I never used Windows in my life. I am 60 years old with a PhD in computer science (coding since 1974, e.g. coding today https://github.com/bstarynk/bismon professionally), but not familiar with recent BIOSes (using Linux since 1993 and 0.99.12 kernel). I bought my ACER Nitro5 AN517 51 72CQ for the RefPerSys project (a GPLv3 project for Linux x86-64) and I want to wipe out Windows entirely and have just Linux on my Acer Nitro5 laptop. I just successfully updated the BIOS to v1.23 using Windows. The vendor who sold me that machine (and the Google checks I made) told me that it is Linux compatible.
The Ubuntu 19.10 ISO USB key is booting a Linux 5.3.0 ubuntu kernel, but I don't see any /dev/sd? device outside of /dev/sda which is the USB key. From sudo -s terminal, the fdisk -l utility don't see any SDD disk.
What did I do wrong? I did disable secure boot in the BIOS! Is there some kernel flag to set to boot a Linux seeing the SSD disk?
The CPU is according to lscpu
Model name: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-9750H CPU @ 2.60GHz
The label says that it has an NVIDIA GTX 1650.
P/N: NH.Q5CEF.014 & S/N: NHQ5CEF01494110EB3400
The output of lspci is
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 8th Gen Core Processor Host Bridge/DRAM Registers (rev 07)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v5/E3-1500 v5/6th Gen Core Processor PCIe Controller (x16) (rev 07)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation UHD Graphics 630 (Mobile)
00:08.0 System peripheral: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v5/v6 / E3-1500 v5 / 6th/7th Gen Core Processor Gaussian Mixture Model
00:12.0 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Cannon Lake PCH Thermal Controller (rev 10)
00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Cannon Lake PCH USB 3.1 xHCI Host Controller (rev 10)
00:14.2 RAM memory: Intel Corporation Cannon Lake PCH Shared SRAM (rev 10)
00:15.0 Serial bus controller [0c80]: Intel Corporation Cannon Lake PCH Serial IO I2C Controller #0 (rev 10)
00:15.1 Serial bus controller [0c80]: Intel Corporation Cannon Lake PCH Serial IO I2C Controller #1 (rev 10)
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Cannon Lake PCH HECI Controller (rev 10)
00:17.0 RAID bus controller: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile SATA Controller [RAID mode] (rev 10)
00:1d.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Cannon Lake PCH PCI Express Root Port #14 (rev f0)
00:1d.6 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Cannon Lake PCH PCI Express Root Port #15 (rev f0)
00:1e.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Device a328 (rev 10)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Device a30d (rev 10)
00:1f.3 Audio device: Intel Corporation Cannon Lake PCH cAVS (rev 10)
00:1f.4 SMBus: Intel Corporation Cannon Lake PCH SMBus Controller (rev 10)
00:1f.5 Serial bus controller [0c80]: Intel Corporation Cannon Lake PCH SPI Controller (rev 10)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation Device 1f91 (rev a1)
01:00.1 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation Device 10fa (rev a1)
06:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 25)
07:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Device 2723 (rev 1a)
The secure boot is disabled in the BIOS.
The main issue is of course how to zero the internal SSD.
solved with
The undocumented Ctrl S BIOS trick in the BIOS panel about disks enabled me to use AHCI mode for the disk, and then it is seen from Linux
PS I did install a new SSD SATA disk and Ubuntu 19.10 runs on it. I did change the SSD M2 disk (the original one, WesternDigital with Windows) to a new Samsung 970 EVO Plus; the BIOS sees it, but not Ubuntu.
