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Comment by tdkl | Hacker News Reader

> This is a Linux-only BIOS, meaning it should be used only by those who want to load the OS. If you want to continue with Windows, do not load the firmware. “This BIOS is not intended to be used on machines running Windows operating systems,” Lenovo said.

One step forward, two steps back.

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The "Linux only BIOS" also works for Windows though so you can dual boot with it. The reason why they say it doesn't is because they don't want to spend money on officially supporting it and AHCI gives a slight performance decrease from their default RAID configuration.

Well if it does work with Windows, then fine, I took it from the article, that there's no chance running Windows or dual booting after switching to it.

> because they don't want to spend money on officially supporting it

I hope this doesn't mean the warranty and support is void after doing this, wouldn't even surprise me.

> I took it from the article, that there's no chance running Windows or dual booting after switching to it

That's literally what they said. The GP is telling you it's a lie (and is very probably right, but I don't know the details), but they said you can not dual boot.

> "and AHCI gives a slight performance decrease from their default RAID configuration."

Is that actually true, or is it really that using Microsoft's AHCI driver instead of Intel's driver hurts performance? Last time I checked, Intel's driver could be used even when the controller is in AHCI mode.

I've seen speculation that it's about forcing Intel's custom driver which supports some nonstandard power management features.

https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/44694.html

Apparently, there isn't much difference between AHCI and RAID modes in the hardware itself.

A lot of the newer developer grade laptops have nvme options anyway (which work on both Windows and current Linux kernels). My XPS 13 runs on Linux with nvme fine.

I suspect you're correct and that the new BIOS may break Windows certification. My experience is that Windows 10 runs fine on non-certified hardware since it's running fine on four non-certified machines here at the house.

The other reason is that Windows 7 is compatible with the "Linux only BIOS."

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