Subject: bug#54945: installer should have a no-graphics boot option

From: "pelzflorian (Florian Pelz)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2022 22:44:58 +0200

On Fri, Apr 15, 2022 at 01:36:36PM +0200, raingloom wrote:
> On Fri, 15 Apr 2022 08:55:43 +0200
> "pelzflorian (Florian Pelz)" <[email-masked]> wrote:
> > I’ve previously had such issues with AMD Radeon GPUs, so we added it
> > to the blacklist in gnu/system/install.scm:
> AFAIK it's a Radeon machine, so that may be the problem.

Could you check if editing the boot options in GRUB to
modprobe.blacklist=amdgpu makes nomodeset unnecessary?  Then
modprobe.blacklist=radeon,amdgpu could be added to
gnu/system/install.scm.

Other than that, I believe the installer would eventually have shown
up with nomodeset and I believe uvesafb makes the graphics work on any
x86_64 or x86 machine, so no save-graphics GRUB entry is needed.  But
maybe I’m wrong and uvesafb isn’t a panacea.

> I have no idea how long the GUI is expected to take to show up, maybe
> it would have appeared if I just waited even more, but there was no
> indication of anything happening.

It takes some time on my old laptop, but it is an old laptop.

All that aside, I believe uvesafb-service-type or
kernel-module-loader-service-type can be added to any config.scm to
show i3 or any desktop environment using software rendering.  It just
consumes much CPU.  The installer could add it to the config.scm
automatically, however it may not be what the user wants and it seems
there is no way to auto-detect the appropriate resolution (v86d has a
resolution checker, but it maybe cannot be run early in the boot).

Regards,
Florian