I heard Mint is supposed to be the simplest distro to get started with but my experience so far (following the setup guide on the website) has been:
- Download ISO
- Check ISO (seemed fine)
- Burn image… crash
- Burn image in administrator mode
- Boot from USB via BIOS… crash
- Boot from USB via Bios in safe mode
- Download multimedia codecs… crash
- Not download multimedia codecs… also crash?
And that’s where I am presently, it runs fine off the USB albeit a bit slow, and I know its connected to the internet because I can browse lemmy on it and make annoying posts on the Linux community. I knew Linux was going to be more work than windows but this feels like a ridiculous level of effort right out of the gate, I worry that even if I somehow get it running I’ll spend 10x more time fixing it than actually using it.
It probably would have done the same if you had tried to install Windows or BSD.
You should use a different USB drive and boot something like memtest86+ and let it run through. Or if it’s something like a Dell with built-in diagnostics, run that. You need to rule out failure of the different components. I’m guessing it’s the drive, but it could also be RAM.
Usually, the Linux installers have memtest86+ built in, as well as media verification. I’d do the verification if you haven’t already, then memtest.
Mentioned in a different comment but I have installed a custom win10 on this same laptop with this same USB stick before.