I’ve decided that after seeing the turmoil over Windows 11 and the end of support for 10 coming sooner than I’d like that it was time to jump ship and try out Linux again. I haven’t done anything Linux related in years, and have never touched an Arch distro before, so please be patient with me!
As title suggests, I have loaded the latest ISO of EndeavourOS to a USB drive to attempt to live boot and install. I have spent weeks trying to read up as much as I could to make sure I didn’t make mistakes while setting things up but it’s gotten to the point I think I’ll need the help. I’ll try to break things down for digestibility but to also try to give as much context as I can.
Environment:
PC info:
Current OS: Windows 10 Pro version 22H2
Motherboard: EVGA Z97 FTW
RAM: 16GB of DDR3 1600
CPU: i7-4790k
GPU: NVIDIA RTX 2060
BIOS mode: UEFI (confirmed in Windows and in BIOS menu) Monitors: 1 Dell S2417DG and 1 ASUS VS248
Current Progress:
Ran into same problem while using Rufus and am currently using Ventoy (going to be installing another distro on my laptop later ). Ventoy is currently configured with exFAT and GPT and I mad sure to uncheck the Secure Boot Support option.
I also confirmed that Secure Boot is not currently enabled through System Info, though I cannot see an option to toggle it in BIOS.
On both Windows and in BIOS, I made sure Fast Boot is disabled.
Install Steps:
Plug USB drive in
Boot to BIOS to double-check everything is set up correctly and restart
Computer will boot to the Ventoy ISO selection menu
I select the ISO for Endeavour and attempt to boot in ‘normal mode’
Screen simply goes dark. No text displays at all, not even an error but it does not turn off. I can sit at this point and wait for many minutes but nothing seems to happen.
I really wish I could provide more info for this but I can’t get any info out of Ventoy either as trying to run grub greets me with a screen simply declaring “Welcome to GRUB 2.0” and seems to freeze at this point. Pressing any key does nothing. I know anyone reading will require more information so please let me know what you need and how I can provide that to you.
My assumption is that this is likely to do with Nvidia drivers not shaking hands well with Linux but that was what I was hoping to avoid by choosing Endeavour as, if I’m not mistaken, comes with Nvidia driver support already installed .
Thanks to anyone who takes the time to read this rambly post and anyone willing to help.
Edit: Added some aditional context I thought may be useful in italics.
Mentioned that I currently have 2 monitors as I think I’ve seen one person on a different distro have an issue when using two at the same time when trying to boot
Provided context that my main monitor doesn’t turn off, but simply doesn’t display anything
Attempting to boot EOS in grub mode presents a screen that states “GNU GRUB 2.04” and nothing else. Hitting any key from here does nothing.
I have also confirmed that Ventoy is on latest version, 1.0.99
I have also now attempted Etcher which, after seeing the splash screen for my motherboard, once again goes straight to a pure black screen with no options for input. This is the same behavior as I had when attempting to use Rufus.
Yes, and it’s bizarre because I think I’ve seen similar BIOS screens that do actually allow the user to toggle secure boot but mine apparently does not.
I can attempt with CSM on but doing so enables a few sub-options which can be set to either ‘Do not launch’, ‘UEFI only’, or ‘Legacy only’ with the last sub-option being the same but about OpROM (see attached).
Do we have an idea of what to have each of these set to?
Edit: I imagine that the only sub-option that would likely make a difference is the Storage OpROM policy but CSM is well outside of anything I’ve studied
I appreciate the help, ricklinux! I’ve seen you helping out a ton in many of the posts I’ve read when trying to diagnose this myself.
What you described is the current setup I’ve attempted to use, as much as my BIOS will allow (since there doesn’t appear to be a way to toggle secure boot but Windows reports that it isn’t booting with secure boot enabled anyway).
At this point, I’ve attempted to flash with both Rufus and Etcher, and tried loading the ISO to my USB drive as a Ventoy drive. The former 2 reliable produce the same result - motherboard splash screen loads, then proceeds to a blank but not off screen - while the latter did allow me to get into the ISO selection screen and even nearly load an ISO of Garuda, strangely enough, as that got as far as the Garuda boot selector menu but using any of those options resulting in that menu freezing and my USB devices seemingly turning off/disconnecting.
In some case, some firmware have CSM settings separated also for USB boot devices apart from hard drives. Check this too may under boot.
Not sure if i understand if you are unable to get the livesession in both cases.
On bootup of the ISO you can see by the used bootmenu screen if it is booting in efi (UEFI) or legacy (BIOS)
If CSM (Compatibility Support Module) is enabled, secure boot is not available at all.
But i can see you have still some setting on uefi:
I only had those options set that specifically for that picture to show what was available for settings there. I promise I have been running (so far) with CSM disabled .
Not sure if i understand if you are unable to get the livesession in both cases.
Sorry if I didn’t make that very clear. I was able to get into a menu that looked similar to this, but Garuda:
except that that was when I was using Ventoy and, even then (if I recall correctly), I didn’t have success actually getting to a live session using any of the options there. That was as close as I’ve come so far to getting anything to work on here.
with this i would really try what @ricklinux suggested before try to enable UEFI and completely disable legacy options (CSM)
And in case omit using ventoy as it will add may issue to the game.
The culprit could be also the GPU… what could need a boot option to set so try nomodeset would be an option to try too also in most case it will boot into very limited graphics if at all…
Do you mean for the EOS ISO that I currently have flashed to my drive or for when I had Garuda on there through Ventoy?
If you mean the first, I don’t know how to do that as I never get to a menu to do any GRUB configuring.
If you mean the second, no, I didn’t try that as I figured that the proprietary driver option they had would have worked and I didn’t really want to use Garuda anyway. I just did that as a test to see if I could get anything to go past where I had been stuck at.
there is no grub on our ISO only syslinux and systemd-boot
But in case you should try set your system to boot the USB in uefi mode what would show the bootmenu without colored background (white text on black background)
Outside of doing the above, which is what I’ve had it set to so far, I’m not sure what you mean. Is there some other option for booting specifically the USB in UEFI? I would think the only things that would make a difference like that would be the boot mode I have highlighted there or CSM (which is still currently disabled).
). Ventoy is currently configured with exFAT and GPT and I mad sure to uncheck the Secure Boot Support option.
.
As this is some bla bla legacy mode, bla bla.
.
