Santa brought me a new laptop

[Phil Marsh]

Just curious, I would say that the bottom line here is: Can you set the
BIOS to boot UEFI or legacy from the USB thumb drive? Perhaps
I've misunderstood and the real problem is that you can't even see the USB,
even if it's UEFI bootable?
Even if your Linux OS is not available in a UEFI bootable image and your
computer must have UEFI bootable installation media, I believe we can set
things up to allow installation even in that case.
I regularly back up my Ubuntu OS and can make the boot drive media UEFI or
legacy bootable after restoring the OS from backup.
I'll be back Jan 3. It would be interesting if you could bring your laptop
to the hackers' meeting and we could look at things?
Thanks,
Phil


On Mon, Dec 30, 2024 at 10:52 AM Stephen Warren <
swarren-tag-list-nclug at wwwdotorg.org> wrote:

> On 12/27/24 20:44, Bill Thorson wrote:
> > On 12/26/24 16:07, spiros thanasoulas wrote:
> >> could it be that the image is not EFI based?
> >> or maybe in the bios there is a setting to enable non-uefi boot modes?
> > Ok, after 30+ years of running Linux on everything and building and
> > running many clusters of Linux computers all over the place, I'm finally
> > stumped with this one,  Here's the thumb drive image of Debian 12 I
> > created by dd'ing the .iso to the drive.
> >
> > As seen by the Linux boot menu:
> >
> >
> >
> > And Linux when I selected it:
> >
> >
> >
> > Now on IdeaPad 5 2-in-1 14Q8X9 and Windoz 11 boot menu:
> >
> >
> > Not seen!  Windoz BIOS:
>
> Note that it's Windows, not Windoz; no need for name-calling. And
> Windows is 100% irrelevant to what I believe you want to do.
>
> What does the existing OS have to do with this? IIRC you just wanted to
> boot a different OS from a USB drive. That USB drive is showing up in
> the list of boot devices ("Specific STORAGE" is its name per the
> screenshots on the other laptop) in your screenshot; just select it
> there and you should be set. There's no need to boot Windows or change
> anything in Windows. All this happens in UEFI long before Windows boots.
>
> To confirm: That screenshot where "Specific STORAGE" does show up: Is it
> _really a Windows boot menu as you said, or a UEFI boot menu? I'm pretty
> sure it's a UEFI boot menu, not a Windows boot menu... If it is some
> form of Windows boot menu, that's not the right place to boot the USB
> drive. Instead, interrupt the UEFI boot (often by pressing F9 IIRC) and
> select the option to boot from a specific device.
>
> > No control over UEFI option.  Now when I select the drive in Windoz:
> >
> >
> > Then when I cancel formatting the drive:
> >
> >
> > Definitely looks like Windoz is not using UEFI and not recognizing the
> > format.
>
> Well, Windows doesn't _use_ UEFI in any case[1]. It's booted _by_ UEFI.
> Your laptop almost certainly does use UEFI if it's new; it's basically
> the only option out there on recent PC HW. But what Windows does or
> doesn't do should be irrelevant here; you want to boot from the USB
> drive without involving Windows at all. Equally, you don't care whether
> Windows can read/access the data on the USB drive since Windows isn't
> involved in booting it, so doesn't need to be able to read it.
>
> [1] Ignoring details such as UEFI runtime services and the ESP partition
> that aren't relevant here.
>
>  >  I've searched everywhere to find out how to fix this. It has > been
> completely frustrating.  No wonder I've stayed away from these
> > pathetic operating systems my entire career.
> >
> > But, still would appreciate any ideas that might help.
> >
> > Bill
> >
>
>
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