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I recently bought a Thinkpad carbon X1 gen9 with Ubuntu preinstalled. The preinstalled Ubuntu have some problems (see this forum) and I was thinking of trying Debian.

As soon as I try to boot from the USB stick that has an image of Debian I am "thrown" into grub and I am unable to do anything else (I guess lack of knowledge).

Now, I thought that I try another distro, and tried to boot up Kubuntu. The result was that Kubuntu never loaded and something like a recovery mode of Ubuntu was triggered, resulting into a fresh Ubuntu installation. (see also this post where the same happened)

I have the feeling that this is related to some configuration from Ubuntu/Lenovo, triggering a recovery mode. As [this post] suggests, completely deleting Ubuntu did the job for him/her, so I was wondering how I can format from an Ubuntu installation.

Thank you

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    Are you actually booting those various USB installers successfully? It's hard to tell from your description. A successful boot of a Debian installer should give you a Debian screen with a big Debian logo and Debian install options. If not, then seems like a How-do-I-select-boot-device-in-BIOS question that's not related to Ubuntu. Ubuntu does not muck around with your BIOS boot selection options.
    – user535733
    Sep 25, 2021 at 12:56
  • Yes I am. I have done successfully this procedure multiple times, on multiple machines. I was actually in doubt in the beginning whether the Debian installer was properly burned, that's why I tried Kubuntu (more straightforward). The fact that Kubuntu also fails to boot signals that it's not a USB stick/boot image problem.
    – hal
    Sep 25, 2021 at 13:17
  • Can you add a picture of the "something like recovery mode" ?
    – user535733
    Sep 25, 2021 at 13:39
  • It's not a specific screen or something. What happens (e.g. when I try to boot Kubuntu) is that the Ubuntu are reinstalling. I am not getting an option for installing Kubuntu. Even if I try to boot another image with Ubuntu OS, I am also not getting an option to wipe-clean and install Ubuntu, it goes straight installing Ubuntu with the oem kernel, which is used in the preinstalled version in Thinkpads.
    – hal
    Sep 25, 2021 at 14:18
  • Does this answer your question? Removing an Ubuntu installation
    – karel
    Sep 26, 2021 at 0:31

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