Live-anything doesn't work

[Newbunto]

Once you've installed

I still haven't got around to reinstalling but I did do a full install onto a USB flash drive (just for emergency booting).

, all you need to do is run the System76 Driver and install the Nvidia driver to get everything set up.

Not necessarily disagreeing with what you wrote but the nomodeset thing is needed twice.

You need it once on the Live USB (or CD).

Then you do "Install". When it installs it won't automatically add the nomodeset.

So on the first reboot from the newly installed disk, you need to stop in GRUB and edit in the nomodeset.

Then I installed the nVidia driver and this (apparently) removes the need for nomodeset on any subsequent reboots.

This is all in accordance with the instructions on the System 76 web site.

[isantop]

I still haven't got around to reinstalling but I did do a full install onto a USB flash drive (just for emergency booting).



Not necessarily disagreeing with what you wrote but the nomodeset thing is needed twice.

You need it once on the Live USB (or CD).

Then you do "Install". When it installs it won't automatically add the nomodeset.

So on the first reboot from the newly installed disk, you need to stop in GRUB and edit in the nomodeset.

Then I installed the nVidia driver and this (apparently) removes the need for nomodeset on any subsequent reboots.

This is all in accordance with the instructions on the System 76 web site.

That's an excellent point. In the future, perhaps it would be a good idea to check what parameters Linux was booted with before installing, then echo those into the Grub configuration for the installed system.

[Newbunto]

Yes, I thought about that but then once you have installed the nVidia driver it seems that the nomodeset is not needed - and there probably isn't an easy way to make it go away once it is not needed, particularly for novice users like me.

There may be a down side to using nomodeset if it's not needed. I don't know.

One thing that I noticed is that the install created multiple items in GRUB. In addition to the default boot, it created a recovery boot and the recovery boot has the nomodeset present. I don't know whether it always puts nomodeset on the recovery boot or put it there because it rightly saw that at the time the install was done nomodeset had been used.

The good aspect of this is that even if someone got stuck after the install (didn't know how to work GRUB), the recovery boot should still work.

Possibly the right answer is that if the install detected that the user used nomodeset to boot the Live-whatever then the install should warn the user before the restart after the install that most likely ... nomodeset will continue to be needed on each boot until appropriate video drivers are installed, tell the user how to edit it in on booting, and suggest that those drivers get installed ASAP. A variation would be to give the user the option of getting the install to make nomodeset permanent i.e. if the user doesn't intend to install the drivers.

[isantop]

Yes, I thought about that but then once you have installed the nVidia driver it seems that the nomodeset is not needed - and there probably isn't an easy way to make it go away once it is not needed, particularly for novice users like me.

There may be a down side to using nomodeset if it's not needed. I don't know.

One thing that I noticed is that the install created multiple items in GRUB. In addition to the default boot, it created a recovery boot and the recovery boot has the nomodeset present. I don't know whether it always puts nomodeset on the recovery boot or put it there because it rightly saw that at the time the install was done nomodeset had been used.

The good aspect of this is that even if someone got stuck after the install (didn't know how to work GRUB), the recovery boot should still work.

Possibly the right answer is that if the install detected that the user used nomodeset to boot the Live-whatever then the install should warn the user before the restart after the install that most likely ... nomodeset will continue to be needed on each boot until appropriate video drivers are installed, tell the user how to edit it in on booting, and suggest that those drivers get installed ASAP. A variation would be to give the user the option of getting the install to make nomodeset permanent i.e. if the user doesn't intend to install the drivers.

The true solution is for Nvidia to not be lazy any more and develop KMS support in the open source drivers (support in the proprietary drivers would be nice to). Or better yet, release some specs on the GPUs so that the best drivers can be the open source drivers anyway.

Anyway, nomodeset does cause problems on non-Nvidia Systems, but the Nvidia drivers don't care about that parameter anyway, so it doesn't really have an effect.