Manjaro Talos with KDE live boot does not work

Dear Community,

I wanted to switch to Manjaro with KDE Plasma for the first time. So I made myself a boot usb device, downloaded the latest installer with KDE and went for it. However, before the UI even loads, somewhere around after the step to create the virtual Filesystem was done, it just freezes. No Key on the Keyboard works, nothing. To make sure it is not related to Manjaro itself or KDE itself, I also tried the live boot for Manjaro Talos with Gnome and it was just fine, same as Kubuntu 23.04 with Plasma 5.27 - works there as well.

It seems to be an issue just with the manjaro - KDE kombination on the live boot. Is there a way to troubleshoot this? I read a whole lot of your forums, but it seems nobody has this issue reported here that I have. The closest one seems to be a few users already running manjaro, that some git packages did not work and they replaced it with the original ones, see “Login Screen not working after update reboot” topic.

I tried the following isos:

  • manjaro-kde-22.1.2-230518-linux61
  • manjaro-kde-22.1.1-230509-linux61
  • manjaro-kde-22.1.0-230421-linux61

those 3 Talos Images did not boot from USB

I also tried

  • manjaro-gnome-22.1.2-230518-linux61 - which does boot and work, but I am not a big fan of Gnome
  • manjaro-kde-22.0.5-230316-linux61 - which does boot, but has the invisible mouse cursor issue on the RDNA3 GPU I have
  • kubuntu-23.04-desktop-amd64 - which contains KDE Plasma 5.27 as well as the manajro talos one, so I know it is not KDE specific

Any Input appreciated, thank you.

My system currently runs Windsows11 with

  • AMD Ryzen 5800x3d
  • AMD Rx 7900 xtx
  • 64 GB Ram
  • Gigabyte Aorus Master x570 Board revision 1.2 with F36 Firmware Version

br Alex

The ISO does work - albeit not for your hardware combination - so there is that - most likely it is graphics related.

You need to pull up your sleeves and get to work.

Can you boot the ISO to the GRUB selection screen?

If yes - then press e on the default selected entry - as we need to verify if you can get onboard the console of the live system

Append a space and the number three (3) to the kernel command line arguments and press F10 to load the kernel.

This verifies that you can actually load the kernel when you reach the console (press escape to remove the plymouth screen).

If you get this far - I recommend installing a base system.

Login as root using passwd manjaro

install a base system

This can be done complete manual or using architect.

A manual install will use some unconvential combination of pacman arguments to avoid pulling updates for the ISO itself as this would be pointless and waste of time.

By hand

A completely manual installation is a series of steps outlined in [root tip] [How To] Do a manual Manjaro installation

Using architect helper

  1. Select a useful mirror

    pacman-mirrors --continent -i
    

    navigate using arrow and tab - select an appropriate mirror - and click OK

  2. Fetch package databases

    pacman -Sy
    
  3. Install manjaro-architect package

    pacman -S manjaro-architect
    
  4. Launch the helper script

    setup
    

The point of going through this is be to establish status points.

Workable system states - where you add functionality - testing - confirming - undo or continue with next step.

With the Architect helper script you can install either a base CLI system and work from there.

You can Install a Manjaro branded Plasma or you can install a default Plasma - your choice.

In any case - you will have a working core system - and further troubleshooting the GPU will be a lot easier with a working core.

Simply try some ISOs with other kernels than 6.1: Manjaro 22.1 Talos released

so runlevel 3 works just fine, starting the ui via startx or systemctl start sddm.service create the freeze again. I might go further with your suggestion, but first I try @philm suggestion with kernel 515 or 510 later today.

also will try fedora 38 live with plasma as well just to see how that is booting up. will get back later, thanks so far for the suggestions.

so after further testing it seems Plasma has some issues with my RDNA3 Hardware and Kernel 6.1 which comes with the Talos Release.

