Thinkpads Forum

Hello all!
I'm looking to edit my GRUB bootloader to allow my T60 to boot Linux Mint Debian Edition.
As it is, It will try to boot, then the system will hang.
I know that it can boot in "compatibility mode" as I live booted off of USB into compatibility mode to install it. If anyone knows what parameters I need to plug into the GRUB editor to make it boot compatibility (or better yet, to boot normally without hanging on the hardware) Please do tell me!

Thank you in advance!

Any idea why it hangs? You shouldn't need to boot into any kind of compatibility mode (which isn't really a thing), as long as you are using a 32-bit version of the OS. If you hit 'e' at the grub prompt, you can edit the boot menu. Then remove 'quiet' from the kernel parameters if it is there. That should give you some more information during the kernel's boot up process.

According to this forum post (https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=198531), you could try adding 'nomodeset' and/or 'noacpi' to the kernel parameters. It seems like this is what "compatibility mode" in Mint does. If your T60 has an ATI graphics card, there might be some graphics issues that 'nomodeset' helps with, however that would be unfortunate as I think many desktop environments have come to require kernel mode setting. You may also need to do some tweaking of graphics driver or Xorg settings. If it's intel graphics, it should just work out of the box (and IIRC that was my experience for the short time where I used a T60p w/ ATI graphics as well, but that motherboard is sitting in a box now and I have no easy way to test it).

My apologies, the problem was solved by updating my BIOS. Everything is working well now! Thank you for your help!

m11k wrote: ↑

Fri Sep 04, 2020 2:33 pm

Any idea why it hangs? You shouldn't need to boot into any kind of compatibility mode (which isn't really a thing), as long as you are using a 32-bit version of the OS.

Which CPU are you using? Merom can use 64bit Linux.

glad the OP solved his problem meanwhile, it was not fully clear what he was trying to dualboot but in case it is dualboot of windows with a distro of choice the one and only right way to do a fresh install is FIRST installing windows and NEXT installing linux. if you do it the other way around, windows will erase your linux bootloader each time... this is microsoft's nice gift to linux newbies. if you do it the wrong way, you still can fix it but it requires some manual work with a linux live boot which can easily be avoided by doing it the right way