Why is gnome 50.1 so hard to install on a windows11 computer. I keep getting boot access violations no matter what I do or try. Why don’t the smart people at Gnome devise a simple ISO file so dills like me can install it easier and find if we want to get rid of Windows for good.
Hi, unless you’re installing GNOME OS, your problem lies more with a distribution.
Although, did you remembered to disable secure boot? You can’t install linux without disabling it.
Hi again I have tried that a few times even reset it re installed the latest bios made a lot of other changes as well and nothing seems to work that I have gleaned off the internet so far.
What errors do you get? Can you make a readable photo?
Hi Victoria,
Just for your info I found another way to turn off Secure Boot in my bios and now I can get the thumb drive to start the installation. I only found that when you get to the section where you want to install Gnome it gets very confusing. None of the selectable items are what appears to me normally in file explorer you get all sorts of funny numbers a and you can’t determine exactly where to put Gnome. I have a 1 TB nvme drive divided into 4 Partitions with drive letters on all of them and one of them is free and empty. I whish to use this drive (actually d: drive ) to put Gnome on which is over 200 GB in size but can’t determine which it is and when I look at what is displayed as options They all look the same and when I try to use one they all come up with a non formatted problem that says it requires some work to get it right. So if I pick the wrong one I lose the data on the drive. Having just rebooted to get this far I can’t use sharex to take a photo I can send you so I’m in a bit of a bind, unless you have some other tips. I would eventually like to get rid of win 11 and get away from microsoft all together as They seem to have lost the plot these days altogether.
Regards,
Rod
Hi Rod,
it would help to have some more information about your computer.
First of all, which ISO are you trying to install and where did you downloaded it from?
This would be good to know, because installation methods do differ between distributions.
To explain a bit: GNOME as in the desktop is only a software you can install on a Linux system. However, GNOME itself did not provide it’s own Linux system. That is often done by a distribution, which have their own names. You might for example have heard of Ubuntu. This is a distribution which provides a system with GNOME installed.
Now, GNOME has recently started work on its own Linux system with GNOME OS. That is what you can find on os.gnome.org. While it is, in my view, a great system and one I use personally, it is still an experimental system which can show more bugs. And, for this case, it’s installer offers less options.
GNOME OS for example can only installed to a complete disk at the moment. If you want to install it to only a partition of a disk, that can only be done manually.
In general, I would not recommend using GNOME OS to a person completely new to Linux at the moment. Especially since it uses experimental development builds instead of stable releases. It is surprisingly stable for that, but you sometimes stumble across some issues. You should have some knowledge about Linux system workings to use it at the moment, until a stable version of GNOME OS is released.
For now, I would recommend to use the Fedora distribution. It provides GNOME close to the developer recommendations and is a stable system, one I have given multiple family members already. I particular would recommend using Fedora Silverblue for use with GNOME.
Also, Fedora has signed keys for secure boot, so you can keep secure boot enabled for it to install. GNOME OS does also support secure boot, but is currently not signed by Microsoft, so you have to change the secure boot keys in your BIOS for it to work. Fedora’s are signed though.
Now, as for your disk and partitions:
Like I said before, the installer of GNOME OS will only work with a whole disk, not with select partitions. Only using select partitions would require running the installation manually.
I think Fedora’s installer can shrink a existing partition to make space for the Linux filesystem. It will have to create a new partition, as the root partition of a Linux system should use a Linux filesystem, not NTFS. If not, a custom installation could be used to reformat an existing partition to use a Linux filesystem.
A Linux system needs two partitions at minimum:
First, the EFI partition where the bootloader is stored. Your disk should already have one for the Windows bootloader, it should be a small partition at the very start of the disk. Do not reformat this partition, but the installer should use the partition to install the Linux bootloader into it. And its mount point should be /boot/EFI.
Second, the root filesystem of the Linux system. This should be a partition that can be overridden by the installer. The installer should reformat that into Btrfs (preferable) or Ext4 and mount that as /, the root of the new system.
If these two partitions are set, it should be able to install the system fully.
After the end of this wall of text I do have to note a thing though:
Having multiple different systems on the same disk can be a bit more tricky to set up. Having one full disk to just install the system to is easier when possible.
So, take what I’ve said just as some thoughts by someone who has set up a few systems from time to time.
If you have more questions or are unsure, it would help to know more detailed information about your system, especially the current disk layout.
MHi again Victoria,
Thank you for your excellent reply and explanation of Linux in general. I can see I still have a lot more reading and work to do to find out more about Linux. I can see the problems I face with Gnome that may be addressed in the future, so I will keep an eye on the os.gnome.org site.
The result of your info and other info I glean from the internet resulted in me finding a distribution that would install on my computer in a relatively easy manner (Abuntu Cinnamon desktop) and me being able to explore Linux it bit more the only thing was later having to put the computer back to normal as something stopped me from being able to get on the internet for a few days which was a concern for me as without that I loose my phone now with the new connections which now exist and have since broadband came 5 or so years ago. Get the computer back to normal was a long process as well.
I will continue to read what I can and wait and see what keeps happening and trying things out when I have the time and eventually I’m sure I will be able to get rid of Windows all together . I still live in hope.
Regards,
Rod