Old hardware

Boykisser Linux runs fine on most machines from around 2010 on. Older ones mostly fail at booting, not running, so there’s a special image for them.

Which ISO?

Your machine	Use
UEFI, or BIOS from roughly 2012 on	Full or Netinstall
Pre-2012, BIOS only, or you end up at a grub> prompt	Lite

The Lite image:

• boots with plain syslinux (BIOS only, no UEFI hybrid), which old firmware chainloads happily,
• starts in safe graphics mode (nomodeset), so ancient GPUs show a picture,
• skips the heavy apps and Recommends, so it’s lighter on RAM and disk,
• only installs the small Flatpak helpers on first boot.

You need a 64-bit CPU. 32-bit-only machines aren’t supported.

Writing the stick

Don’t use Ventoy for this

Ventoy adds its own boot chain that old firmware often rejects. That’s the most common reason for a grub> prompt. Write the ISO directly.

• Linux: sudo dd if=boykisser-linux-lite-amd64.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=4M status=progress oflag=sync
• Windows: Rufus. Partition scheme MBR, target BIOS (or UEFI-CSM), and choose DD Image mode when asked.
• macOS: sudo dd if=boykisser-linux-lite-amd64.iso of=/dev/rdiskN bs=4m (find diskN with diskutil list, unmount it first).

Firmware settings

If it still won’t boot:

1. Enter setup (usually F2, Del or Esc at power-on).
2. Set Boot mode to Legacy, or enable CSM.
3. Turn off Secure Boot if it’s there.
4. Put the USB stick first in the boot order, save and restart.

Hardware notes

• Intel graphics from 2nd gen Core (Sandy Bridge) on works well with normal graphics.
• Black screen after installing? The live stick uses safe graphics, the installed system doesn’t. At the boot menu press e, add nomodeset to the end of the line starting with linux, and boot with F10. If that fixes it, make it permanent by adding nomodeset to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT in /etc/default/grub and running sudo update-grub.
• Very old NVIDIA cards use Nouveau. The proprietary driver from boykisser nvidia doesn’t support cards older than roughly 2014.
• 2 GB of RAM is the realistic minimum. Close the browser before installing.

If nothing boots

Some machines just won’t start any modern ISO. Two ways out:

• Boot another live system that does work (like an old Debian or Ubuntu stick), and install plain Debian 13 with XFCE from there. Then add the Boykisser tools on top, see boykisser-tools.
• Keep a SystemRescue stick around for repairs. It boots on almost anything.