Hello,
I haven't been able to create a bootable thumb drive of KDE Neon that is recognized by my computer when using UEFI boot mode. I've tried with both “BalenaEtcher” and “ISO image writer” (the KDE app). Though I can boot into it using the Legacy boot option from by BIOS settings, but that can create other issues.
Is there a way for creating a bootable drive of latest ISO image of KDE Neon that is compatible with the UEFI boot option?
Any suggestions or solutions will be appreciated!

When booting the system in UEFI mode, what shows up when you hit the appropriate f-key to bring up boot options? On my PC it is F11, for example. Yours will be different, most likely. This system doesn't like booting to an OS that hasn't been previously assigned a slot in the boot order, so i usually have to use the f-key to boot an install ISO.

On my old laptop which is set to boot USB first (also UEFI) , I have no issues. No f-keys needed.

claydoh wrote:When booting the system in UEFI mode, what shows up when you hit the appropriate f-key to bring up boot options? On my PC it is F11, for example. Yours will be different, most likely. This system doesn't like booting to an OS that hasn't been previously assigned a slot in the boot order, so i usually have to use the f-key to boot an install ISO.

On my old laptop which is set to boot USB first (also UEFI) , I have no issues. No f-keys needed.

Thank you for replying. I have tried both: 1- setting the external drives as the preferred boot option, over the internal drive, and 2- pressing the appropriate F button to explicitly tell the computer to boot from the external USB drive. None works with a black screen shown that goes on without any change for as long as I forcefully power off. As I mentioned, though, it boots without any issues on the Legacy boot mode.
Since it does work for you, may I check these few details about how you create your bootable drive:
* What program do you use to create the bootable drive? And do you specify UEFI as the target system?
* Is the computer on which you create the bootable drive, booting on UEFI itself, with GPT format for its partitions?

thebluequasar wrote:

claydoh wrote:When booting the system in UEFI mode, what shows up when you hit the appropriate f-key to bring up boot options? On my PC it is F11, for example. Yours will be different, most likely. This system doesn't like booting to an OS that hasn't been previously assigned a slot in the boot order, so i usually have to use the f-key to boot an install ISO.

On my old laptop which is set to boot USB first (also UEFI) , I have no issues. No f-keys needed.

Thank you for replying. I have tried both: 1- setting the external drives as the preferred boot option, over the internal drive, and 2- pressing the appropriate F button to explicitly tell the computer to boot from the external USB drive. None works with a black screen shown that goes on without any change for as long as I forcefully power off. As I mentioned, though, it boots without any issues on the Legacy boot mode.
Since it does work for you, may I check these few details about how you create your bootable drive:
* What program do you use to create the bootable drive? And do you specify UEFI as the target system?
* Is the computer on which you create the bootable drive, booting on UEFI itself, with GPT format for its partitions?

All my systems boot UEFI/GPT, and I most often have used dd on the command line in recent years, but do very often use and recommend Etcher, and have been using this application successfully many years now, for all ISO images. Neon images have been working on uefi as long as it has existed, and for as long as I have been using it (2016). I have seen no issues or had to do anything special as far as i can recall in that time.

if you have been using the same USB stick for a while, for many images, it might be worth zeroing out at least the beginning of the disk and any potential mbr that might accidentally still be present, if not zeroing the whole drive, perhaps.

claydoh wrote:All my systems boot UEFI/GPT, and I most often have used dd on the command line in recent years, but do very often use and recommend Etcher, and have been using this application successfully many years now, for all ISO images. Neon images have been working on uefi as long as it has existed, and for as long as I have been using it (2016). I have seen no issues or had to do anything special as far as i can recall in that time.

if you have been using the same USB stick for a while, for many images, it might be worth zeroing out at least the beginning of the disk and any potential mbr that might accidentally still be present, if not zeroing the whole drive, perhaps.

Well, this sure seems odd to me. I have used Etcher, and the bootable drive will only boot on Legacy boot for me, and not when UEFI is enabled. I assumed UEFI is some kind of standard that's not dependent on specific hardware and thus, if the same image created with the same program boots on one device, should also boot on another. But this doesn't seem to be the case here.
However, I managed to create a bootable USB of KDE Neon that does boot on UEFI on my machine, but I did it using Rufus and on a Windows PC. While this confirms that UEFI is supported on my machine and that KDE Neon image doesn't have any problems with UEFI boot, it's not much of a solution since I can't use it on Linux. I'll probably try other programs, perhaps UNetBootin at the top of the list, to see if the bootable drive created with them will work on my machine. I'll try to post any useful results here, if I could find any.

ventoy is also popular, and seems to have few complaints. it can hold and boot multiple isos, and seems easy to use.

Using dd on the command line is not hard at all
Overly thorough but good and understandable instructions:
https://itsfoss.com/live-usb-with-dd-command/

I find Unetbootin inconsistent, but have not used it in a while for that reason.

claydoh wrote:ventoy is also popular, and seems to have few complaints. it can hold and boot multiple isos, and seems easy to use.

Using dd on the command line is not hard at all
Overly thorough but good and understandable instructions:
https://itsfoss.com/live-usb-with-dd-command/

I find Unetbootin inconsistent, but have not used it in a while for that reason.

I had heard about Ventoy once and since you suggested it, I went with Ventoy first. Glad to say Neon image works fine on UEFI on my laptop with Ventoy (used GPT partition scheme in Ventoy btw).
Thanks a lot for your helpful replies