My motherboard and processor and AMD GPU are reasonably up to date, and have been running Tumbleweed for a couple of years now. I accept the manageable flow of occasional regressions and bugs - it’s Tumbleweed. As a UXer, I do get frustrated about the lack of or hidden communication about UI design decisions often merely unwitting UI manifestations of deeper technical decisions. I’m getting off topic though. After some troubles - can’t even recall what they were, I decided it had been long enough and I ought to run a new install, stick to the core repos only and rationalise and harden my storage.
I downloaded the .iso and ddd it to a thumb drive. The checksum matched and the install proceeds successfully - to a point, depending on the BIOS settings.
I have a Z790 Aorus Elite AX
I upgraded the BIOS successfully from F1 to F15 (12/01/2025 8ARPT005) and reset the BIOS to factory defaults and changed the motherboard battery.
Processor: 13th Gen Intel Core i9 13900K
Security Option: System
Boot Option: UEFI:Kingston... thumb drive with install image
Fast Boot: Disable Link ← I thought this was the problem but seems not entirely
Windows 10 Features: Other OS
CSM Support: Disabled ← understand that if enabled, is legacy UEFI (ie MBR / max 2TB / max 4 partitions)
Secure Boot: Enabled - Active but also tried Disabled - Not Active
Secure Boot Mode: Standard
With Fast Boot enabled, the install almost immediately returns ../../grub-core/kern/mm.c:584/out of memory searching here there was a thread speculating that there had been a change, meaning more ‘something’ needed to be pre loaded and that fast boot only prepares insufficient storage, ‘somewhere’ - I didn’t really understand but I disabled Fast Boot and it worked a bit better, getting beyond to start the Yast install screens.
After using the ‘expert’ partitioner to reuse most of the existing partitions, I proceeded to the install button. I have a Sandisk M2A 500GiB SSD - I had set it up to format 256MiB FAT for /boot/efi and 465GiB for /. The package install seemed to proceed until it got to the bootloader and a dialogue popped up with a message along the lines of Couldn't find EFI system partition. It is recommended to mount it to /boot or /efi.
Switching to a tty console and running bootctl status returned the same message, plus
System:
Firmware n/a (n/a)
Firmware Arch x64
Secure Boot: disabled
TPM2 support: no
Measured UKI: no
Boot into FW: supported
Random Seed:
System Token: not set
No boot loaders listed in EFI variables
tty2: install:/usr/bin #
Now, when I try the install, I’m going round in circles enabling and disablingSecure Boot and still getting the memory issue - can’t even find a config that gets me past that and onto the /boot/efi disk not found!
You want to change your procedure and terminate the loop. Software engineers tend to break their products. Thus I checked current openSUSE-Tumbleweed-NET-x86_64-Current.iso. II (Innate Intelligence, formerly known as Common Sense) tells me to rely on KISS.
Settings used:
Secure boot: disabled
Expert partitioner: use existing Efi System Partition /dev/sda1, create System Partition /dev/sda4
i4130:~ # fdl
Disk /dev/sda: 465.76 GiB, 500107862016 bytes, 976773168 sectors
Disk model: Samsung SSD 850
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: BEEDF98F-DA82-4488-A275-F581FA13B9F8
Device Size Type
/dev/sda1 100M EFI System
/dev/sda2 368G Linux filesystem
/dev/sda3 48.8G Linux filesystem
/dev/sda4 48.8G Linux filesystem
Partition table entries are not in disk order.
i4130:~ #
System readily installs:
erlangen:~ # ssh karl@tw2026
(karl@tw2026) Password:
Last login: Tue Jan 6 06:13:00 CET 2026 from :0 on tty2
Have a lot of fun...
karl@tw2026:~>
tw2026:~ # journalctl --list-boots
IDX BOOT ID FIRST ENTRY LAST ENTRY
0 23c262b7074f4d2aa7c3320ac63534ee Tue 2026-01-06 06:12:29 CET Tue 2026-01-06 06:21:48 CET
tw2026:~ #
Disable FastBoot which, as far as I understand, is mostly for Windows and can prevent the Linux kernel from fully probbe and manage hardware
As written above, allocate more space to ESP Efi System Partition as there is a move towards installations compliant with Boot Loader Specification (BLS)
Unless it really prevents you from installing, I wouldn’t disable SecureBoot
Thanks All (@malcolmlewis@opsusemaco@marel@karlmistelberger )
I think I better understand what I need to do but I can no longer get beyond the ../../grub-core/kern/mm.c:584/out of memory message. If I do get beyond that, I’d be able to allocate 2-3GiB to /boot/efi and I think I’d have it fixed. Unfortunately Fast Boot is Disabled and I’ve tried Secure Boot both Enabled & Disabled but I still get the out of memory message.
There’s a Secure Boot Mode set to standard. If I change it to Custom there are some dangerous looking options that become available:
Restore Factory Keys
Reset To Setup Mode
Enter Audit Mode
Enter Deployed Mode <-- as distinct from the User mode currently
Key Management
Not keen on playing with those unless One of you knows it to be a problem or a solution
Also, in Settings → Miscellaneous → Trusted Computing → TPM 2.0 Device Found
and Security Device Support Enabled
To the O.P. You can probably use an older snapshot to install tumbleweed. Then do a zypper dup after install.
I tend to agree with you, I think there’s something off with the latest snapshot from mid December 2025. I had an issue after the mid December snapshot like selinux blocking tumbler and flickering panel in Xfce 4.20. Get a snapshot from maybe late November to early December and see if there will be a difference.
I’ve given up and plumped for Leap 16
Seems to install fine so far.
At a guess, I’d say Tumbleweed’s broken somehow. If not, It shouldn’t be this difficult and it’s a UX fail.
I think I’m OK with Leap 16 for a bit but having tried to use the storage configurator.
OMFG - I need a long word about user experience with whoever designed that. What a disaster!!!
I know what I want to achieve and this just refuses to let me do it. The YAST expert version is/was SO much better.
I’ve had no end os issues in the last month, or so, with fresh installs…
Partly fixed by selecting “Grub2 with EFI” (instead of Grub with BLS), in the boot section prior to pressing the install button…
There is a lot of good info here. Howerver. I am not a Linux expert and am not trying to become one. The installation of 16 is too hard for me; It is time for a different distribution.