Linux installation failing on HP 17-ca0013

[xhajt03]

Hello,

I seek an advice for successful installation of Linux (Debian or possibly one of its derivates) on HP 17-ca0013 (the exact model is 4CN33EA). I understand that Linux is not officially supported on this laptop, but I assume that it should work nevertheless. All my attempts up to now ended up in the newly installed system not booting after the installation (depending on the scenario, either GRUB or BIOS complaining of not being able to load the operating system).

What I did so far:

• I turned off Secure Boot in BIOS
• I tried installing with both UEFI and legacy mode enabled
• I updated the BIOS to the latest available version (41)
• I tried using various disk partition approaches (without Logical Volume Management or with LVM)
• I tried various filesystem types (JFS, ext4) to make sure that it wasn't an issue with a particular filesystem loader in the particular build / kernel version
• I tried installing two different distributions/releases (Ubuntu 19.04 and plain Debian 9.9) using a USB stick (and the network)
• Don't ask me how many hours I already spent on these attempts 😕

Everything resulted in installation working up to the moment when it copied everything, but failed to load the system after restart. 😞

The laptop is configured with a 128GB SSD (Samsung MZNLN128HAHQ, just in case it matters) plus a 1TB HDD (Toshiba). My preferred setup is as follows:

• LVM so that I can extend volumes easily
• JFS filesystem at least for volumes expected to be used for changing data, but possibly for the system as well
• SSD: /boot (1GB should be probably more than enough) and / (80GB), preferably mounted with noatime option
• HDD: /home (100 GB), /tmp (32 GB), /var (32 GB) plus one large (512GB) partition mounted as /data for stuff I want to keep outside of /home; I'm open to advices regarding size of /tmp and /var if you believe that I should change them, I have no experience with a SSD+HDD combination and thus I didn't need to think about this before
• I'm used to Debian (with Gnome), but I'm ready to consider some derived distribution like Ubuntu if you believe that it would support my laptop better

Regarding the filesystem - should JFS be an issue, I can use some other journalling filesystem like ext4. Similarly, LVM is not a strict requirement (I have the GPT partition table configured with LVM at the moment, but I guess that I could remove it again from the shell if needed and possibly even to create the whole partition tables from scratch if needed - just tell me if you believe that it helps and I need to do something differently).

Can somebody advise me what I should do / should avoid in order to get this working (preferably clear steps to follow)?

Thanks in advance

Tomas

[WAWood]

@xhajt03 

I'm sorry, but we here are not equipped to provide detailed Linux support.

HP only warranties their PCs for usage with the OS that comes preinstalled. IF you replace that with Linux, or add a Linux OS, then you assume full responsibility for maintaining that -- as HP provides Linux assistance only on Redhat and then only to commercial customers.

The primary "challenge" to using Linux on any HP PC is the availability of Linux drivers. Any hardware that does not work will then range from simple (if there are Linux drivers available) to impossible (if there are NO Linux drivers available) to fix.

Since HP does not provide Linux drivers, your best bet for Linux support is to contact the support forum for the Linux distro you are using.

[xhajt03]

Well, yes, I understand that I'm on my own with regard to drivers. However, my current issue doesn't seem to be related to drivers directly (as far as I can tell) - live Linux boots from the USB, installer runs, but the installed system doesn't boot afterwards. 😞 Obviously, I could run into various other issues later due to the drivers (wifi, Bluetooth, sound, camera, etc. - hoping to be able to solve them eventually 😉 ), but I'm not even there yet.

[ieee488]

Again, ask at the forum for whichever Linux distro you are using.

[xhajt03]

FYI - the same installation went rather flawlessly with Debian 10.1. 🙂 As expected, I had to install the non-free firmware packages (firmware-graphics-amd, firmware-realtek) and add an additional DKMS module for the WiFi driver (RTL8122ce) which I had to download from a separate source (on GitHub). Everything working as it should now. 🙂