this post was submitted on 20 Dec 2023
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Howdy everyone!

Looking for some help, I am trying to install openSUSE tumbleweed, the issue is I get stuck at the boot screen, the one that says loading kernel... loading initial ramdisk...

The issue is I am not quite sure what to do to troubleshoot this, any advice would be appreciated. This also happens with every distro I try to install, I've tried Arch, Nix, openSUSE and Fedora.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Have you tried disabling secure boot in the bios

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

My windows did this to me while I was dual booting with Mint, re-enabled secure boot when I went back to windows to check a wiki real quick.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Can you share some details about the machine you're trying to install it on? Are you able to boot a live image?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Yes this. Imagine posting to a stack themed site, your question would be closed for being incomplete. A screenshot of the failed boot would be great, and some info about the options you chose when installing and the type of machine you're using.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I tried uploading a picture, but couldn't figure out how, I will try again after work.

As for some system information it's an old Dell Optiplex 710 workstation, it's has UEFI but no option to turn off secure boot.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

The Optiplex 710 supposedly supports Ubuntu 10 and 11, so booting Linux should be possible. May require installing without UEFI, though.

I know some distros have issues with old Intel GPUs, try booting with nomodeset and the other my-graphics-card-doesnt-work kernel parameters, and figure out what driver options you may need from there. You may need to boot a kernel older than Linux 6.3 for some VERY old GPU hardware to work.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Not sure about your machine, but I have a project box that is a 2008 MacBook Pro, it would get stuck on every distro I tried at initial ramdisk like yours EXCEPT Ubuntu and mint which it installs perfectly fine for whatever reason. Not even Debian worked, I have no idea why this was. Try that possibly?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

If I have to I will, not really looking to go down any of the Debian flavors.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Try different bootloader entries, there should be something like failsafe mode.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

So I did try that, I went and installed with grub 2 inside ventoy, the installer works but I can't boot my installed system now.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I'm running a very old dell optiplex 710, it has uefi but no option to turn off secure boot.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

The messages you're getting sound like they're from the bootloader, so I think secure boot is not causing the problem... Linux should print some stuff right away when it loads, maybe check the architecture of the kernel you're trying to boot, even an error immediately after loading the kernel should print something unless the architecture is so different that it's just feeding the CPU bad instructions... Not sure how the bootloader would get installed correctly in that situation though. Is this after installation? Does the system boot from a live USB or cdrom?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Is this via a USB 3 or USB 2 port?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

USB 2 port.