I am currently trying to escape Windows and want to switch to Linux Mint as my daily driver.

However when I first tried it on a spare laptop everything worked except the WiFi. A kernel update fixed it because it also has ethernet.

My question is can I boot to a live USB on the ethernet laptop, update the kernel on the live USB and use that on the other laptop to install mint with working WiFi?

I tried to use the internet from my phone via Bluetooth but it was so slow it was unusable.

If this is a dumb question I apologise as I’ve been using Linux for less than a day at this point.