I am having the exact same issue with trying to install Solus Budgie.

First attempt: Used Etcher to write the ISO to the USB drive. Secure Boot disabled. Verified shasum, did the usual things I've done to install a distro.

Second attempt: Redownloaded files. Doublechecked signature and shasum. Used Gnome MultiWriter. Tried enabling and disabling Secure Boot in case that was somehow the issue, even though the error message seemed unrelated.

Third attempt underway, using the torrent download and the command line option for writing to the USB (as explained in the quickstart guide at getsol.us). Same result.

Finally tried to download etc the Plasma edition to see if that works and it's just something weird with Budgie, but no -- still getting

Invalid Image
Failed to read Header: Unsupported
Failed to load Image: Unsupported
Start_image() returned Unsupported

So at this point I'm not sure what to do to troubleshoot, other than write some different distro ISO to the stick and make sure it's not a problem with my hardware.

Jason5

      amichai I am having the exact same issue with trying to install Solus Budgie.

      Jason5 still the same, i can write other OS without any issue and it boots too.

      I'm running out of ideas, folks. I'm hoping someone might have some other ideas to suggest.

      I downloaded the current .ISO files without a problem using Vivaldi, installed Plasma on five computers here (my laptop, my wife's laptop, our little travel laptop, my development workstation, and my torrent server), and had no issues with any of those.

      And I've used the same .ISOs to create five VMs, including Budgie, GNOME, MATE, Plasma, and a Budgie VM that I converted to Xfce. There was never a problem with any of those.

      Bottom line is that I can't reproduce this behavior, and can't think of any other reason why it might be happening. I can only hope that someone else is able to help.

            WetGeek You downloaded the Solus 4.4 budgies today and tried? Is it related to old motherboards?

                Jason5 You downloaded the Solus 4.4 budgies today and tried?

                Not today, no. But I have no reason to believe that they were changed recently. I follow the Matrix conversations by the Solus team, because I'm learning to be a package maintainer, and I've heard no such chatter.

                I'm not sure about the old motherboards, but I suppose that's a possibility. At the very least, it does sound like a local problem, because there are thousands of people who've downloaded and installed Solus Budgie, presumably without an issue like this.

                Are you currently running Budgie 4.3 on your computer? Do you realize that if you've updated it regularly, you're already on 4.4?

                  Ventoy

                  Once Ventoy is installed there is no need to "write" to disk. Simply copy ISO files to the usb and profit

                    • [deleted]

                    • Post #14
                    • Edited

                    murbert I think I also installed this time with Ventoy. The problem is that not always/not for all it works with each Ventoy setup/setup try.

                    BTW, and this is not a recommendation but just something I think I used,
                    I personally chose to later exFAT format it (Ventoy partition - the place you put bootable ISO in for booting, and BTW also chose so for the other, optional, storage partion I added, for some reason,) before I added the image, and probably it was GPT (and secure boot support) this time and not MBR, too (as using UEFI and GPT) though unsure, but each with one's own choices and style and for each one it might work different. For some it doesn't work.

                    On Linux, if it doesn't work or if people chose other way, they may use Gnome Multiwriter (this might be limited to up to 32GB USB keys though) or dd but as instructed on the help center, or in any other declared supported app/software mentioned there. https://help.getsol.us/docs/user/quick-start/installation/#usb

                    Some said etcher works as well and I think I "tested" it myself recently. (Yes I installed twice recently for some reasons. A fast app, at least usually in my experience works (no promise), I like it, but yes, I like Ventoy which has some nice benefits and which I find to be very useful for many purposes and also recycling/easily updating ISO versions in the way murbert said by just replacing a file.)

                        What is your hardware?
                        Its not a bad iso I think its telling you it doesnt like something about your setup
                        Maybe crappy usb (try another)

                        [deleted] I think I also installed this time with Ventoy. The problem is that not always/not for all it works with each Ventoy setup/setup try.

                        You are correct. I tried a lot of bare metal distros since January and always 1 out 10 needed to be burned on to USB. But that's still a 90% success rate for Ventoy....including Solus Budgie which I reinstalled recently. @murbert is right, this will cure his problem.
                        It won't solve the mystery of the Wiggy Hardware but it will let him install Solus.
                        ............maybe he will need to setup the Ventoy program on a different USB though😉.
                        edit/sp

                          Axios the intersections where uefi, legacy, secure boot, MBR, and BIOS all meet is often unpassable in the wrong configuration---any single mismatch of those would have also caused OP's problem. Good reading.

                              brent I use rufus on winders if I burn it one way it will only boot to legacy I think
                              and if I burn it another it will boot both.
                              Sometimes alittle slow because of the detection time.
                              But it works pops up with screen if you have a mismatch...lol

                                I ran into this problem twice, it could simply be an outdated bios, that's what my computer has. If the hardware is fine(run diagnostics and whatnot), check the bios settings, don't know if it's on the installer's end or the specific bios, but sometimes you need to manually direct the bios to the solus boot directory.

