I haven’t submitted anything about this previously, as I thought for whatever reason I was the only user impacted by this issue, but there seem to be other users posting on Reddit with similar issues which could be linked.
My problem is with the Debian 11.4 Live Image installer. The installation works like a charm on KVM-based virtual machines (I have proxmox in my home lab), the issue is that on physical hardware, it the Calamares installer doesn’t write a boot record, leaving the system in an unboottable state after installation. This has occurred with two of my Dell Laptops, an XPS 9575 as well as a Latitude E5470. I’ve used Legacy and UEFI modes, no improvement. Both my laptops have no problem installing and running: Fedora 36, RHEL 8.4 (and clones), Ubuntu 22.04, Manjaro, Pop OS 22.04. Literally every other distro I’ve tested installs fine, the issue is solely with Debian Live images For the XPS, I only tried with the non-free firmware images, but for the Latitude, I tried with both non free and free versions. STEPS TO REPRODUCE: 1) Burn ISO live image to USB 2) Start Dell laptop off of USB 3) Launch the Calamares installer and run it to completion. 4) Remove USB 5) Reboot. You will be at a blank screen, no OS is found. Do not test this in a virtual environment, the installer works fine there last I checked. Here are some reddit posts that make me think that this is a widespread issue than just me: https://www.reddit.com/r/debian/comments/wl2b1s/follow_up_from_my_previous_post_i_have_no_idea/ https://www.reddit.com/r/debian/comments/wk9157/i_installed_debian_11_on_my_intel_core_i5_dell/ Images I’ve used are (I’ve also tried Torrent downloads, no difference): Free https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/amd64/iso-dvd/ Non Free Firmware https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-including-firmware/current/amd64/iso-dvd/ If QA isn’t the correct list to submit this to, I would appreciate it someone could point me to a more appropriate list? Thank you! Lucas
