NixOs install from usb freezes, same ISO works fine in VirtualBox

1

I’m trying to install Nixos for the first time (on an empty ssd, goal is to make a dual boot with windows 10 ) and I’m not really familiar with linux in general. Booting from an old 2gb USB stick with the 20.03 ISO opens up the installer choices but after choosing the installer I get a few lines running and get to the root login before the system seems to freeze with a black screen and an _ in the upper corner. I never get anywhere from that unless I reboot. copytoram and debug installers freeze at the same spot. The same iso works just fine in VirtualBox.

I’m running an old i5-3570k with a rtx 2070 and someone mentioned this might be a graphics driver issue but a friend of mine had no problems with the same iso and a 2080 so I don’t know what to think. I also have 2 displays and before the freeze the few lines of the installer jump back and forth between them.

Any ideas or pointers would be welcome.

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Seems I had two different problems preventing the installation:

  1. Motherboard had a secure boot setting turned on, which prevented all non-windows booting
  2. Graphics drivers somehow messed up booting.

Solution was to disable secureboot and run the installer in nomodeset mode. After NixOs intall I had the same issue when booting from the ssd but got it fixed by adding the following lines to configuration.nix:

boot.kernelParams = [ "nomodeset" ];
services.xserver.videoDrivers = [ "nvidia" ];
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