| 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. --- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