Kernels 5.10 and 5.15 are too old and have no RDNA3 support. Everya other Plasma 5.27 release I have tried (Kubuntu, Fedora) have Kernel 6.2 on their live distro and it just boots.

For to me unknown is why the same 6.1 kernel in manjaro Gnome just works.

You are using manjaro-kde-22.0.5-230316-linux61 - I suggest you try the current ISO.
Just noted

I cannot confirm - I just swapped my WX7100PRO with a RX7900XTX with no issues.

Boot from current live Plasma ISO manjaro-kde-22.1.0-minimal-230421-linux61.iso

 $ inxi -SCGm
System:
  Host: manjaro Kernel: 6.1.25-1-MANJARO arch: x86_64 bits: 64
    Desktop: KDE Plasma v: 5.27.4 Distro: Manjaro Linux
Memory:
  RAM: total: 62.62 GiB used: 3.24 GiB (5.2%)
  RAM Report: permissions: Unable to run dmidecode. Root privileges
    required.
CPU:
  Info: 12-core model: AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5945WX s bits: 64
    type: MT MCP cache: L2: 6 MiB
  Speed (MHz): avg: 2227 min/max: 1800/7015 cores: 1: 1800 2: 1800 3: 1800
    4: 4100 5: 1789 6: 1800 7: 1800 8: 1800 9: 1800 10: 1758 11: 1800 12: 1800
    13: 2940 14: 1800 15: 1800 16: 1800 17: 1784 18: 4100 19: 4100 20: 1800
    21: 1800 22: 1800 23: 1800 24: 4100
Graphics:
  Device-1: AMD Navi 31 [Radeon RX 7900 XT/7900 XTX] driver: amdgpu v: kernel
  Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 21.1.8 driver: X: loaded: amdgpu
    unloaded: modesetting,radeon dri: radeonsi gpu: amdgpu
    resolution: 5120x1440~120Hz
  API: OpenGL v: 4.6 Mesa 23.0.2 renderer: AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX (gfx1100
    LLVM 15.0.7 DRM 3.49 6.1.25-1-MANJARO)

My installed system

 $ inxi -SCGm
System:
  Host: tiger Kernel: 6.3.3-1-MANJARO arch: x86_64 bits: 64
    Desktop: KDE Plasma v: 5.27.5 Distro: Manjaro Linux
Memory:
  System RAM: available: 62.62 GiB used: 3.66 GiB (5.8%)
  RAM Report: permissions: Unable to run dmidecode. Root privileges
    required.
CPU:
  Info: 12-core model: AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5945WX s bits: 64
    type: MT MCP cache: L2: 6 MiB
  Speed (MHz): avg: 2136 min/max: 1800/7015 cores: 1: 4100 2: 1800 3: 1800
    4: 4100 5: 1800 6: 1800 7: 2940 8: 1844 9: 1800 10: 1800 11: 1800 12: 1800
    13: 1800 14: 1800 15: 1800 16: 1800 17: 1800 18: 1800 19: 1800 20: 1800
    21: 1800 22: 1800 23: 1800 24: 4100
Graphics:
  Device-1: AMD Navi 31 [Radeon RX 7900 XT/7900 XTX] driver: amdgpu v: kernel
  Display: wayland server: X.org v: 1.21.1.8 with: Xwayland v: 23.1.1
    compositor: kwin_wayland driver: X: loaded: amdgpu
    unloaded: modesetting,radeon dri: radeonsi gpu: amdgpu
    resolution: 5120x1440
  API: OpenGL v: 4.6 Mesa 23.0.3 renderer: AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX (gfx1100
    LLVM 15.0.7 DRM 3.52 6.3.3-1-MANJARO)

Here is an image with kernel 6.2 series: Release 202305230243 · manjaro-plasma/download · GitHub

1 Like

this image boots up just fine, thanks for letting me test that. Now I will move on with this. Can I later swich back to stable if I use this?

1 Like

This topic was automatically closed 2 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.