On Mon, Aug 09, 2021 at 10:37:44PM +0100, Bev Nicolson wrote:
Now googling to find out what to press to get to the boot menu usually brings up suggestions to hit the shift key. I keep trying this but am not having any joy. Esc doesn't get me far either. Do I simply need to keep trying or are there any other options? Does it make a difference that I'm using a laptop? I get 10/11 seconds till the Mint logo appears if that's any help.
Do you mean you want to get into the BIOS or the Linux boot loader menu? I think you mean the Linux boot loader (probably Grub?).
If the machine will boot and run Linux then there will be a way of making it show the menu on every boot, possibly by editing config files and running the grub install process or maybe via some menu options.
I set all of my desktops and laptops to pause at the grub menu (not servers) on boot as I don't boot machines very often and as they all boot in a few seconds with SSD and it's far more convenient having to wait 5 seconds every so often than spend 5-10 minutes trying to mash keys to get the boot menu up.
Adam