Once done, tap ctl+o to overwrite, then enter to save current configuration. Tap ctl+x to exit the editor and in terminal run
sudo update-grub
You can format the drive using Gparted application.
You can learn a lot about using Gparted and partition management here:
But to format your drive, select the drive or partition that you want to format - then select the (-) icon to clear it to Free Space. Click the (+) to format it, selecting the partition volume and filesystem that you want. (Logical partition, NTFS, etc.)
This may be the Flatpak package for Firefox. You might try running the following commands in terminal:
sorry; I forget how Flatpak is... flatpak update org.mozilla.firefox
It is not particularly unusual to see ACPI errors due to the manufacturers of motherboards not always fully filling in their ACPI tables, yet the Linux Kernel will expect to see a completed table. An incomplete entry will be logged, as shown in your screenshot, then the kernel will fallback to known working parameters. So it is not something to sweat over.
We can silence those with (again)
sudo nano /etc/default/grub
Change the following line to include the loglevel=3 parameter: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash loglevel=3"
Once done, tap ctl+o to overwrite, then enter to save current configuration. Tap ctl+x to exit the editor and in terminal run
sudo update-grub
The i2c error looks like your graphics card is trying to connect via a USB type C interface.
If your Nvidia is mounted via PCI slot, you can disable the i2c_nvidia_gpu to resolve that.
Most often, though, all a user needs to do is change Nvidia drivers.
So, I will hold off on posting how to disable i2c for Nvidia and begin with
What Nvidia card do you have?
Which drivers are you using? (Software & Updates > Additional drivers tab)
On Zorin OS, when you launch the file manager, the mounted drive that is formally known as C: should be listed in "Other locations."
It will appear as a Device (/dev) and its build (nvme) so something like
/dev/nvme
It may appear based on its available volume, like a 500 gig drive might show as
498 volume
If necessary, you may add it to your /etc/fstab file to ensure it always automounts for access as storage. I believe @337harvey wrote an fstab guide on the forum somewhere, I need to find it...
Well it looks like it is fully up to date...
The Error you are seeing has been reported by many users of Zorin OS 17. Usually, errors on Zorin OS are quite specific. This one is quite vague, which is why I regularly suspect Flatpak.
It's not harmful, thought it can create annoyances. Will need to research that one further.
Using the terminal command
nvidia-smi
should show all the relevant information including card model and driver, though it will only work if the driver is fully working.
I am on the Nvidia 3060 using the 550 driver, currently. It is more stable than the 535 which liked to ramp up my CPU to high temps. This was fixed in 545 and that fix seems to remain in the 550.
DKMS is Dynamic Kernel Module Support` and it allows drivers to be manually installed and then roll over to the newer kernel when a kernel is upgraded.
You can install with the driver automatically setup DKMS using
sudo apt install nvidia-driver-550
Or
You can just select the 545 driver listed in Additional drivers in Software & Updates
