Hi, I’m new here. Istalled ZimaOs on a Lenovo M920x Mini PC with a simple Raid1 working well. In fact, everything so far works fine. Have had some experience with Synology, QNAP, Ugreen and find Zima extremely user friendly and quite powerful. Only miss rsync capabilities to be honest.
I want to get into Docker and VMs. And there is my first challange, I’m trying to install Linux Mint as a VM and I can’t get past the boot menue of Linux Mint. I simply cannot communicate with the boot menue in any way. The interface does not respond. Tried multiple browsers and computers. I’m probly making a stupid mistake. Any ideas?
You’re not doing anything stupid, this is a known gotcha with VM installers.
What you’re seeing is almost always caused by the console input mode during early boot.
Here are the key things to check:
Click inside the VM console first
The Mint boot menu will not accept input until the console has focus. Click once inside the black VM screen, then try the keyboard.
Use the keyboard, not the mouse
The Linux Mint boot menu is keyboard-only.
Arrow keys to move
Enter to select
e to edit (if needed)
Switch browser if needed
Chromium-based browsers (Chrome / Edge) usually work best. Firefox sometimes fails to pass key events correctly in VM consoles.
Try “Basic graphics mode”
If the menu appears but freezes after selection, choose “Start Linux Mint (compatibility / basic graphics)”. This avoids early GPU/driver issues common in VMs.
Check VM firmware & display settings
In the VM settings:
Firmware: UEFI (recommended)
Display: VNC / default display, no GPU passthrough for install
Keyboard layout: leave default
ISO integrity
Make sure the Mint ISO is fully downloaded and not corrupted. Re-uploading the ISO fixes this more often than expected.
If the console still won’t accept input, restarting the VM and immediately clicking into the console before the menu appears usually resolves it.
Once Mint is installed, interaction works normally, this issue is almost always limited to the installer boot menu.
Thank you very much. First tip already worked. Didn‘t even try to klick in the boot screen with the mouse, as mouse was obviously not enabled yet. Sorry and thanks again.