Introduction
I am going to describe some notes on how to install Debian on Lenovo h50.
BIOS / UEFI modification
First of all you need to press F1 several times at boot time so that Lenovo BIOS Setup Utility appears.
Under Security tab I enter into Secure Boot menu and I change Secure Boot into Disabled. Windows seems to boot ok despite this change.
Under Startup tab I see that CSM is disabled. I keep it disabled because Debian supports UEFI out of the box. I disable Quick Boot to avoid Windows starting in its own and bypassing out Boot order.
While we are still in Startup tab we open Primary Boot Sequence and make sure the USB HDD entry is in the first place.
Finally I press F10 to save the changes and exit.
Shrink Windows
I won’t explain it here but you usually need to shrink Windows (even using Gparted live disk) so that you can install Debian in a partition of its own.
Boot from Debian AMD64 Netinst installation disk
I used Debian 8.6.0 Debian AMD64 Netinst installation disk myself. I used dd to put the iso image into a usb stick (also known as pendrive).
You just insert the usb stick into the computer and press the ON/OFF switch. The installation disk should appear.
Installation
You can add an additional usb stick so that the integrated wifi dongle works out of the box. I have not tested it myself. I used the Etherned card. Other than that it’s a pretty straight-forward Debian installation.
Enable Debian as the first OS
Once again you need to press F1 several times at boot time so that Lenovo BIOS Setup Utility appears.
Under Startup tab we open Primary Boot Sequence and under SATA 1 it shows:
- Windows Boot Manager
- debian
I modify its order thanks to + or – keys so that it shows:
- debian
- Windows Boot Manager
Finally I press F10 to save the changes and exit.
Nvidia boot
The first boot test was done with screens connected to the Nvidia video card. Grub was shown but then somehow it froze. By removing the quiet boot parametre at boot (press ‘e’ key) I saw the error:
fb: switching to nouveaufb from simple
As I don’t need a full effect desktop I decided to remove nouveau driver altoghether:
First of all at grub I need to edit the Debian entry with ‘e’ and at the kernel line which shows:
linux /boot/vmzlinuz... root=UUID=e39... ro quiet
where I remove quiet and I blacklist nouveau driver on the fly:
linux /boot/vmzlinuz... root=UUID=e39... ro modprobe.blacklist=nouveau
I press F10 to be able to boot.
Nvidia boot final fix
Once I am able to boot into my system I edit the file:
/etc/default/grub
so that the line:
GRUB_CMD_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet"
becomes:
GRUB_CMD_LINUX_DEFAULT="modprobe.blacklist=nouveau"
.
We save the file and apply changes by running:
update-grub
.
Next time we reboot everything is working fine. However the simple xserver configuration does not detect the additional attached screen. Maybe nouveau with additional switches (or an updated nouveau driver) would do it.
Using Intel Graphics card
As I don’t need nvidia I don’t mind using Intel graphics card. But this BIOS does not enable it by default if it detects the Nvidia cards.
So we have to modify the BIOS once again to use the Intel Graphics card.
Once again you need to press F1 several times at boot time so that Lenovo BIOS Setup Utility appears.
Under Devices tab we open Video setup and in Select Active Video we select IGD instead of Auto .
Finally I press F10 to save the changes and exit.
Of course you don’t have to forget to connect the screens into the Intel graphics plugs (instead of the Nvidia) ones.
Now both screens are autodetected.
adrian15's freedom quest 