[GTALUG] Toshiba Satellite L500 rejects Linux

[Giles Orr]

I've recently acquired (through a friend who stopped using it) a
Toshiba Satellite L500 - Core i3 (3rd gen?), 4G RAM.  I'm determined
to get Linux onto it (preferably Debian).  I thought I had succeeded:
I booted from a Debian USB stick, installed to the HD.  All appeared
to go well, but the system won't boot.  It returns to the Boot Menu
and says "HDXXXX has failed."  What the search engines are telling me
is that with this generation of Toshibas, the problem is generally
Secure Boot / CSM etc.  Which makes sense, but ... there is absolutely
zero mention in the BIOS/UEFI ("Phoenix SecureCore Tiano Setup") of
"Secure Boot," "CSM," "Legacy," or "UEFI."  Acccording to notes I
found online, "SecureCore Tiano" has "full support" for legacy
booting.

Another issue with this machine is my mixed success booting from USB
sticks: I have an old-ish USB stick I built myself that has GRUB and a
large menu of ISOs: works great on most systems, won't boot on this
thing - probably because it's an old-style BIOS-boot only(?).

One of my ideas was to upgrade the BIOS: it appears there's a newer
version available, but it's NOT available from Toshiba, which is the
only place I'd want to download it from.  The rest look like dubious
secondary download sites (if you know one you consider reliable, let
me know).

What I read online said that Fedora's installer puts an EFI partition
on the HD as part of the install, while Debian doesn't.  And that
may(?) be why I can't boot from my Debian install?  So ... I
downloaded the Fedora installer, put it on a USB stick ... and no joy:
the Toshiba doesn't recognize the Fedora USB stick as a bootable item.
Would this be because I burned it on a "Legacy" system?  Is there a
fix for that?  Except ... I'm about 99% sure the Debian Installer USB
stick was created on the same machine.

Worst case, I can stick the HD from the Toshiba into another machine,
install Fedora on it, repartition to make room for Debian, put the HD
back into the Toshiba ... but that's getting damn complicated and
annoying.

As always - any suggestions welcomed.

-- 
Giles
https://www.gilesorr.com/
gilesorr at gmail.com