It's notoriously difficult to get youngsters to use Linus, and Garuda was the first that gave the "I WANT THIS" feeling to my kids.
I have seen that the problem has a solution, but I wanted to ask whether there is any chance that the problem will get addressed so a simple install for the not-so-initiated is possible again. In my case, the Macbook was semi-bricked, I needed to download and install OSX 10.8 and then go back to another Linux.
It's ok, of course, if this is not within the general Garuda scope, but I wondered whether, if the issue were easy to address by experts, I could still nudge you into doing it...
Hi there, welcome to the forum!
Unfortunately, I must once again reiterate the concept that a small distribution cannot guarantee total support for any conbination of HW and SW. Conceptually this would be prohibitively hard for anyone.
In this case the point is clear: for some technical reasons that I do not know (I am not a developer), the efibootmgr implementation (called by the installer to install the bootloader) that we use (we almost always rely on Arch packages) does not work with some Macbook models.
This is an "upstream" problem, I don't think there is anything doable (with acceptable effort...).
You see that in fact the brilliantly found workaround temporarily uses that command from a different distribution, which does not have this problem (believe me I remember so many cases of the contrary, things not working natively in other distros but working out-of-the-box in Garuda).
First thing (if not already done) I'd suggest you try the installation anyway (trying to help in those threads, I've seen other users in the forum with Macbooks, so it must be something model-dependent).
Then I would advise you to try the solution (the workaround) in the first thread. It may look complicated, but it seems well explained!
Most importantly, once the system is installed you can forget about the problem and your kids can enjoy Garuda like everyone else...
Thanks a lot - and I totally understand. The scenario I was afraid of is setting this up and then having a problem later on (after a major update or similar).
But I guess I’ll give it a try and will implore the concept of backups even more…
Great!
I'm confident that the problem should not reoccur in the future: as far as I know, the only case where you may have problems that require reinstalling the bootloader (or anyway using efibootmgr) is when dual booting with Windows, and this really shouldn't be the case
Keep a USB key available anyway, with the Garuda iso and, if necessary, the Debian iso.
I use Ventoy, which is great, you simply copy all the iso files to the key, then when you boot from it you decide which one to use.
"efibootmgr" doesn't always work with Macs and IIRC the author of it mentions that it shouldn't be used on Macs. Both of the threads you linked to are created by Mac users. Here is something else you may attempt:
Install Garuda Linux, while installing skip bootloader installation but create a FAT32 ESP and mount it to /boot/efi.
"--no-nvram" skips calling efibootmgr, "--removable" installs GRUB to the default location so the firmware can pick it up.
4. If you set up a MacOS & Linux dual boot, hold "alt" while Mac is booting and choose whatever that is not MacOS. If you nuked MacOS, Linux should boot automatically.
