So simple to start over…
All I had to do was completely torch everything and install Ubuntu. Over the past few years I have dabbled in using Linux on and off. I work of course a full time senior infrastructure engineer for a VERY large global company. That being said, I have gravitated to VMware as my specialty which was very good for me up until Broadcom purchase VMware and immediately ran it into a ditch. Now companies world wide are fleeing traditional hypervisor-land and going in wildly different directions my own company included. Its looking more and more like we are aiming the ship right at an Open Stack solution, based off all sorts of OSS stuff. Fortunately I have been getting closer and closer to pivoting my old school Windows knowledge over to open source since most DevOps stuff is already that way.
So,…lets take a page out of history and burn the ships that brought us here and force ourself to survive. I took my aging gaming pc which was starting to struggle with Windows 11, and completely erased it for Ubuntu.
I chose Ubuntu for one reason. I wanted to be wrong about my distro choice.
There now that is out of the way, lets discuss further. I need this machine to be able to use my nVidia GeForce 1070TI, it has to be able to run KVM with a few small vms as needed, some light coding with Python, and lastly it has to be my editing machine for vlogs. I already use Davinci Resolve so score a point for them supporting Linux. I don’t have to unlearn Adobe! I will have to relearn how to use VPNs on this, get some steam gaming working, and generally be a helper not a hinderer.
So the adventure begins. Spoiler: this took all day.
I started like any sane person and immediatly made a backup of my files using an external hard drive. To make life complicated I chose to use the built in Windows robocopy command and it synched my files all night last night. I woke up and verified they were copied over. I already kept 95% of the data on a d: drive but this is that failsafe.
Next I used good old Rufus to rip an iso of Ubuntu 22.04.01 to a thumb drive. This software has never failed me before in the 25+ years of IT. Handy app. Next I booted off the thumb drive to install Ubuntu and saw the early signs of doom, but I pushed on like an idiot.
So then it utterly failed. After rebooting and poking around the errors were all over the place with device failures, missing partitions, the boot loader just pointed to an address in Nebraska I think, and worst off, I was out of coffee.
I read a bunch of forum posts on the various errors but the actual Ubuntu installer was failing which was a first for me in ages. So I did what any normal person would do, closed all the forum posts on my iPhone and instead listed to the new Sabrina Carpenter album on YouTube Music Premium.
When you are out of coffee and your computer is just absolutely wrecked, some bopping tunes always help. I fiddled with this over the next 2 hours trying to use the live image of ubuntu to deleted both the windows and the Linux partitions, grub loader etc, but eventually the disk utilities were not even seeing the disks. All I had was a live instance in memory, and it continuously gave me that System program problem detected message.
Step 2: take a nap
Things are always better after a fresh nap.
Hours later after a nap and some food I returned. This time around I thought, “how can I tackle this? How can I make my computer Linux-ey?” The answer was easy, rip off the case sides, remove all unused things inside like the CD-ROM, extra cables, that spare data disk I was paranoid about erasing accidentally, about 3 years of cat hair and dust, an unused USB hub, and heck: even the front bezel.
Now it looks like it runs Linux at least! Perhaps that will help with Installing Linux?
Super nerdy 9000 IQ protip: invest in a good wall outlet powered air duster tool, and also get a box fan and duct tape a 3M air filter from Lowes to the back of it. You’ll thank me later.
Now my machine was a stiped down shell of a pc. But I also drew upon decades of IT wisdom and thought: I bet its either the bios or like a firmware issue somehow. At my work, I am literally THE GUY who pushes firmware to several hundred racks of infrastructure on a regular basis. I am intimately familiar with Dell and HPE’s firmware repository websites and even details about various bugs in everything. Yet, here in my home I had to laugh because I couldn’t recall the last time I patched anything on this mut of a pc I built 5-7 years ago. Sadly, with no running OS, I had to bite the bullet and REINSTALL Windows 10 since there is no easy bootable option to push bios firmware using Gigabyte motherboards that I am aware of. I can’t just boot into an iDrac and flash a file. Boo! So with a huge sigh and a banging mix of Chappell Roan and Lady Gaga I begrudgingly reinstalled Windows 10.
What? I have to now register for a Microsoft Account to install Windows 10?
<sarcasm>Oh no what happened?</sarcasm>
Oh look at that, now I can use a local account instead of a Microsoft account! And there was much rejoicing.
Using Windows 10 I downloaded the latest version of Rufus. I also redownloaded the latest Ubuntu 22.04.02 iso and I even did a SHA check to verify it was not corrupted! Look at me, growing. I became a man today.
I used the Gigabyte utilities to install the latest bios firmware. Mine as expected was from 2016. Whoops. I went from F20 to F22. No idea on their numbering standard but whatever.
Next after rebooting into the new bios, I first told it to just straight up revert to factory. Lets start fresh. After further rebooting I set it to boot UEFI mode instead of legacy mode, and the new Rufus’d thumb drive image I made was also set to UEFI.
Booting this time into it, I pretty much used nearly all the default settings for Ubuntu, and chose to ERASE windows, …again…, and it worked! This time I was able to install no issues.
The very last thing I did was plugged back in my second monitor so I had the vertical screen I am used to. Whew, what a day. Tomorrow: DaVinci Resolve and KVM.
…and more coffee.