Model covered

System76 Thelio Astra

The motherboard is the ASRock ALTRAD8UD-1L2T so most if not everything will apply to other systems using that motherbaord.

Overall Status

Installation done using the official Debian 13(Trixie) done from an USB sick, display connected to the Nvdia mini display port.

From the UEFI menu, selects Boot Menu, then select the USB stick to boot the debian installer. Text mode is fine, but the graphical installer will only work if you pass nomodeset as a boot option.

Note that the debian installer is able to create an UEFI NVRAM entry to boot Debian, but is not able to set it as the default in case of a preexisting OS installation. In that case you need to go in the UEFI/BIOS setup, Boot tab, and in the NVME BBS Boot Priority choose Debian, and save the settings.

Core Components

Boot Standard Kernel:

{OK}

LAN network card:

{OK}

Detect hard drives:

{OK}

Secure boot:

{OK}

Extra Features

CPU Frequency Scaling

{OK}

Hibernation

/!\

Sleep / Suspend

/!\

Xorg

{OK} {i}

- OpenGL

{OK}

- Resize-and-Rotate(randr)

{OK}

Switch to External Screen

{OK}

Wireless/Wifi

{OK}

Legend :
{OK} = OK ; {X} Unsupported(No Driver) ; /!\ = Error (Couldn't get it working); [?] Unknown, Not Test ; [-] Not-applicable
{i} = Configuration Required; X-( = Only works with a non-free driver and or firmware

Configuration

Display

If on boot you just see the grub menu, but no display at all, you can add the parameter console=tty0 as a kernel boot option. This seem to be needed because the default output is redirected to the motherboard BMC virtual console.

After a graphical installation done with the nodemodeset option, the machine will boot into a mere 1024x768. To use the nouveau Xorg driver with full resolution, you will need: 

# apt install firmware-nvidia-graphics
# update-initramfs -u -k all

and remove nomodeset from /etc/default/grub.

There is also an onboard display from ASPEED with VGA ouput, which can work up to 1900x1080 resolution, with no 3d acceleration and a lower image quality.

System Summary

Good stuff, powerful but quiet, the lack of suspend to RAM / suspend to disk is a noted miss.

Other reports

CategoryDesktopComputer