Out of my depth II
 

I'm installing Linux Mint, to dual-boot it with Win 11 (I was concerned that I couldn't find the drive on opening the laptop; the existing drive is an M2, and I simply didn't recognise it as a drive - until I got the new one, after which installation was almost embarrassingly easy!). I booted from a USB stick. But it's only gotten as far as the 'Find help' splash screen, and it's 'getting the time from a network time server'.

The time displayed, bottom right of the taskbar, is correct. The cursor/pointer is doing the Linux version of the hourglass. It hasn't changed in a while (except for what appears to be a screen saver). It doesn't seem to have crashed, though; other things like Files are working. No mention yet of dual booting.

What's happening? Has it, in fact, crashed? Should I try again, or leave it a while?

(sigh) I really hoped that just once. just once, something would go smoothly for me - not unreasonable to expect given the rep of Linux. But no, it's business as usual!