Good luck!

Thanks for your post. Yeah I’ve done encrypted OS partitions myself and it’s worked fine - it’s asked for the password. This was a bit different because I was needing something unlocked that - as far as the boot loader was concerned - was not needed for boot. I did find the solution though - see my edit in OP above.

Thanks, I solved it by RTM-ing, see edit.

Debian!

Um, I was just sharing my experience with an xps. You have different experience, with a different xps model I’d guess. I’m glad you’re happy with it!

I didn’t even share the worst part of my experience: when it died it just died, refused to turn on. Immediate brick, no warning. This has happened to quite a few people I found, from frantic searching at the time.

I’ve bought dell for 20 years but their quality has been falling for the last decade, in my opinion and based on having bought about a dozen (for various people).

I’ll never buy an xps again. Last one needed pretty much everything replacing, and within 3 years dell stopped manufacturing the battery!!

$2k on a laptop that’s a brick within 3 years?