For the MSE a registry patch is available to fix the update issue. Had it myself in a Win7 VM.

I am not using the FF on Win7. An idea since the two machines seem not to work the same: has one of them a proxy or something like that defined in the internet connections?

I guess there is the mistake. AFAIK the installer looks for a deb file.

I would assume that such a brandnew computer has an UEFI only bios. No more CSM mode supported. So the legacy strategies to boot a stick do no more work.

The kernel 5.10.0-0.bpo.9-amd64 is definitely not from Daedalus. Daedalus uses linux-image-6.1.0* or 6.12 from backports.

If you try again?

I am pretty sure that that isn't possible. I have tried it with Telegram, no way, it requires a smartphone application and phone number to connect to on Linux. You can use the Linux program once you have linked it with a smartphone. Its the same with Signal.

And I think its the same for Whatsapp. The linking to the smartphone is required from state authorities to be able to track users.

First of all I would look into the Bios and check the USB settings. And then possibly try "Load optimized defaults".

Not so simple, MBR/GPT and legacy/UEFI gives you 4 possible combinations.

Here are my thoughts: You want a legacy installation, should be possible.

Bios setting: can't you set the bios to legacy driver first? Since its a laptop this might be limited. On my mainboards its possible.

CSM mode is an emulation of the old legacy bios behaviour on every uefi bios you can find on the market. No exception. CSM has been dropped on new designs nowadays.

Install media: I do not use live media or refracta installer, they are limited, at least for me and my wish to encrypt every OS I do install. I use the netinstall. That works for sure.

Booting the install media: on an uefi PC you have to pay attention how you boot the usb stick. When you stick that in and look at the boot options you get, you will see the stick twice. Example: its from Sandisk, you will get a Sandisk entry and a UEFI Sandisk entry in the boot options. For your legacy install make sure you boot the entry without the UEFI prefix. This topic is also important for grub-install. Only when booted in legacy mode you can run the legacy grub-install.

/boot-Partition: I would use ext4.

MBR partitioning: every tool should leave about 1MB free space before the first partition. This space is used by grub for a hidden installation of this famous stage2 files. No bios_grub or ESP required.

GPT partitioning: you could do a legacy installation on a GPT disk too. But its a bit more complicated. Since the GPT scheme needs 34 sectors instead of only 1 for the MBR, you need a bios_grub partition (no filesystem, 1MiB is fine, I give it 8MiB to be on the safe side, bios_grub flag needs to be set). grub installs its stage2 into this bios_grub partition. No ESP required for legacy.

grub-install in legacy mode goes into the MBR. No need to install it to /boot. You need to specify the device for the installation. The boot flag has to be set either to the separate /boot or to /.

grub-install in uefi-mode is a completely different beast. You do not specify a device, can be left off. Some kB of the bootloader goes into the ESP, all the rest is installed into /boot. The booting mechanism is completely different from the old legacy days.

grub installs fine without any network connection in both legacy as efi mode installs, at least from the netinstall. the live/refracta stuff may be differernt, I never use this path.

Since the laptop has an uefi bios /sys/firmware/efi will be present and have entries, but cause no harm. Actually some of that stuff will be required to be able to boot from USB sticks ...

I hope this gives you some background. I would use a netinstall for a fresh installation. That should do the job.

PS: some HP laptops resist anything but Windows. Lets see if we can tame this one.

Welcome dfatd.

Well, I am on Daedalus now, VBox is installed from the .deb from virtualbox.org, I am currently on 7.0.22. Got two older Win VMs running using shared folders. Never had any issues. The XP VM was generated about 2012, the Win7 VM around 2017. Have been pulled up through several releases of Debian/Devuan.

Now to your problem: what is host, what is guest? Are you running Win10 as host and Chimaera as guest in a VM? Is that right? Have you got dkms and the linux headers installed in the VM? Guest additions are uptodate, you use the ones from 7.0.20?

maybe viber depends on systemd? maybe thats why it works on debian and arch?

use the live for testing if it suits you.

if you want to install it onto your disk use the normal installers, e.g. the netinstall.

not 100% sure but i guess the problem is before upgrading from daedalus to excalibur you will need to install the usrmerge package.

and on excalibur you just have one line active in your sources.list:

deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged/ excalibur main contrib non-free non-free-firmware