I've been trying to install several Linux distributions on my old HP N150 laptop, but I'm running into some serious boot issues. I've tried installing Arch, Debian, Alpine, and NixOS. Arch and Alpine installed just fine but led me to emergency shells on the first boot, claiming they couldn't find the root filesystem even though the UUID was correct. The Debian live ISO couldn't detect my hard drive at all, while NixOS installed without any problems (though I really don't like using it). All this time, my SSD is being recognized as sdb, which seems odd. I've disabled secure boot and have scoured the BIOS for any RAID settings that might be affecting it, but found nothing. Does anyone have ideas on how I can diagnose and fix this boot problem?
3 Answers
Make sure to check your BIOS settings for anything like "Fast boot" or "Fast startup." This can sometimes mess with hardware detection. Also, seeing your SSD show up as /dev/sdb is pretty normal; it can happen with various types of drives including SATA and UFS.
I’ve seen some reports that certain distributions might not recognize UFS as storage properly. You might want to try a distro like Ubuntu 25.10 or Fedora 42 as they come with kernel versions that handle UFS a lot better. Just a thought!
That's interesting! My Debian attempt was with the latest version, but it couldn't find my drive. Given that Nix worked fine, I might lean toward trying Ubuntu or Fedora next.
Have you checked if there's a firmware update for your laptop? Sometimes an outdated firmware can cause hardware detection issues during the install process. It’s usually a good idea to keep that updated if you can!
I did check, but the firmware is from late 2024. Unfortunately, the HP tool to handle firmware updates is a .exe that doesn't play nice with Wine, so I'm a bit stuck there.
Good point! I’ll check for that Fast boot option. I'm learning just how tech illiterate I am during this whole process!