Has anyone had problems installing Tumbleweed from a recent ISO?

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Has anyone had problems installing from a recent Tumbleweed ISO?

On my P/C I have Windows 11 and Tumbleweed. I update Tumbleweed by ‘zypper dup’ and every 2 or 3 months I do a fresh install from a USB ISO.

I have tried doing a fresh install from ISO’s from the 17/06/2025, 18/06/2025, 20/06/2025 & 26/06/2025. All four have failed. I run the ISO from the bios/efi settings and select the install Tumbleweed option. The installation starts in the normal way with - loading basic drivers & hardware detection and stops just before the normal installtion menu is shown.

I found an Tumbleweed ISO dated the 05/06/2025 and installed this without any problems (but a very big zypper dup). Has anyone had probems?

Thanks

2

Interesting reinstall opinion.

The big question from my perspective: “Why”

Seems a bit excessive. When we used TW, we never reinstalled it unless there was a catastrophic system failure. Which was maybe one time over the years.

This question might come across as negative, but I’m genuinely curious: do you also reinstall Windows 11 occasionally?

And just to be clear, you’re not writing the ISO to a flash-drive, then booting to it to install?

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Many thanks for posting.

I take your point about doing a fresh install when you are using a rolling system! I just enjoy installing Tumbleweed. Windows 11 came with the p/c (in October last year). I never use.

Thanks

1 Like
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Sorry forgot to confirm, ‘yes’ I install the ISO onto a flash drive and use this to install Tumbleweed. Have tried 3 or 4 different flash drives.

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Snapshot 20250610 included an upgrade to Mesa and an upgrade to kernel-firmware-amdgpu that might have impacted selected systems.
Does your system have an AMD GPU or APU?

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Thanks for posting. The date looks relevant but I don’t have any AMD hardware on my p/c.

I have found a way round the issue - install the latest Tumbleweed using the latest openSUSE-Tumbleweed-KDE-Live ISO. This opens at a ‘live’ desktop with an install oction.

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I’m having issues with the Tumbleweed installer too, I’ve tried the Jun 14 (NET/DVD), Jun 16 (DVD), and Jun 27 (DVD) images and all failed just before the installation menu is shown, getting stuck in a black screen with a single underscore showing at the top.
The device is an Avell A70 HYB, which does not contain any AMD hardware (i7 12700H with RTX3050).
This notebook already runs Tumbleweed, and I even ran zypper dup last week without issues.
Before someone asks, I want a fresh install because the current install is pretty old, with a lot bloat from previous projects before I knew about containers/distrobox…

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@yagomello Hi and welcome to the Forum :smile:
Can you show the output from inxi -GSaz normally that’s a graphics issue…

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Hi @malcolmlewis and thank you!
I ran the installer two more times (using the Jun 27 image) just to check where things break, so I can add a bit more info here:

  1. The installer loads the basic drivers and runs hardware detection
  2. The installation changes from hardware detection to a console-like output
  3. It shows
starting yast...
Starting Installer
Probing connected terminal...

Initializing virtual console...

Found a Linux console terminal on /dev/console (240 columns x 67 lines)
Sampling every 5 s to /var/log/YaST2/memsample.zcat
  1. It shows a single _ on the screen and gets stuck, I can’t interact with anything, trying to get to a tty (Ctrl+Alt+F_) does nothing

Here’s the output from inxi:

