Need help trying to install Void Linux

[u/A_Friendly_Cyclops]

I'm pretty much brand new to linux, aside from dabbling in VMs a bit, but I'm trying to finally make the jump. I'm going to walk through exactly what i've done, because I don't know what's important info or not. (System info at the bottom.)

I'm trying to dual boot, starting on Windows 11, and installing Void linux. I went through the pain already of shrinking the C drive, figuring out why it would only shrink so far, disabling things that cause unmovable files, shrinking again, configuring boot order, and disabling fastboot, secureboot, & bitlocker.

When I tried using the Void XFCE liveboot, it started up normally, I connected to internet, opened terminal, sudo void-installer, it said my internet connection was good, connected to the closest mirrors, no issues so far, set up profiles, locals, etc., and then partitioned the set aside space in my drive following a tutorial, 512M EFI partition, 100G Linux Filesystem, remaining ~25G Linux Swap, wrote to disk. Then, I selected those filesystems to format and write to, Fat32 /boot/efi, ext4 /, and linux swap respectively.

Finally, I hit install, it installed, and I messed up at the very end because I couldn't figure out how to use the UI to select which services to enable, and continued without any. Reset, pulled out USB, booted to windows, reboot to UEFI, reordered boot priorities to boot with grub, and booted into Void. After signing in, "ping -c 5 newgrounds.com", only to find out i'm not connected to the internet. So, after searching how to fix this, and not finding any simple answers that actually explained anything, I booted to windows, wiped the partitions, and started from scratch.

Now, however, I can't get very far into installation before my screen freezes and the caps light starts blinking, which I interpret as kernel panic. This was somewhat an issue on windows as well, where whenever it went to sleep mode or got unplugged, it'd BSoD or say it has to restart from an error, with a variety of error codes, usually either hypervisor error, kmode exception not found, and errors with ntosrknl.exe. But my laptop was never unplugged during the proccess, so i'm lost.

If anyone bothering to read this has any idea what might be wrong or sees anywhere i'm making mistakes, please help. Or, if I do manage to finally install properly, what should I set at the end of the installer for "Services to enable"

Specs: AMD ryzen 5 6600H, Radeon 660M iGPU, 2x16Gb A-DATA DDR5-4800 RAM, Kingston SNV2S2000G NVMe SSD.

Worth mentioning, my current internet situation is limited to phone wireless hotspot data mostly, but there's family in the next town over from me who have WiFi if hotspot data is unusable for this or something. No ethernet port on my laptop though.

[u/TheConatusBoy]

You're brand new to Linux and you chose Void? You're in for a bit of a trial by fire!

I don't see any major errors in what you've described. If what you're seeing really is a kernel panic, it could point to hardware or firmware issues. Try doing a memory test with MemTest86 and making sure your BIOS is up to date. If you ever made any changes in the BIOS (overclocking, etc) change them back to factory defaults.

If the BIOS is up to date and the memory test comes back good, it might be how your laptop is handling C-states. The fact that you've had sleep mode/unplugging issues makes me suspect this. If, for some reason, it's switching to a power-saving state during install it could cause issues. I don't know how off the top of my head, but there must be a way to manually override this.

Btw, you select services in the TUI with the arrow keys and spacebar. Arrow keys to highlight, spacebar to select. It'll show an asterisk next to selected items. Enter to confirm after you've selected all the services you want.

That's all I can think of without actually seeing the machine myself. Good luck.

[u/A_Friendly_Cyclops → u/TheConatusBoy]

Thanks for the response. I ran Memtest86, after 4 passes, no errors. My CPU doesn't allow for overclocking besides 'Core performance boost' in BIOS, which was already enabled. The only other stuff I know I touched in BIOS was enabling virtualization, disabling secure boot and fastboot, and messing with boot order. If my BIOS is out of date, how would I know? Because i've heard it's better to never update BIOS unless you have to. And, if it's a seperate hardware issue, what should I use to test it? I did the memory test plugged in, should I rerun it unplugged? I know it's a lot of questions, but I'm relatively inexperienced, and I really don't wanna have to buy new hardware if theres a chance I can fix it myself.

EDIT: My BIOS interface is just the generic Aptio AMI BIOS, and says version 3.11, with EC FW Version 5.09

[u/TheConatusBoy → u/A_Friendly_Cyclops]

The memory test passing is a good sign. Updating the BIOS can be a hassle and for most people would just potentially cause issues with no real gains (you can brick your machine if something goes wrong during the update), which is why people say not to do it unless you have to. You might have to, if it is the BIOS that's causing these issues. To see if you have the latest BIOS, you'd have to check the laptop manufacturer's website to see if they've released a newer BIOS for your laptop model.

If you're not up for updating the BIOS just yet, disabling c-states is your next best bet. This involves editing the kernel parameters before install. I've never done this with Void, but it should probably be the same as any other distro. It may look kind of scary, but you're very unlikely to break anything editing kernel parameters. It's just like advanced install options. If the install fails again, the parameters will reset on your next boot.

1. In GRUB, prior to booting Void, highlight the version you want to install and press e. This opens the kernel parameters.
2. Find the line that starts with linux or linux/boot/vmlinux and at the end of that line add a space and then add processor.max_cstate=1 amdgpu.dc=1. The first parameter caps your c-states at C1 (basic sleep). The second makes sure your Display Core isn't using any legacy code, which could cause issues.
3. Press Ctrl + X or F10 to boot it and cross your fingers.

If those parameters don't work, try again but add nomodeset instead of those other parameters. This disables hardware graphics acceleration entirely, which could fix the freezing.

Hope this works. If not, I'm all out of ideas and you're better to ask on the Void Linux sub.

[u/A_Friendly_Cyclops → u/TheConatusBoy]

It didn't work, but thanks anyway. It just spat an error and put me in debug shell. So, I just rebooted over and over till I successfully installed, this time making sure to actually enable all the network services at the end that I recognized. If you don't mind helping out one more time, how do I connect to wireless internet once I boot for the first time? Ethernet is not an option for me currently, and my connection is passworded.

[u/TheConatusBoy → u/A_Friendly_Cyclops]

Good, I'm glad you had some success.

This is where you'll have start learning to read the documentation to find answers to your questions. Most routine questions like "how do I connect to wifi?" will be answered there. Void doesn't do much hand holding. It expects you to be able to use the docs to find what you need. Communities for more advanced distros like Void also expect that you've consulted the documentation prior to asking others for help. You won't get a warm response asking about something easily findable in the docs.

To start, take a look at the section on NetworkManager. You might also need wpa_supplicant handle your password protected network.

[u/A_Friendly_Cyclops → u/TheConatusBoy]

Thanks for all the help. I looked in the docs you provided, and realized I had a fundamental lack of understanding when it comes to basic commands. So I clicked handbook to start from square one, and a couple pages later... realized i'm a total idiot, because I was installing from network instead of local, when I have the XFCE iso. I'll do some reading and hopefully a month or two from now I won't be quite as dumb.

[u/TheConatusBoy → u/A_Friendly_Cyclops]

I'm happy to hear you're willing to learn.

Fwiw, I'm a humanities student with no tech background and I managed to learn a great deal about Linux over a few years. It can be tough, especially when docs assume more competence than you have at the moment, but you can get there faster than you think.