My question would be: Does the provided keyboard work with those other distros?
If the answer is “no” then, whether SeaBIOS gets fixed or not, you aren’t going to be left with a really great result.
I would get yourself a wired keyboard so that you can get past the boot process and then see what the situation is.
What make and model?
I maybe should have added that info in the above post.
Generally speaking the provided Keyboard does work when booted into PureOS, Manjaro, Garuda and Arch.
This is true for my wireless keyboard.
Where both of them don’t work is in SeaBIOS (where I could click ESC to choose boot device). But both keyboards do not work in Grub (installed bootloader) as well.
Short summary:
Installed OS/LiveUSB: Both work
SeaBIOS and GRUB: Neither the detachable keyboard nor my wireless keyboard work here (could not test a wired keyboard here)
Its a Cherry Stream Keyboard Wireless, exact Modell is JD-85K.
edit: corected Keyboard
1 - Let me try booting a recent Arch ISO and see what’s going on. I do try a lot of ISOs (and Heads community members run many OSes) but I haven’t tried Arch in a while. Most likely we can get this to work.
2 - You probably won’t need to make any changes to the ISOs. If there’s something problematic about the ISO that can’t be fixed in PureBoot right away, we can probably manually kexec into it for now to install (after that normal boot should be fine).
3 - Others have already mentioned that SeaBIOS is picky about USB keyboards, they’re right. The keyboard cover not working in SeaBIOS is a known issue currently. The wireless keyboard here is probably similar, I have tried many keyboards that work but there are still many that don’t. I think we are best off pursuing the PureBoot route.
@stefan230 Could you try the Arch 2023.11.01 install ISO?
Both PureBoot and SeaBIOS can boot the latest ISO, but the Arch kernel is unable to initialize the built-in display (and i915 panics on shutdown too).
I haven’t figured out whether this is a Linux upstream bug, specific to Arch, etc., but at any rate the kernel in the 2023.11.01 ISO works. I did not try the 2023.12.01 ISO.
You can always update after installation, but if you update the kernel you might still get that problem. External displays still worked, so if you have an issue you could use that to get back to a working kernel.
First up. Thank you very much for looking into this. I appreciate it.
I did try the normal Arch Iso and used the latest. What you describe basically resembles what I was seeing as well. Booting the arch-iso would spit i915-messages at me even when in the Live mode.
Personally I would think this is an upstream issue since it was somewhat persistant with derivates as well. I guess the never kernel messed something up there.
I can atleast provide the info that Manjaro and Garuda (both derivatives of arch) would boot when older isos are used. Garuda would experience the same issues you mentioned after being updated. Manjaro on the other hand was fine since they still have older stuff in their repos.
I can work around that. I will try some more isos when I come back home shortly.
My primary concern was that as it is. Neither Manjaro nor Garuda would boot at all. Not even coming as far as the panic. It would just show what can be seen in the photo of the first post.
Both sticks would boot fine with seaBIOS/coreboot though.
I will provide you with version numbers of the isos as well later if you want.
I will test around myself as well and come back here again
Garuda
Ah yes thanks, I got caught up in Arch and should have gone back to the original question there. Let me try those as well.
I had some time to test some different arch-based isos and see if they boot.
I tested some manjaro isos and some Isos of EndeavourOS.
Isos:
manjaro:
EndeavourOS:
Both of the tested manjaro-isos did not boot and it comes to the error seen in the first post of this topic. Side Note: I did use the newer stick to succesfully install Manjaro on another intel-based (normal) laptop no problem.
Both of the EndeavourOS-Sticks generally booted. The newer of the two (Galileo) would sadly share its fate with arch and only display a black screen with some mangled white lines.
Cassini Nova booted up just fine and I could even get to the desktop and use the liveUSB no problem. Though Installing did not work as well I hoped it should have but I will have to test that tomorrow in more detail. I also remember I had Cassini Nova on that device before this whole ordeal as well.
I will report back tomorrow once I (hopefully finished installing something.
alrighty after some more trying and testing I got something arch installed on the librem 11 again. I did use EndeavourOS here since the manjaro isos sadly would not boot for me. But atleast I have something usable by now again (Though I still need to figure out how get autorotate working on kde-plasma on there)
The issue is that there is a kernel regression in newer kernels (I guess some 6.6 and 6.7 kernels) that leads to the i915-driver to crash which results in a black screen. See this: i915 driver issues after 6.6.x (#21) · Issues · Arch Linux / Packaging / Packages / linux · GitLab
So my “fix” for now was to use an older Endeavour-Iso which boots and install it in its offline-variant.