                                It ended up being perfectly happy to boot from my USB if and only if I told it to do it from Legacy mode and not from UEFI. So that's solved on my end (and now I just need to work out if I prefer Solus or EndeavourOS, but that's all on me). Thanks for trying to help me, folks, and also to jason5 for asking the question in the original post!

                                  Thank you all for the input. First i will try to boot the USB with secure boot off and only Legacy. If all methods fail i will use Venoy and give it a try.

                                  I have 4.4 budgie only. I am trying as my Amd gpu has a weird issue. So with a hope that new installation might fix it, i am trying to setup the OS

                                  My motherboard is Zebronics H61M-CS

                                  amichai I just need to work out if I prefer Solus or EndeavourOS,

                                  I just found Endeavour a week ago. it's on a different drive. I am Solus for life but Endeavour is pretty danged nifty. In fact I have a Webex work meeting tomorrow that I configured because arch had the binary for the standalone. There's things you can't beat about an AUR and immediate packaged binaries, and there's stability and beauty you can't beat with Solus. So unlike you I do not feel compelled to make a decision.
                                  Makes dual booting a thrill🙂.

                                    7 days later

                                    Sorry to hijack someone else's thread but I'm having the same issue. The only way I can get Solus installed is via legacy mode in the Bios. If I try to install via UEFI I get the following:

                                    I use Gnome Disks to burn my ISO's, which has never given me any problems before. My main system is Fedora and have now tried using the AppImage of Etcher which produces the same result. And then Ventoy whichboots and lets me try to install Solus but then hangs with the following:

                                    The machine I'm running on is an old Lenovo B50-30 all in one, and judging by some of those errors I guess it's a conflict with the BIOS, I'll look on the Lenovo site tomorrow and see if there is a bios update available. In the meantime if anyone has any other suggestions.

                                      You didn't mention how you partition your disks. How do you do that? An EFI installation requires a gpt partition table, and a first partition of at least 512 MB (I use 1 GB) that's formatted to FAT32, and has flags set to boot. (GPartEd will add another flag automatically, KDE Partition Manager doesn't need that.)

                                      If you plan to be able to hibernate your machine, you'll also need a swap partition, at least as large as your RAM. GPartEd gives that a swap flag, but KDE Partition Manager just goes by the linux-swap format you give it.

                                      By the way, Etcher is in the repository. You don't need to use an app image.

                                        WetGeek

                                        The reason I used an App Image is because my regular linux distro of choice is Fedora. But as you may be aware Red Hat has recently made a move towards going closed source and is making life awkward for diistros like Rocky Linux that are based off of it. Also Fedora is talking about adding opt out telemetry to their distro, admittedly that isn't going to happen for about a year or so, but it pays to be prepared so the last few days I've been looking for a backup distro, and noticed on distrowatch that Solus was back to active status, so thought I'd give it another try, on my muck about / Media PC. Lenovo All in one.

                                        So I downloaded the Solus ISO on Fedora, as I usually would, then used Gnome Disks to restore the Solus ISO to a USB Stick.

                                        The same process I have used for Manjaro, Debian 12, Makulu Linux, Mint and other distros. I then used the Solus Installer to use the whole disk, and let it auto partition the drive.

                                        The only problem is the Solus USB will not boot unless I set the Bios to Legacy Support. In UEFI mode I get the errors posted. I then tried Etcher but Etcher isn't in the Fedora Repo, hence the AppImage. I also tried Ventoy after it was recommended by BuzzPCOS see JanetLox's thread https://discuss.getsol.us/d/9659-solus-istallation-effort-fails

                                          So, how did you prepare the disk in the Lenovo all-in-one before you attempted your EFI installation? Did you provide a boot partition of at least 512 MB, formattd to FAT32, and with the flags set properly? I'm not familiiar with your method of creating the installation medium, but I am familiar with what Solus needs for an EFI installation. That's why I asked, and you still haven't answered.

                                          Simply put I didn't do anything to the drive. I let the Installer set it up. And that isn't my problem. I have a fully working Solus system installed. I'm using it now to communicate with you on this forum.

                                          The issue is that in order to install Solus in the first place I have to go into the BIOS and turn on Legacy Mode or enable CSM to be more precise. Boot mode is set to auto so it tries UEFI first then falls back to legacy. If I set it to UEFI only, then the USB or My current Install will NOT Boot.

                                          If I use UEFI only, the 'Live USB' just throws the errors I posted earlier, and my current working install will just get stuck in a perpetual boot loop.

                                          There is however an update for my BIOS, the only problem is I have to reinstall windows as it comes in an .exe format. And as this is a BIOS update I don't want to mess around with any Linux hacks as that will probably just end up in a corrupted BIOS.