Please help with not booting from USB so to install Debian

[Liam Proven]

On Sat, 10 Jun 2023 at 04:19, Bret Busby <bret at busby.net> wrote:

>
> I am glad that I managed to get Linux installed on the computers that I
> have, so far, which do not have Win11 installed.\

My until recently unpopular but I think now increasingly widely held
opinion is that Windows 11 is one of those occasional bad Windows
releases that nobody really likes and doesn't bring much that anybody
needs. For me personally, I think Windows 11 is worse than Vista or
either 8.0 or 8.1. It's even worse than Windows ME!

Summary: you are not missing anything.

> The only computer with which I had a problem with BIOS or UEFI, and,
> booting, is the HP laptop that I mentioned, some time ago, as being
> problematic. I seem to have somehow, with the weird, complex, and,
> mostly obscurantist BIOS thing that it has, blundered my way into
> getting it to boot into the Linux (Linux Mint Mate 21.1) installation,
> but, not into anything else. It seems to have abandoned, or, gone
> directly through, GRUB, without any GRUB options on bootup - it simply
> boots directly into the Linux installation.

Oh, yes, that's a thing. On some machines you can hold shift or press
escape at the point during start up in which the grub menu would
appear, and it will show up. You can also edit the grub config file
and tell it to show a menu.

https://askubuntu.com/questions/16042/how-to-get-to-the-grub-menu-at-boot-time

> As that is the operating system that I primarily am using, I am not
> overly concerned that it will not now boot into anything else, as I do
> not use MS Windows, and, I had had no luck with the two BSD's that I had
> tried - I could not get MidnightBSD to boot from the Ventoy drive - it
> was a botch up - I think that is due to the iso being too small - about
> 1GB;

No, midnight BSD is very small. But the bad news is, I've tried it and
it's rubbish. I would recommend that you avoid it.

There isn't an easy to install graphical freeBSD distro out there at
the moment. Ghost BSD is indeed the closest... And as you have
discovered, it's not great.


> But, I can run the Linux installation on it, so, while that works, I
> intend to not try to fix anything on it, to facilitate multiple booting
> or even, trying again top boot from an external device; just upgrading
> the OS version, as required, for as long as it works.

That is probably your best plan.

> The HP/MS conspiracy to prevent other OS's being run or installed, seems
> to have backfired on them, as I can now, only run the Linux
> installation, and, can no longer access the MS Windows (10) installation.

I feel your pain. This is something that could be fixed.

However if you don't need it, don't bother.

If you do want to try, then firstly apply the fix in the second answer
to the stack overflow question I linked to above. It's just a couple
of lines. That should result in your group menu showing up again. Then
you can install the os-prober package, and enable detection of other
operating systems with another small change to the group configuration
file.

Here is how:

https://forum.endeavouros.com/t/warning-os-prober-will-not-be-executed-to-detect-other-bootable-partitions-systems-on-them-will-not-be-added-to-the-grub-boot-configuration-check-grub-disable-os-prober-documentation-entry/13998


> The whole of the UEFI thing, from what you have said, appears to be
> gratuitously complex and unusable (that is, unusable as far as a system
> administrator trying to work with it, goes), and, designed to be fudged,
> or, to obtain a working system, by blundering through until a workable
> system is achieved, without any idea of what is happening, or, how the
> workable system is achieved.

I do agree with you. Although I feel a bit like I am engaging in some
kind of conspiracy theory, it does feel very much to me like UEFI is
some kind of Microsoft plot to make rooting Linux more difficult.
However saying that, I have talked to people from several of the big
enterprise Linux benders, and because they support secure boot and
have signed boot images, they actually like UEFI and they think it's a
good thing. So… what can I say?


> So, thank you for your advice, and, I am glad that I have somehow, got
> these computers working as well as I have managed to get them working.

:-)




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