My good old laptop with OpenSuse Leap 15.0 died the other day, and it was time to replace it. So, I got a Windows 10 64bit, HP Spectre X360 15-DF003DX with a 512GB SDD card (NVMe).
The last two laptops I had came from a company where the drives were non formatted and non-allocated, so they were virgin drives. Installing OpenSuse on them was a breeze.
I even remember before that having a Windows machine (98, XP, ME, 7) where I could still install linux even if the drives had NTFS partitions already on them. I remember the install showing the partitions, asking me if they could be deleted, and telling me all data on them would be gone.
With this latest machine, I was doing an install and when it came to setting up the partitions, I got an error “cannot delete mdContainer” which I could not find anywhere on the internet.
Someone on StackExchange said the Windows was formatted with Docker, but I think that is ****. I tried DBAN to kill off my existing windows 10 partitions which were taking the entire disk.
Finally, I used an OpenSuse Live DVD. I installed that, installed “GParted” and I was able to remove ALL the Windows 10 partitions. Then when I rebooted my OpenSuse install disk, then OpenSuse recognized my drives, and installation could commence.
I will also say that I changed the BIOS boot order to be DVD/USB/HDD in that order. I also told the BIOS to DISABLE Secured Boot, and ENABLE Legacy Boot.
Just wanted to share that story with you. Thanks!