6/3/2018 2:04 PM, lukefro...@hushmail.com wrote: > One place you may need more detail (or to tell people to look online for it > is the mess created by UEFI and secure boot for new installs on > computers from the Windows 8 and later eras. The advice given about trying > from a USB stick and how easy it is applies only to machines with a real BIOS > (sold with Windows 7 and earlier or rare Linux preinstalls). or to machines > on > which someone else has already disabled secure boot at least. Unless US > installers are using a SIGNED kernel(this I do not know), they are not going > to boot US on > anything that still has Secure Boot turned on. Legacy boot should not be > needed, > but will of course work fine if someone has already turned it on while > turning Secure Boot > off. Also, there are some junk Lenovo laptops that do a string check to > block everything > but Windows 8 and RHEL, but will boot other OS's if the boot executable is > renamed to march > either of those. > > I had to install Ubuntu on one laptop for a friend that was an almost exact > copy of a > machine she had that died-except for a later UEFI version. The new version > was buggy, > and could not boot any linux distro without updating the UEFI again, which > had to be done > from within Windows 10. For someone not willing to activate Win10, that's a > return to the store. My friend had paid a local techician $90 just to rid her > first of these > machines of Windows 10, and that second one would have been even more had I > not been > able to find the issue. Without my own (running) machine to access the > Internet it would not > have been possible to even research what was wrong other than from inside > Windows 10. > > There are some Win10 machines that cannot even get to the UEFI screen except > from > inside Windows (and AFTER activating Windows) unless you can remove the > drive (not possible if soldered down or too hard to disassemble) or otherwise > forcibly cause boot failure. These are the ones with "fast boot" enabled. > This skips > things like initializing the keyboard, USB etc in firmware, so there is no > way to even > ask for a USB boot much less execute one until fast boot is turned off. > Some have reported success with repeated power cycling during boot to simulate > a failure of Windows to boot. but I have not played with one of those "fast > boot" machines > so I do not know. > > More recently, when I my good BIOS-based Atom netbook died, the closest > replacment was a bottom-barrel Chromebook. Unfamiliar with the process for > wiping Chrome and installing only a real distro, it took me hours JUST TO GET > ROOT so I could reset the bootloader to accept anything other than Chrome. > "Developer mode" was not enough, and getting to a terminal without creating > a Google Account required a lot of though and non-obvious procedures. I > almost > returned it to the store before I finally figured it out. I had to among > other things > create a dummy wireless hotspot with no Internet access to get past the > "connect > to the Internet" part of intiial startup, not knowing it could F-2 to a > terminal like > any other Linux install. > > Had I removed the disk and directly installed to it first, I would have been > unable > to turn on legacy boot, as the Coreboot varient used in that version of > Google Chrome can only > be reset to allow USB and legacy boot from inside Chrome OS! Withing > theChromeOS > command line, if you try to set a root password and fail, you are all the > way locked > out until you "powerwash" to reset to factory. The OS I was installing was an > image of > one installed on a BIOS machine, thus itself was only bootable by legacy boot > on anything. > > Newcomers would be much better off with either a desktop build new from parts > (so Windows was never installed, no Intel Boot Guard, and an easy to reach > UEFI > setup page) or from a sufficiently powerful older machine with a real BIOS, > meaning > one that came with Windows 7 or older. Newer laptops can be brutally > difficult, and > I do not advise spending money on such a machine unless you specifically need > a > laptop. Also especially avoid Lenovo-not worth a penny unless the exact model > involved > passes an online search for bootability with Linux, or you aready have it. > Lenovo is > infamous for actively malicious UEFI code, such as the above-mentioned string > check, and in another case reinstalling Windows bloatware removed by users. > > Some Win10 machines (those shipped with Fastboot turned off) are as easy as > BIOS machines that > were not factory set for USB boot to get going, others are impossible > without updates to > buggy firmware. If buying a new or used Windows 8 or later machine, you need > to check exactly > what you are buying oneline prior to purchase. > > At least in the case of Chromebooks they are most consistant: actually harder > to get to > boot real Linux with Chrome removed, but as they use Coreboot all of them can > be > eventually rooted and made to run UbuntuStudio or any other recent distro. > You may > very well need that external soundcard though, as the onboard sound may not > work > or may work only when connected to a HDMI screen and external speakers due to > kernel bugs for which ChromeOS gets patches. On the other hand, even the > cheapest > Chromebooks (as long as they are x86 and not ARM so the necessary software is > available > in architecture-compatable builds ) are surprisingly powerful these days. All > those die shrinks > have let Intel et all get more power into the low power budget chips. You > won't edit video > on one (except in HW accelerated Avidemux) but you can play 1080p video and > audio > editing should be fine.
Luke, I understand your frustrations on this, but I'm afraid it will fall on deaf ears in this mailing list since the issues don't seem to be specific to Ubuntu Studio. Peter can correct me if I'm wrong, but I would say technical stuff like that is far beyond the scope of this handbook. It might seem like something easy to teach but in reality, it's not. I will say, however, that there can be an area on the wiki for that, although, since it's not Ubuntu Studio specific and applies to Ubuntu as a whole, it should be included in the main Ubuntu wiki. Remember, Ubuntu Studio is, to put it simply, a customized version of Ubuntu. Under-the-hood things like UEFI, BIOS, and other items are not within the scope of the Ubuntu Studio development team. For those things, there's the main ubuntu-devel mailing list. The scope of the Ubuntu Studio development team consists of the ubuntustudio-* packages primarily. We do not develop Ubiquity (the Ubuntu installer program). It is developed by the main Ubuntu development team. Also, and I cannot emphasize this enough, none of the Ubuntu Studio developers are paid to do this. It is a completely volunteer project. With that said, Luke, please take these frustrations to the ubuntu-devel mailing list so that the main Ubuntu Development team can have a go to address these issues. Erich
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