System:
  Kernel: 6.15.2-1-default arch: x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 14.3.0
    clocksource: tsc avail: acpi_pm
    parameters: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-6.15.2-1-default
    root=UUID=35a11eeb-ed6e-4c5e-bcba-2a72c8e6c205 splash=silent
    resume=/dev/disk/by-uuid/04b35983-fa69-40a8-8c64-a4c9883ea50e
    mitigations=auto quiet security=apparmor rd.driver.blacklist=nouveau
  Desktop: KDE Plasma v: 6.3.5 tk: Qt v: N/A info: frameworks v: 6.14.0
    wm: kwin_wayland tools: avail: xscreensaver vt: 3 dm: SDDM Distro: openSUSE
    Tumbleweed 20250614
Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel Alder Lake-P GT2 [Iris Xe Graphics] vendor: AIstone Global
    driver: i915 v: kernel alternate: xe arch: Xe process: Intel 10nm
    built: 2021-22+ ports: active: eDP-1 empty: DP-1,DP-2 bus-ID: 00:02.0
    chip-ID: 8086:46a6 class-ID: 0300
  Device-2: NVIDIA GA107M [GeForce RTX 3050 Mobile] vendor: AIstone Global
    driver: nvidia v: 570.153.02 alternate: nouveau,nvidia_drm
    non-free: 550/565.xx+ status: current (as of 2025-01; EOL~2026-12-xx)
    arch: Ampere code: GAxxx process: TSMC n7 (7nm) built: 2020-2023 pcie:
    gen: 4 speed: 16 GT/s lanes: 8 link-max: lanes: 16 ports: active: none
    empty: DP-3,HDMI-A-1 bus-ID: 01:00.0 chip-ID: 10de:25a2 class-ID: 0300
  Device-3: Chicony HD Webcam driver: uvcvideo type: USB rev: 2.0
    speed: 480 Mb/s lanes: 1 mode: 2.0 bus-ID: 1-5:3 chip-ID: 04f2:b711
    class-ID: fe01 serial: <filter>
  Display: wayland server: X.org v: 1.21.1.15 with: Xwayland v: 24.1.6
    compositor: kwin_wayland driver: X: loaded: modesetting,nvidia
    unloaded: vesa alternate: fbdev,intel,nouveau,nv dri: iris gpu: i915
    display-ID: 0
  Monitor-1: eDP-1 model: ChiMei InnoLux 0x1521 built: 2020 res:
    mode: 1920x1080 hz: 144 scale: 100% (1) dpi: 142 gamma: 1.2
    size: 344x193mm (13.54x7.6") diag: 394mm (15.5") ratio: 16:9
    modes: 1920x1080
  API: EGL v: 1.5 hw: drv: intel iris drv: nvidia platforms: device: 0
    drv: nvidia device: 2 drv: iris device: 3 drv: swrast gbm: drv: nvidia
    surfaceless: drv: nvidia wayland: drv: iris x11: drv: iris
    inactive: device-1
  API: OpenGL v: 4.6.0 compat-v: 4.5 vendor: intel mesa v: 25.1.3 glx-v: 1.4
    direct-render: yes renderer: Mesa Intel Iris Xe Graphics (ADL GT2)
    device-ID: 8086:46a6 memory: 30.36 GiB unified: yes display-ID: :1.0
  API: Vulkan v: 1.4.313 layers: 2 device: 0 type: integrated-gpu name: Intel
    Iris Xe Graphics (ADL GT2) driver: N/A device-ID: 8086:46a6 surfaces: N/A
    device: 1 type: discrete-gpu name: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Laptop GPU
    driver: N/A device-ID: 10de:25a2 surfaces: N/A device: 2 type: cpu
    name: llvmpipe (LLVM 20.1.6 256 bits) driver: N/A device-ID: 10005:0000
    surfaces: N/A
  Info: Tools: api: clinfo, eglinfo, glxinfo, vulkaninfo
    de: kscreen-console,kscreen-doctor gpu: nvidia-smi wl: wayland-info
    x11: xdpyinfo, xprop, xrandr
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@yagomello So hybrid graphics, I would suggest edit the installer grub and add nomodeset as an additional kernel option.

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Hey @malcolmlewis I just tried you suggestion to use nomodeset and it worked :slight_smile:
Thank you!

I’ll add the steps below in case anyone needs it:

  1. Start the installation media
  2. Select (but don’t press enter) the Installation option
  3. Press e to edit the Installation entry
  4. Navigate to the Linux entry and add the nomodeset option:
 setparams 'Installation'

   set gfxpayload=keep
   echo 'Loading kernel ...'
-  linux /boot/x86_64/loader/linux splash=silent
+  linux /boot/x86_64/loader/linux splash=silent nomodeset
   echo `Loading initial ramdisk ...`
   initrd /boot/x86_64/loader/initrd
  1. Press F10 to boot
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  1. Also remove the nomodeset option from the boot entry after the installation is complete, as it should not be necessary anymore and affects a lot of stuff (like animations)
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Thanks very much for posting the steps to get round this issue with recent Tumbleweed ISOs.