This PC is a gorgeous piece of hardware, so I decided to disregard my own long held practice of not trying to install Linux on state of the art/bleeding edge hardware. I expected problems, but I never imagined it could be this bizarre.
I first disabled Bitlocker in Windows 10, disabled secure boot, shrunk the Windows partition to create free space (intending to dual boot) and tried to install from a USB drive prepped with 15.1 net install. I was able to boot to the thumb drive without difficulty, and the usual green bars worked their way across the screen, etc., but the installer halted when unable to detect a network connection. The on board wifi is a relatively new Intel 9560, so I put in an older USB wifi dongle and tried again… same result.
I then tried again with a 15.1 DVD image, hoping to get a system to boot, so I could install a newer kernel to get wifi. That’s where it got ugly. The installer not only can’t even detect wifi it cannot see the hard drive, in fact the partitioner not only can’t find any partitions it cannot even find a drive, not even the thumb drive. (Win10 is still fully functional when I reboot). I expected that Optane would make my efforts more complicated, but this seems a little extreme.
Before I go any further (i.e. waste more time) I would like to know if anyone can offer constructive feedback, thanks in advance.
The system booted right up, wifi just needed a password, sound card was detected OK. Even the touchscreen worked. Everything indicated a working system, however installation might not be so simple, as YAST’s partitioner can only find the main drive and the Optane drive but can not see any of the Windows partitions. 512Gb SSD and the 32Gb are configured in BIOS as “SATA configured to support RAID”. There is a BIOS option to switch them to “SATA configured for ACHI mode”. I have read that making that change would allow a LInux installation, however I am afraid that I would lose the ability to dual boot into Windows (which would not be a terrible loss), however I’d like to avoid that.
I did read that one fellow made that BIOS change, and was able to install Linux and still boot Windows provided he first went back and reversed the change in the BIOS back to RAID. Sounds impractical, as I’m not always around to oversee the process.
Hi
Download the WinX 1909 iso image and use the likes of Rufus to create and UEFI image, boot from a live openSUSE Tumbleweed release, wipe everything from the system, re-partition with gdisk as required (except sda1 efi/ef00 ~260M, sda2 0c01 16M), set BIOS to AHCI, install winX and let it install all the drivers (or via device manager install them manually via looking for them). Then install openSUSE for dual boot.
OK, the system is now up an running on Tumbleweed. It’s a joy to use, so far. Here’s what happened:
I did download the Win10 1909 media and switch to ACHI mode as suggested by malcolmlewis, however at that point curiosity prompted me to boot to the latest gparted just to confirm that partitions might now be visible as expected. To my surprise they were not. I could still only see the drives but no contents. Now I was thoroughly discouraged and opted to walk away for a bit. About an hour later I was passing by the screen and happened to notice all the partitions displayed. (??)
Still curious, I rebooted with Tumbleweed install media and was able to complete an installation into the free space (created days earlier in Windows Disk Manager) with no trouble whatsoever. In fact this was the first time in my entire career when I was able to complete the setup without having to change any suggested parameters other than to uncheck auto login. Half an hour later I was installing multimedia files, etc.
Of course the obvious flaw in that is that I cannot dual boot back into Windows 10 without reversing the BIOS back to RAID and allowing Windows to “repair” itself (highly problematic). I’m confident that I could have avoided that issue had I followed malcomlewis’ suggestions through to the end, but in this case I opted not to waste more time, as the user now assures me that she is unlikely to need Windows any more after all.
I’ve never considered using Tumbleweed before, but if the user experience is as polished as the installer it will not be the last. Well done guys.
Looked up your system,
Apparently it launched well more than a year ago… In fact, I found all sorts of posting until end 2018 that described a mysterious “disk not installed” error that kept popping up and couldn’t be eliminated. Seems finally someone posted that the BIOS had to be manually re-flashed with latest at the time, Dell utilities silently failed without telling the User. And then, MS Windows Update started re-flashing (!!). In other words, this machine has been around a bit and with an interesting history, but hopefully should work fine by now.
Bottom line regarding openSUSE,
Is that it’s unlikely you should have to run TW for its latest kernel mode drivers, I would expect that there should be support in the stock LEAP kernel. Depending on what you plan on doing and your tolerance for big updates/upgrades, you may want to try LEAO agaub,’
The other thing I did was to look up exactly what you’re likely looking at in the BIOS, looks like your AHCI vs “SATA + RAID” settings are simply that… support for hardware RAID. I’d be somewhat but not especially surprised that Linux may not recognize the “SATA + RAID” setting, especially since IMO DELL has a somewhat spotty history of using on-standard disk controllers. But, unless you want hardware RAID in your MSWindows, you can switch between your disk controller settings without issue, and if you don’t mind can set up software RAID when using AHCI settings on both MSWindows and openSUSE if you wish.
So,
From your posts it sounds like easiest working path is to set your disk controller to AHCI in your BIOS, then boot to a LEAP installer if you wish. (You probably were set to RAID when your LEAP failed earlier)
I hadn’t mentioned it, but that was the case here too. Flashing the BIOS to v. 3.x seems to be essential. Note for owners of similar hardware: The first two times I flashed to 3.x, using the Dell Utility, all appeared to go well, however the version remained unchanged at 1.x. The third time it did work as designed, and the BIOS became stable with 3.x. It’s pretty clear to me that version 1 was highly problematic.
Is that it’s unlikely you should have to run TW for its latest kernel mode drivers, I would expect that there should be support in the stock LEAP kernel.
That’s what I thought too, but without the newer kernel there was no wifi card detected.
The other thing I did was to look up exactly what you’re likely looking at in the BIOS, looks like your AHCI vs “SATA + RAID” settings are simply that… support for hardware RAID.
That’s what I read too.
…you can set up software RAID when using AHCI settings on both MSWindows and openSUSE if you wish.
Interesting idea. Thanks
You probably were set to RAID when your LEAP failed earlier)
TSU