Installing Linux: Still a PITA, continued
Or maybe I'm not keeping track of chapters. As some of you know, I've been on a quest to upgrade my daily desktop from Windows to a dual-boot Linux system (and eventually, I hope, to eliminate Windows). As some of you know, I've been replacing systems with dual-boot (first Unix, then Linux) on systems for almost 30 years, though I don't have that technical a bent. But I swear, things are getting harder rather than easier for the non-technical. First step was backing up the Windows and getting ready on my newer, double-the-size M.2 drive. Cloning the old drive was the best option, but not using Clonezilla which was absolutely useless to me. Couldn't find the Windows drive, despite multiple tries. Maybe it did, but its UI is beyond awful. Tried many hours before giving up. I had considerably greater success with the free version of Macrium Reflect, which knew exactly what I wanted to do and did it with ease. Swapping the hardware was easy enough, given that my system's motherboard has two M.2 sockets even though it's several years old. System boots Windows just fine, identical to what I had before except I now have 250GB unallocated. Online help about how to partition a Linux system is as confused as ever, some saying a single partition will do for everything, and others saying that even a UEFI system needs a separate ext4 partition for /boot even if there is an existing EFI one already there. And then the final step (i thought) -- installing. I decided, after hearing from everyone here, that MX Linux KDE would be the best combination of things I needed and things I didn't. Downloaded the bootable image and used Rufus, where I had to decide if the bootable USB stick would be GPT or MBR (not obvious to a newcomer). All loaded, reboot, and .... no graphics. The mouse pointer shows up for a half second and vanishes, with the screen at alt-F1 inviting me to do a CLI install whose partition choices threaten to wipe out my windows system and don't have an intuitive way to customize. Thankfully (I think), I was able to scp the X.org log file to another computer so I wouldn't lose it on the USB stick's live boot. I attach it below, and ask assistance from anyone who can read these files so I can understand why it's dying. My graphics card is a fairly recent AMD RX 6500 XT which works fine under Windows and is claimed to be supported by X. Or do I just give up on MX? A search on its forum appears to draw blanks, except for me to boot in failsafe mode which didn't change anything. Will this be better on another distro? One option is to boot a gparted live stick, partition as I want, install Linux VIA MX's CLI and pray it updates with current graphics drivers. But sheesh. One would think that given 20 years to improve the install experience, it can be more confusing than ever. Any help is appreciated. Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada @evanleibovitch / @el56
On 5/7/22 23:04, Evan Leibovitch via talk wrote:
... My graphics card is a fairly recent AMD RX 6500 XT which works fine under Windows and is claimed to be supported by X.
Or do I just give up on MX? A search on its forum appears to draw blanks, except for me to boot in failsafe mode which didn't change anything. Will this be better on another distro?
If you have fairly new hardware, then general wisdom is to go with bleeding edge distro, like OpenSUSE Tumbleweed and Fedora. Try them on USB stick... At least, that part is definitely easier than before. NOTE: For writing to USB, try Etcher from balena.io. It does something other than just 'dd'. It brought few USB sticks back to life.
| From: Evan Leibovitch via talk <talk@gtalug.org> | Or maybe I'm not keeping track of chapters. ??? | Online help about how to partition a Linux system is as confused as ever, | some saying a single partition will do for everything, and others saying | that even a UEFI system needs a separate ext4 partition for /boot even if | there is an existing EFI one already there. Any distro's installer might make rules that are not intrinsic to Linux. I never create a /boot with Fedora. /boot has to be on a filesystem that is understood by grub2. If you want to put / on a filesystem that isn't of a type understood by grub2, you will need to have a separate /boot filesystem. I only use ext4 for / so I don't have this problem. What filesystems does grub2 understand? It depends on how your distro built grub and on the grub2 version. I don't even know how to find out. I didn't find it in the grub2 manual. I know that ext4 is supported. ZFS and NTFS(!) are supported too, with some oddities. So your favourite filesystem might well be supported. With luck, your distro installer will demand /boot reside on a filesystem understood by grub2: forcing you to create a viable configuration. Another layer of confusion: encrypted disks or filesystems. "bitlocker" for Windows. If your Windows came locked, you might want to unlock it. Confession: I think encrypted disks are a great idea but I don't know how to do it. | And then the final step (i thought) -- installing. I decided, after hearing | from everyone here, that MX Linux KDE would be the best combination of | things I needed and things I didn't. Downloaded the bootable image and used | Rufus, where I had to decide if the bootable USB stick would be GPT or MBR | (not obvious to a newcomer). At least with Fedora and Ubuntu, Rufus is too complicated a solution. If you make a raw copy of the .iso file onto the raw USB stick, it will just work. It is already in the form that can be booted from a USB stick (or large DVD). If it is booted using MBR, it will only install an