Dualbooting Nobara onto my Windows PC

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

Welp I never should've "upgraded" to Windows 11. Microsoft...how? How did you do it? How the hell does this OS run things so badly? Playing games on Windows 11 is such a miserable experience with so much microstuttering that at this point I've just been playing on my Steam Deck more than the main PC just so I don't have to deal with Windows

So I'm going to install Zorin OS onto my main PC, installing it to a SATA SSD. It's gonna be a weird experience since my graphics card is an Nvidia RTX 3060, and modern Nvidia cards do not like Linux. There's a reason AMD cards are recommended for daily driving Linux, but hey I'm at wits end and anything is better than Windows 11 at this point

I'll keep you all posted on my adventures with Zorin on the main PC once I get it all setup. I've used Zorin before, it's a really great distro. Even has Windows and macOS UI modes if you're more used to those interfaces.

Zorin OS - Make your computer better.

Discover the alternative to Windows and macOS designed to make your computer faster, more powerful, secure, and privacy-respecting.

zorin.com

 

[RokinAmerica]

Why not install 10 instead? If you have had it in the past (upgraded to), just make an installable USB of Win 10? You already have the license.

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

Why not install 10 instead? If you have had it in the past (upgraded to), just make an installable USB of Win 10? You already have the license.

I honestly at this point would rather just switch to Linux because I'm tired of Windows. I'm tired of Microsoft forcing mandatory automatic updates. It's one of the reasons I switched to Mac as my main driver to begin with.

Plus I've been using my Steam Deck a lot more than the main PC at this point for gaming purposes I'd rather not deal with Microsoft and their **********

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

Alright so sitrep, Zorin is a bust. Sound is just not working, and nothing I did to troubleshoot fixed it, so I said screw it and switched distros. Now I installed Nobara

Unfortunately something has really gone wrong. After the Nobara install, nothing is happening anymore. Turning the computer on, I just get a black screen. No BIOS menu, no post screen, nothing. But the motherboard has no error light turning on, and I can still hit Caps Lock and that light turns on. So either A. The graphics drivers got broken in the install, or B. Boot partition is not active since during the install I told it to overwrite the Zorin partition.

So later I'm going to try resetting the CMOS to see if that will fix it. God I hope so because I swear to god if Nobara just bricked my entire PC I'm gonna have an episode.

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

Yeah she's dead Jim. Resetting the CMOS fixed nothing

Well, short thread. Looks like my Steam Deck is gonna become my main gaming PC now.

 

[Cape Dave]

Yeah she's dead Jim. Resetting the CMOS fixed nothing

Well, short thread. Looks like my Steam Deck is gonna become my main gaming PC now.

Bad PSU?

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

Bad PSU?

No it powers on. The BIOS is completely cooked from the install. Nothing is posting anymore but the motherboard is trying to cling to life as fans still work and it's still sending a signal to the monitor that the monitor sees. But nothing displays and I cannot access BIOS options anymore. If the Linux shell is accessible I could save it, but if Ctrl+Alt+F3 doesn't work, it's gone.

At this point it's outside my hands. If it is salvageable, the BIOS would have to get reflashed and Windows reinstalled, which I do not have the equipment to do that so I gotta take it to a third party anyway.

Even if it is salvageable, I'm frankly done. I'm just gonna sell it for parts and default to my Steam Deck. I have no intentions on replacing this tower.

Shoutouts to Hewlett Packard for making absolute garbage. The worst motherboards and system BIOS I have ever seen.

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

Okay turns out, it wasn't bricked. I couldn't see anything because of a boot manager problem. The default boot manager was GRUB, and my monitor had auto HDR settings turned on, which in turn meant I couldn't see the terminal at all. So this entire time I thought it was bricked but it wasn't, it was just Linux display issues.

I'm cleaning up everything and trying this install again now that everything is fixed

 

[Cape Dave]

No it powers on. The BIOS is completely cooked from the install. Nothing is posting anymore but the motherboard is trying to cling to life as fans still work and it's still sending a signal to the monitor that the monitor sees. But nothing displays and I cannot access BIOS options anymore. If the Linux shell is accessible I could save it, but if Ctrl+Alt+F3 doesn't work, it's gone.

At this point it's outside my hands. If it is salvageable, the BIOS would have to get reflashed and Windows reinstalled, which I do not have the equipment to do that so I gotta take it to a third party anyway.

Even if it is salvageable, I'm frankly done. I'm just gonna sell it for parts and default to my Steam Deck. I have no intentions on replacing this tower.

Shoutouts to Hewlett Packard for making absolute garbage. The worst motherboards and system BIOS I have ever seen.

LOL, not quite I remember when Compaq used to put their BIOS on THE HARD DRIVE Glad you got it sorted.

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

And there we go. We're all done. Everything is setup

So you're probably wondering why I did all this. WellI have a ne