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Setup[1] in the signature below (a UEFI gaming laptop) is my main daily driver.  I've always had difficulty with stability with any distros (LL, Manjaro, etc) installed on it, with CMS enabled and Fast boot & Secure boot disabled in the laptop's Settings.  For these setups, I've used an MBR-ext4 formatted SSD, and LL  installed with '/' and '/home' partitions only.  No '/swap'  used as there is 16GB RAM, and the SSD works extremely fast anyway. It works well initially, then as time goes by I get booting problems (e.g. freezing). 

The only way I seem to be able to run a distro smoothly on this laptop, is to use a distro that comes with UEFI support, install from the UEFI option from the installation DVD, and have CMS in Settings turned off  (=UEFI on) before and after  OS installation.  This of course rules out using LL, which saddens me somewhat, as I have been a great fan of the LL project for last 4 years.

However, I'd like to question the way I've been setting up LL in CMS mode (Legacy BIOS), as I would like to try again with LL on this laptop, and would like to invite you to comment, and tell me if I'm doing anything incorrectly ...

Could the problem be with 'managing flags', when partitioning the drive in gparted, prior to OS installation. For example, should I tick the flag for 'Legacy Bios'. I think the only flag I ever ticked, if any, was the 'boot flag' for the '/' partition. Which flags should I be ticking?

Hi,

I'm not sure about the flags as I always used the full erase function.
For the swap, I am somewhat noob to Linux but I know that in Windows some function NEED a swap (page file), maybe same goes for Linux even with lots of RAM.
You mentioned <as times goes by> , could it be updates break your configuration? I would personally point the finger at Grub updates if related. I got this a few times, but it could also be the known problems with virtual-box updates, but this should technically be something related to a virtual install, like if you cloned a VM to a hardware machine.

Cheers!

(05-04-2018, 03:26 AM)TheDead link Wrote: [ -> ]I'm not sure about the flags as I always used the full erase function.

Yes, presumably with the full erase (autoinstall) method, any flags that are needed are automatically set up for you. I hadn't thought of that - many thanks  8)
The only thing is, it'll probably install a '/swap' partition (which I don't need), but I guess I can erase that.

Quote:For the swap, I am somewhat noob to Linux but I know that in Windows some function NEED a swap (page file), maybe same goes for Linux even with lots of RAM.

I think where /swap is used on SSDs, even where the level of RAM is more than adequate, it's normally used for the 'hibernate' or 'suspend' function. Basically, you can close the lid of your laptop, without having to shut everything down, and resume again later.   

[member=6733]TheDead[/member]

Just to let you know I installed LL3.8 on laptop(1) in signature, but this time used the 'erase-method'
you mentioned. So far so good in Legacy-Bios - laptop seems to be behaving very well. Yes, the erase-method
set a flag called 'boot' and installed LL as two partitions, '/root' and '/swap' on the MBR-ext4 formatted SSD.

I'll give it a month and report back here on how it's going. I'd forgotten how easy it is to install, including
the printer and scanner. I have given up installing Manjaro - the last straw today was getting the printer to work.
In contrast, LL auto-detects and auto-configures it - no input from me whatsoever, and it takes less than 10 seconds!!
I wasted a whole morning trying to get the printer to work in Manjaro, but to no avail.

So my daily driver is LL once again ...
Happy days  8)