MBR system; if it is booted using UEFI, it will only install a UEFI system. ==> in your firmware setup screen, disable "legacy boot" (MBR support). | All loaded, reboot, and .... no graphics. For that, you have to look for MX support. You could try booting a (very painless!) Fedora or Ubuntu live USB stick. | Thankfully (I think), I was able to scp the X.org log file to another | computer so I wouldn't lose it on the USB stick's live boot. X.org? Does that mean you are using X and not Wayland? I guess that KDE / kwin isn't yet 100% on Wayland. I've read that about Ubuntu; not sure about Fedora. | I attach it | below, and ask assistance from anyone who can read these files so I can | understand why it's dying. My graphics card is a fairly recent AMD RX 6500 | XT which works fine under Windows and is claimed to be supported by X. Looking at the log, I didn't see any recognition of your video card. The X log started at 13.531 seconds since boot. X seemed to start shutting down at 16.008 seconds since boot. It did try to use the frame buffer device (fbdev). This is generic, implemented by calling UEFI video commands. At least that's how I read [ 13.567] (II) FBDEV(0): hardware: EFI VGA (video memory: 5120kB) My uneducated guess is that the black screen is due to bad inference of characteristics of the EFI VGA device: [ 13.567] (II) FBDEV(0): Virtual size is 1280x1024 (pitch 1280) [ 13.567] (**) FBDEV(0): Built-in mode "current": 131.1 MHz, 80.3 kHz, 76.6 Hz [ 13.567] (II) FBDEV(0): Modeline "current"x0.0 131.09 1280 1312 1472 1632 1024 1028 1032 1048 -hsync -vsync -csync (80.3 kHz b) [ 13.567] (==) FBDEV(0): DPI set to (96, 96) Just using fbdev might be a good trade-off for an installer. Handling all sorts of video drivers is a distraction. I did not see anything in the log that seemed to say why X was shutdown. It was not a crash. | Or do I just give up on MX? A search on its forum appears to draw blanks, | except for me to boot in failsafe mode which didn't change anything. Will | this be better on another distro? Most likely. But which distro? At least some are easy to try. | One option is to boot a gparted live stick, partition as I want, install | Linux VIA MX's CLI and pray it updates with current graphics drivers. But | sheesh. Perhaps. I certainly don't know and would not make promises. | One would think that given 20 years to improve the install experience, it | can be more confusing than ever. Any help is appreciated. Potentially every distro has their own installation mechanism. In fact, it is one of their main differentiators All installation systems are full of potholes, including those for Windows. Ones that give you the most capabilities are also intricate and confusing. I have no opinion about MX. I don't remember hearing of it before your quest.
Evan I apologize it seems I may have caused you more frustration not less by suggesting Clonezilla. I am still confident that it is a very useful tool for doing what you want to do but I have been using it for so long I didn't consider the learning curve and the old style cryptic user interface. I only use it in beginner mode myself. In hindsight I should have offered you the image file from my Clonezilla USB stick so you could make one in less than 10 minutes using dd, knowing that it is reliable and works. It boots from both MBR and EFI. And I should have included steps with screenshots in my original reply post. In terms of finding Windows, Windows is almost always placed on sda1 and sda2, sda1 being the little boot partition (100 MB originally and now I think 250 MB), and sda2 the main Windows system partition. For name brand systems with recovery / install to factory default partitions, sda1 is often but not always used pushing the Windows boot and active Windows system partitions to sda2 and sda3. I will write a blog post describing these steps for anyone who might want to use Clonezilla in the future. I did this for my father years ago. On the distro front, like you my preferred desktop environment is KDE. I like a fully featured desktop and KDE has equal or better functionality than Windows. I make this suggestion with some trepidation but here is one thought for a medium-term solution. Install KUbuntu 20.04 LTS. It is supported for another year and I imagine it will install successfully on your system as it is mature and is mainstream. I don't like snap either but you can install Chrome natively and Chromium running under snap seems to be okay. I also use Firefox and Brave and those browsers are installed natively. I think all of the other applications I use are natively installed, not snapcraft packages. I have used KUbuntu 14.04, 18.04 and now 20.04 as my main production systems. At least this way you will have a year to find a longer-term solution. I can't find the URL for the article I used to remove the snapcraft version of Chrome and replace it with the natively installed version but a quick search on Google / DuckDuckGo should yield such articles / forum posts. I'll go through my log notes to see if I can find the original post I used and will report back if I find it. On Sat, May 7, 2022 at 11:04 PM Evan Leibovitch via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
Or maybe I'm not keeping track of chapters.
As some of you know, I've been on a quest to upgrade my daily desktop from Windows to a dual-boot Linux system (and eventually, I hope, to eliminate Windows). As some of you know, I've been replacing systems with dual-boot (first Unix, then Linux) on systems for almost 30 years, though I don't have that technical a bent. But I swear, things are getting harder rather than easier for the non-technical.
