So I want to install openSUSE Leap on a USB stick permanently (via another USB stick).
I can get that to work, but it wont boot with my really old computer that doesnt support UEFI.
Is there some way to make that work?
Thanks in advance!
IME, really old computers can’t be expected to support USB3 sticks with their USB2-only ports. You may need to install to a USB2 stick for such a purpose, or add a USB3 ports card to the old computer.
How old is yours?
That’s not the problem nor answers this my question, but thank you, could’ve been the problem, yeah (but I use a USB2 stick already).
when the system does not support UEFI, you should not stall it in UEFI mode.
It is not clear if you did all of that on one and the same system, but I doubt that. If the system is not UEFI, then the install medium will be booted legacy (obvious) and the the whole installation will be done for a legacy system.
If I install on a USB drive, then:
- I install only for legacy boot;
- I later add support for UEFI boot.
To install for legacy boot, when the USB is plugged into a UEFI machine, the trick is to change the bootloader from “GRUB2 for EFI” to just plain “GRUB2”. During partitioning, you might need to allocate a small partition as a “BIOS boot partition”.
To later install support for UEFI booting, I manually run (as root):
shim-install --removable
The USB drive should then be able to be booted either on legacy boot systems or on UEFI systems.
If the older system doesn’t boot from a USB drive (which is entirely possible), then you need a “helper” application that will do that. It probably isn’t an issue with it not being UEFI-capable, but more with the system not being able to boot from a USB drive to start with (some older systems could, others couldn’t).
One that I’m familiar with (and have used on occasion) is the Plop Boot Manager (Plop Boot Manager 5.0 - Table of Contents). I don’t believe it’s entirely open source (parts are under the GPL), but it is not commercial/paid software.
You can burn this to a bootable CD, and it will boot a USB device.
It makes sense, though, to do the install as an MBR install rather than GPT.