So, I have got my framework now and just tried to install MX KDE.
It all seemed to be going fine, I set all the settings, hit install, then upon reboot, I got an error message saying ‘‘MX Linux boot failed’’, another message saying ‘‘EFI Hard Drive (hard drive name etc) boot failed’’ and a final message saying ‘‘Default boot device missing or boot failed. Insert recovery media and hit any key. Then select ‘boot manager’ to choose a new boot device or to boot recovery media’’.
Not sure how to proceed from here. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks
I cannot offer any advice that pertains to your chosen distribution. Apologies for that. I’m responding because I can imagine how frustrating it is to have your new box fail to boot.
In order to troubleshoot and / or receive official after-sales support you will need to be using one of the two supported distros. I suggest you invest some time preparing a live booter of either Ubuntu or Fedora.
Once you’ve booted the live distro you’ll have the tools to interrogate the hardware and investigate whether your NVMe storage device is operating nominally or not.
Make sure you are booting from the USB first. Also, you need to turn the secure boot off. Did you do the MD5 checksum? Is it a good install onto the USB?
If you want MX Linux, did you try the Xfce version?
I’ve only been using MX Linux as a live USB with persistence. I tried the KDE version, which was too buggy for me. It would boot into it, but the USB would get hot after a while, and the OS would slow down. I went back to the Xfce version.
@truffaldino thanks for your reply. I shall try the xfce version like Michael_Polsinelli suggested. If that doesn’t work, then yes, I shall give Fedora a shot. Please forgive my lack of knowledge, but which tools would you use to check the hardware and SSD status?
Cheers @Michael_Polsinelli for the suggestions. I hadn’t turned secure boot off, will do that. MD5 and sha256 were good. I have only tried the KDE version so far. Everything appeared to be working fine on the live USB, I didn’t have it running for very long though, so can’t comment on the USB stick heating up. Will turn off secure boot and try the xfce version.
@DeM to give you confidence that your boot device has been detected by the kernel you could issue either lshw or inxi at a shell prompt. Both commands will provide more (but not necessarily useful) information if prefaced by sudo or run as the root user.
A couple of examples (from my 12th Gen Intel Framework 13):
$ sudo lshw | grep -i nvme
*-nvme
description: NVMe device
logical name: /dev/nvme0
capabilities: nvme pm msi msix pciexpress nvm_express bus_master cap_list
configuration: driver=nvme latency=0 nqn=nqn.2018-01.com.wdc:guid:obfuscated-0001-obfuscated state=live
description: NVMe disk
description: NVMe disk
description: NVMe disk
bus info: nvme@0:1
logical name: /dev/nvme0n1
bus info: nvme@0:1,1
bus info: nvme@0:1,2
bus info: nvme@0:1,3
bus info: nvme@0:1,4
$ sudo inxi -D -a -d
Drives:
Local Storage: total: 1.83 TiB lvm-free: 84.88 GiB used: 473.68 GiB (25.3%)
ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 maj-min: 259:0 vendor: Western Digital
model: WD BLACK SN770 500GB size: 465.76 GiB block-size: physical: 512 B
logical: 512 B speed: 63.2 Gb/s lanes: 4 type: SSD serial: obfuscated
rev: 731120WD temp: 34.9 C scheme: GPT
SMART: yes health: PASSED on: 7d 21h cycles: 1,616
read-units: 12,708,060 [6.50 TB] written-units: 11,834,992 [6.05 TB]
ID-2: /dev/sda maj-min: 8:0 type: USB model: USB DISK 3.2
size: 931.51 GiB block-size: physical: 512 B logical: 512 B type: N/A
serial: obfuscated rev: PMAP scheme: MBR
SMART Message: Unknown USB bridge. Flash drive/Unsupported enclosure?
ID-3: /dev/sdb maj-min: 8:16 type: USB vendor: SMI (STMicroelectronics)
model: USB DISK size: 476.71 GiB block-size: physical: 512 B logical: 512 B
type: N/A serial: obfuscated rev: 1100
SMART Message: Unknown USB bridge. Flash drive/Unsupported enclosure?
Message: No optical or floppy data found.
Dino
PS: both commands offer a wealth of options to probe more deeply or broadly. I’m hopeful that more knowledgeable people will chime in once you’ve posted your command output.
I believe that turning off the secure boot will do the trick. Don’t give up on KDE yet; it might have better battery conservation than Xfce. I would try both to see which one you like better.
Cheers @truffaldino the inxi command rings a bell. Will have another look at it, along with the other one you suggested to get to know my system better.
Thanks @Michael_Polsinelli removing secure boot worked, and KDE is up and running. I have regular MX xfce running on my old laptop, so can kind of do a comparison. Not sure how much the lack of ‘ahs’ status would make a difference. It’s about the feel of the de’s though to a certain extent anyway I guess.
There is little to no difference between Desktop Environments. This has been a question with a long history, and the same answer. Pick the desktop you want to use.
Although I love how fast cachyos is compared to other arch based distros, their stable kernel with scx scheduler will break sleep pattern in EVERY arch variant that I tried, both on FW-13 and my other lenovo legion laptop. I’d be very curious which kernel you use exactly.