First step was backing up the Windows and getting ready on my newer, double-the-size M.2 drive. Cloning the old drive was the best option, but not using Clonezilla which was absolutely useless to me. Couldn't find the Windows drive, despite multiple tries. Maybe it did, but its UI is beyond awful. Tried many hours before giving up. I had considerably greater success with the free version of Macrium Reflect, which knew exactly what I wanted to do and did it with ease.
Swapping the hardware was easy enough, given that my system's motherboard has two M.2 sockets even though it's several years old. System boots Windows just fine, identical to what I had before except I now have 250GB unallocated.
Online help about how to partition a Linux system is as confused as ever, some saying a single partition will do for everything, and others saying that even a UEFI system needs a separate ext4 partition for /boot even if there is an existing EFI one already there.
And then the final step (i thought) -- installing. I decided, after hearing from everyone here, that MX Linux KDE would be the best combination of things I needed and things I didn't. Downloaded the bootable image and used Rufus, where I had to decide if the bootable USB stick would be GPT or MBR (not obvious to a newcomer). All loaded, reboot, and ....
no graphics.
The mouse pointer shows up for a half second and vanishes, with the screen at alt-F1 inviting me to do a CLI install whose partition choices threaten to wipe out my windows system and don't have an intuitive way to customize.
Thankfully (I think), I was able to scp the X.org log file to another computer so I wouldn't lose it on the USB stick's live boot. I attach it below, and ask assistance from anyone who can read these files so I can understand why it's dying. My graphics card is a fairly recent AMD RX 6500 XT which works fine under Windows and is claimed to be supported by X.
Or do I just give up on MX? A search on its forum appears to draw blanks, except for me to boot in failsafe mode which didn't change anything. Will this be better on another distro?
One option is to boot a gparted live stick, partition as I want, install Linux VIA MX's CLI and pray it updates with current graphics drivers. But sheesh.
One would think that given 20 years to improve the install experience, it can be more confusing than ever. Any help is appreciated.
Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada @evanleibovitch / @el56 --- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
On Sat, May 07, 2022 at 11:04:00PM -0400, Evan Leibovitch via talk wrote:
Thankfully (I think), I was able to scp the X.org log file to another computer so I wouldn't lose it on the USB stick's live boot. I attach it below, and ask assistance from anyone who can read these files so I can understand why it's dying. My graphics card is a fairly recent AMD RX 6500 XT which works fine under Windows and is claimed to be supported by X.
[ 13.537] Current Operating System: Linux mx1 5.10.0-13-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 5 .10.106-1 (2022-03-17) x86_64 The kernel is too old. RX 6000 generation needs 5.12 or newer. MX has an Advanced Hardware Support repository which they claim supports more recent hardware. Try the .iso image with "ahs" in the name, if that isn't the one that you are using now. The ahs .iso boots into Xfce, not KDE. -- Tom Low-Shang 416 857 7013 https://twitch.tv/tomlowshang
On 5/8/22 09:01, Tom Low-Shang via talk wrote:
On Sat, May 07, 2022 at 11:04:00PM -0400, Evan Leibovitch via talk wrote:
Thankfully (I think), I was able to scp the X.org log file to another computer so I wouldn't lose it on the USB stick's live boot. I attach it below, and ask assistance from anyone who can read these files so I can understand why it's dying. My graphics card is a fairly recent AMD RX 6500 XT which works fine under Windows and is claimed to be supported by X.
[ 13.537] Current Operating System: Linux mx1 5.10.0-13-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 5 .10.106-1 (2022-03-17) x86_64
The kernel is too old. RX 6000 generation needs 5.12 or new > MX has an Advanced Hardware Support repository which they claim supports more recent hardware. Try the .iso image with "ahs" in the name, if that isn't the one that you are using now. The ahs .iso boots into Xfce, not KDE.
If kernel is too old, then how does "advanced hardware support" fix it? They use newer kernel? Anyways, this is too much work for a user. If you want the latest distro, just wait for Fedora-36 or try OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. Or, bite the bullet and try Kubuntu-22.04 (hopefully 22.04.1 will fix some of the issues).
Hi all. On Sun, May 8, 2022 at 12:47 PM William Park via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
On 5/8/22 09:01, Tom Low-Shang via talk wrote:
[ 13.537] Current Operating System: Linux mx1 5.10.0-13-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 5 .10.106-1 (2022-03-17) x86_64
The kernel is too old. RX 6000 generation needs 5.12 or newer
[...]
Anyways, this is too much work for a user. If you want the latest distro, just wait for Fedora-36 or try OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. Or, bite the bullet and try Kubuntu-22.04 (hopefully 22.04.1 will fix some of the
issues).