After installing and rebooting all worked fine since I basically installed the Live-Enviroment to my Tablet. Updates will be done, but one needs to make sure to install an alternative (older) kernel so one can still boot. I used a 6.1 kernel in the AUR.
So my issue more or less solved and I atleast have a usable system again. I still wonder though why the manjaro-isos do not work really. I would have liked that instead of endeavour but its all arch in the end so I am happy.
Looks like PureBoot isn’t able to parse the grub.cfg in the Manjaro / Garuda live ISOs (they look the same).
It looks like they have some logic to enumerate the kernels on the live ISO and generate menu entries for them. Since PureBoot doesn’t execute the entire grub.cfg but just picks out menu entries, it isn’t able to find these entries, which results in the error in the OP.
It should be possible to manually kexec into the ISO to install, if you are still interested in this I could figure out the kernel and command line and we could try it. If the installed grub.cfg is simpler (likely I think but have not checked), they’ll work after installing.
Thanks for linking to that related i915 issue, I’ll test the Librem 11 issue and report upstream if it’s an upstream bug.
Sorry for leaving you hanging a bit. I had an assignment to finish.
Thats interesting to hear for sure. Trying out manjaro on that thing would be nice. I do not think it will be really that different from endeavour since both of these distros are based in arch.
Also just so other users know as well how to boot an iso that does not work since the same problem might happen with other ISOs.
If you find the time to test this and give a quick rundown I would really appreciate it.
@jonathon.hall Is there anything new on the boot-stuff with manjaro? I would really love to give it a try. Also was there some new knowledge with that i915-bug?
Thank you for all the work so far.
Thanks for checking in @stefan230 - this is still in my queue but I expect to circle back to these shortly. The release testing for PureBoot 29 has been taking a lot of time since there are a lot of changes in this release, but I have not forgotten 
I appreciate the heads-up. I this did not come off as naggy or something. I am just interested in this since it might open up more avenues for the Librem 11. Pureboot 29 does seem to have some options to look forward. Good luck with getting all that stuff done ^^
Not at all, thanks for checking in! I should have an update soon.
This does work, I tested booting Garuda and Manjaro from the recovery shell. The steps are very similar for both.
For Garuda (KDE Dragonized Edition, garuda-dr460nized-linux-zen-231029.iso, which is latest right now):
mount-usbGARUDA_DR460NIZED_RAPTORkexec --initrd=/media/boot/initramfs-x86_64.img --command-line="misobasedir=garuda root=miso:LABEL=GARUDA_DR460NIZED_RAPTOR quiet systemd.show_status=1 ibt=off driver=free i915.modeset=1" /media/boot/vmlinuz-x86_64
kexec -eFor Manjaro, I had to go back to the 23.0.4 image dated 2023-10-15 due to the same kernel problem we identified above for Arch. The only difference here is the miso* parameters.
mount-usbMANJARO_KDE_2304kexec --initrd=/media/boot/initramfs-x86_64.img --command-line="misobasedir=manjaro misolabel=MANJARO_KDE_2304 quiet systemd.show_status=1 ibt=off driver=free i915.modeset=1" /media/boot/vmlinuz-x86_64
kexec -eI installed Manjaro and it booted fine, so this is only needed for the initial install. You will have to partition manually and create an unencrypted /boot partition, since PureBoot requires it. I didn’t test an installation of Garuda but it’s very similar, I expect it’ll be the same.
Thanks for your patience while this was queued up!
@jonathon.hall I very much appreciate the time you have put into this. Do you have some sort of wiki where I could add these steps to so other people can also boot different isos on the librem 11?
Thanks @stefan230, I’m actually writing that page right this moment I’ll link when I post it and feel free to add any further info.
I also opened an issue upstream in Heads for Manjaro/Garuda: https://github.com/linuxboot/heads/issues/1605
Okay I thank you very for going through all that effort. If the page is ready feel free to send me a link and i can maybe add some stuff to it. Maybe some sort of list what does and does not boot out of the box and requires the steps outlined above.
Thanks! Here’s the new page: Install Another OS · Wiki · Librem 11 / L11 Community Wiki · GitLab