Alright, thanks for this advice! I’ll look that up as soon as possible.
I used Ventoy from Windows to create this bootable USB, I must have messed up something in the process then. I’ll go through your steps from TTY then. Thank you
Ventoy expects a fresh empty USB during creation, so you might need to use GParted and delete the (USB) partitions before creating the Ventoy USB; or, perhaps easier; another empty USB if you have one.
So, I did what you requested namely:
- delete all partitions from the USB stick
- creating the Ventoy USB following your steps
- dragging in the ISO
While being plugged in, the inxi -Fazy correctly returns a partition.
I also rechecked that :
Then, I boot live using the USB and redid all the steps (from mirrors to installing a new kernel). I rebooted and try to boot on the new kernel, but i’m still stuck with
/dev/nvme0n1p5: clean, x/x files, x/x blocks
when trying to boot.
The order you wrote this in lets me think you misunderstood me.
Because these keywords are most definitely present in my default installation.
It could be, but I doubt, that you have already previously removed them.
This is what I suggested you look for in your real system - in chroot.
These will tell you quickly:
grep ^HOOKS /etc/mkinitcpio.conf
or
grep plymouth /etc/mkinitcpio.conf
and
grep GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT /etc/default/grub
or
grep splash /etc/default/grub
However, this may not be a solution
but the black screen issue is discussed in multiple threads here …
In chroot, these are the outputs:
- for
grep ^HOOKS /etc/mkinitcpio.conf:
HOOKS=(base udev autodetect modconf kms block keyboard keymap filesystems fsck)
- for
grep GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT /etc/default/grub:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet apparmor=1 security=apparmor udev.log_priority=3
The 2 other commands don’t return anything as guessed.
I guess I’ll dig a bit on the threads regarding the black screen issue, seems like we transpose the problem 
Mine is a very fresh installation,
yours is a bit older.
Maybe that is where the difference comes from - and my being sure that yours is the same, which it obviously isn’t.
When you installed, the defaults where different, apparently.
Here is what I have - why I was so sure:
grep ^HOOKS= /etc/mkinitcpio.conf
returns:
HOOKS=(base udev autodetect kms modconf block keyboard keymap consolefont plymouth filesystems fsck)
grep GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT /etc/default/grub
returns
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash udev.log_priority=3"
Sorry, my mistake.
plymouth - the splash screen - was never in the mix for you
No worries, I appreciate the time you put in trying to help me. I’ll look at some threads about this issue.
Either that, or the memory of removing it has long since faded.