Bullet bitten. - I tried MX, which uses a kernel rev too old for my video card. (Thanks for the catch, Tom!) - I tried Fedora testing, which was OK with the video but froze upon determining that it lacked the firmware for my Realtek r8169 LAN controller (which it saw and used fine during install, but froze upon boot from HD -- what's up with that?) - I tried the unofficial 'firmware' Debian installation <https://cdimage.debian.org/images/unofficial/non-free/images-including-firmware/11.3.0+nonfree/amd64/iso-dvd/> -- no change, still borked on the LAN lack of firmware (isn't this pretty common hardware?) - I then tried Kubuntu -- full success! Dual-boot, dual-screen, all HW recognized (tho the video can use some tuning, its defaults are good). So I'm happy with the Kubuntu install so this war story has a happy ending. The only installed snaps are "CORE20 <https://ubuntu.com/core/docs/uc20>" which is an IoT package and Firefox which is strangely dependent on CORE20. There are ways to replace this, but at least for now Snapzilla is functional. As for William's "too much work for a user" comment, couldn't agree more.
Sigh. Fingers not attached to brain. Must be the mental exhaustion of spending multiple hours downloading ISOs, burning USB sticks and fighting with "you can't get there from here" installs. I finished at 5am this morning. On Sun, May 8, 2022 at 5:32 PM Evan Leibovitch via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
- I tried Fedora testing,
My second install was Debian 'testing', not Fedora. I'm still trying to stick with .deb-based systems, but had Kubuntu failed I would have strayed... Thanks again to all who helped. I've passed on Tom's finding to the MX devs, whose only answer to me in the forum was that my install media must be corrupt. 😝 - Evan
On Sun, May 08, 2022 at 09:50:45PM -0400, Evan Leibovitch via talk wrote:
Sigh. Fingers not attached to brain. Must be the mental exhaustion of spending multiple hours downloading ISOs, burning USB sticks and fighting with "you can't get there from here" installs. I finished at 5am this morning.
Of course OS installs in general can be a pain. Installing windows isn't something most people would enjoy doing either. But most people start out with a working windows install and then try to add linux to that setup so certainly that makes the linux step much harder (anything is harder than doing nothing after all). Driver support for hardware has certainly always been a problem (and can certainly be an issue on some machines with windows too). -- Len Sorensen
On Sat, May 07, 2022 at 11:04:00PM -0400, Evan Leibovitch via talk wrote:
Or maybe I'm not keeping track of chapters.
As some of you know, I've been on a quest to upgrade my daily desktop from Windows to a dual-boot Linux system (and eventually, I hope, to eliminate Windows). As some of you know, I've been replacing systems with dual-boot (first Unix, then Linux) on systems for almost 30 years, though I don't have that technical a bent. But I swear, things are getting harder rather than easier for the non-technical.
First step was backing up the Windows and getting ready on my newer, double-the-size M.2 drive. Cloning the old drive was the best option, but not using Clonezilla which was absolutely useless to me. Couldn't find the Windows drive, despite multiple tries. Maybe it did, but its UI is beyond awful. Tried many hours before giving up. I had considerably greater success with the free version of Macrium Reflect, which knew exactly what I wanted to do and did it with ease.
I know some laptops have the problem that they hide the nvme drive behind the intel raid controller which meant linux wouldn't see it. Some had an option to disable that and make it appear as a regular nvme drive but some don't. Other than that I am surprised it didn't find it. Old version of clonezilla?
Swapping the hardware was easy enough, given that my system's motherboard has two M.2 sockets even though it's several years old. System boots Windows just fine, identical to what I had before except I now have 250GB unallocated.
That's good.
Online help about how to partition a Linux system is as confused as ever, some saying a single partition will do for everything, and others saying that even a UEFI system needs a separate ext4 partition for /boot even if there is an existing EFI one already there.
Having /boot on / as ext4 is perfectly fine with grub and has been for many years. /boot/efi on the other hand has to be the fat UEFI boot partition that is shared by all installed OSs to store the boot loader. The EFI partition is NOT /boot. /boot stores files controlled by your linux distribution and needs linux file permissions. FAT doesn't do that. /boot/efi stores booloader files, not boot files.
And then the final step (i thought) -- installing. I decided, after hearing from everyone here, that MX Linux KDE would be the best combination of things I needed and things I didn't. Downloaded the bootable image and used Rufus, where I had to decide if the bootable USB stick would be GPT or MBR (not obvious to a newcomer). All loaded, reboot, and ....
I know debian says not to use rufus since it often breaks the installer. Using a disk image writing tool works. dd on linux or win32diskimager for windows. -- Len Sorensen
participants (6)
-
D. Hugh Redelmeier -
Evan Leibovitch -
Lennart Sorensen -
Nigel Auger -
Tom Low-Shang -
William Park