Can't boot live Fedora / Ubuntu on Toshiba Satellite C40-C-10K
 

Hi,

I recently bought the laptop below without checking for linux compatibility:
http://www.toshiba.nl/laptops/satell...ite-c40-c-10k/
It's evidently part of this series:
http://www.toshiba.eu/press/releases...-c-series2015/
(I got lured in because it was relatively cheap, ~200 euro).

I tried to run live Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu USB sticks, but failed.

For details of what I did, see below.

Can anybody assess from the specs provided on the Toshiba site what the problem might be and if there is any hope of installing (any brand of) linux?

Thanks,

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The laptop is UEFI only (i.e. doesn't provide an option to fall back to BIOS-compatible booting), which seems to exclude the Debian Live disc which at present doesn't seem to support UEFI.

As for Ubuntu and Fedora, the USB sticks from which I tried to boot did present an on-screen menu of boot options. When typing "c" I could enter commands like "reboot". If however I would execute one of the boot options, the screen would go darkish never to light up again.

I used the following iso files:

Fedora-Live-Workstation-x86_64-21-5.iso
debian-live-8.2.0-amd64-gnome-desktop.iso


I created the Fedora USB stick under Fedora 21 with the command

livecd-iso-to-disk --format --efi --reset-mbr Fedora-Live-Workstation-x86_64-21-5.iso /dev/sdb

(That tool refused to work with the Fedora 23 iso file, complaining that it didn't support EFI).


I created the Ubuntu USB disk under Fedora 21 by selecting the iso file in nautilus, right-click > open with > Disk Image Writer

Does this help? I guess I'm really asking if there actually is a way to enable legacy boot. My current laptops are Samsung and HP; both have settings that allow me to boot of a USB flash drive. I don't recall what I did to get to where I could change the settings.

The UEFI vs BIOS issue seems to only affect the Debian USB stick:
Ubuntu and Fedora both get into the stick's GRUB menu, but then fail only at a later stage.

As for your specific question: I own two Satellite laptops, the other being C50-B-14C model: The BIOS-setup of the latter does indeed provide a possibility to use old BIOS compatible booting, but I actually don't even use it because Fedora just boots on UEFI without problems.

In the new laptop's (C40-C-10K) BIOS-setup however, the choice possibility for going back to BIOS compatibility is grayed out. There may or may not be a way to enable that choice, thus opening the possibility to try a Debian disk, but my feeling is there's another problem lateron because both Ubuntu and Fedora fail at that later stage.

One aspect of the specs of the C40-C-10K is that there is no SATA harddisk (slot) inside: The 32GB SSD is apparently integrated on the motherboard. I wouldn't know how to put another disk in in order to start experimenting without destroying.

I've got an HP Stream 11 arriving today. Similar specs to the Toshiba C40-C-10K. No way to change anything internal. I checked before ordering - Linux does run on the Stream.

My final suggestion - create the live USB using dd rather than something like livecd-iso-to-disk. I've had livecd-iso-to-disk fail to give me an unbootable USB stick in situations where dd worked.

Good luck!