On 01.06.2026 10:30 Olybrewfest Olybrewfest wrote: > I retrofit aging computers for various businesses so that they > can get more life from them, but also do new installs on new > hardware. This usually means installing (stable) Debian KDE or > Debian XFCE from a live image. Since Trixie came out, I am > unable to use any live images from a USB flash drive to boot or > install Debian Trixie. Both KDE and XFCE will display the boot > menu, get several steps into the installation process and then > kick off an "unable to detect installation medium" within the > installer.
Which hardware is that? Is the disk controller shown with lspci? > I have tried all the usual suspects: different flash drive, > different Debian version (13.1, 13.2, etc), re-download the iso, > verify the checksum, different computer, disable secure boot, > CSM on/off. All to no avail. However, if I use the exact same > ISO image written onto a CD, it works perfectly. Another oddity > is that the only time a Debian Trixie live image has worked for > me was on a very old Lenovo desktop that had a UEFI firmware > lock such that it would only let windows boot on it. Sounds like Secureboot is missing the keys. You can disable that and should be able to boot anything. > Today, I attempted to install Debian Trixie KDE onto an Intel > Mac and the drive did not appear in the UEFI boot menu at all. > Debian Bookworm, however, worked perfectly. > > My best guess is that something changed between how Debian > Trixie live images and Bookworm live images interact with the > UEFI, but I do not know which package that would be, or why the > installer would be unable to detect the drive from which itself > was booting. I assume this is an issue specific to Apple's UEFI implementation. I was able to install Debian KDE on an UEFI system. UEFI allows booting by specifying the location of the .EFI file. Does that work on the Mac?
