Hello everyone. 🙂
I have a problem. Well, multiple. First, hello, my name is NamelessWing and I'm a distrohopper. I've been all around the Linux world by now, or at least it feels like it because I can now install multiple distributions blindfolded. I'm currently writing this on Fedora 30. But for some reason, whatever I do and even now... I miss Solus.
I started on Solus, actually. It was the first distro I settled on. Solus 3. And there are some distros I keep coming back to. Fedora or even Pop!_OS for exemple... but damn, Solus is always in the back of my mind. But I can never do it.
But now, to my real problem.
As much as I hate it, I need Windows 10. I despise it and I barely use it. Solus would suit me fine for like, 99% of the stuff I do. But there is that 1%. Like a stubborn game that isn't on Steam or doesn't work well with Proton and that Lutris can't do anything about it (Apex Legends is a good example of that). Stuff like that. So for the few times I need it, I like not ending up stuck without it. So I keep contained on it's own partition of my SSD, with a large enough EFI partition to handle my distrohopping... not to mention, I'll eventually end up wiping everything and making a complete fresh install when I think I'm ready to settle... before endind this stupid cycle by missing Solus and trying to install it.
So here is what happens: No matter what I do, I can't get Solus to work alongside Windows.
Secure boot is off, fast boot is off... both are installed through UEFI, on the same SSD. The EFI partition selected is the correct one. It installs FLAWLESSLY. No error, nothing. I reboot... and it boots straight into Windows. Reboot again, check my BIOS and I have a few partition (I have a 1tb SSD for my system and a 2tb HDD for storage).
So I try them all, in case it might've installed itself on one of those. And except for the Windows partition that'll boot into Windows, obviously... all I get is a black screen telling me this:
Reboot and Select proper Boot device
or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device and press a key
This has been a consistent issue with Solus for me. At this point, it's the only reason I'm distrohopping. I've tried to making the ISOs from Windows and various Linux distros alike, with different tools (Rufus, Etcher, the awfully slow Multiwriter, Popsicle...) and I get the same result every time.
It's the same result every time and it's just with Solus. I never have any issues with others distros. I've tried with Ubuntu (and lots of Ubuntu based distros), Manjaro and Fedora... no problem. But Solus, same exact result everytime. It's like it installs itself into the void and just doesn't exist.
It also is an issue that is specific to dualboot. Because installing Solus, with the whole SSD to itself, gives me no issue. It works fine... there still is that issue of swap not working, but hey, different topic for a different day...
But dualboot? Nope. No matter how I install it, custom install, resizing of Windows 10... just can't do it. The only time I managed to make it work... it turned out that I had accidentally wiped the whole SSD. So yeah, again, this issue is locked to dualbooting Windows 10 and Solus, spefically.
ONE THING I DIDN'T TRY: Is installing both OS in legacy mode. But then again, I've seen some distros dropping that and from what I gathered, it's quite inferior to UEFI.
Anyway. Sorry for the length of this post, I wanted to give some details. So yeah. Any ideas? Because I did look and I can't seem to find anyone with a similar issue... or I just suck at googling, which is a possibility too.