Hacker News Reader

Comment by voltagex_ | Hacker News Reader

I really don't understand all these people having issues booting in UEFI mode. Fine, disable Secure Boot (or boot Fedora/Ubuntu if you care about it), load a recent distro and get on with your work/play.

View on HN

Same here, I boot Linux from UEFI on several computers and it works fine. It boots faster and uses native display resolution instead of VESA. I dual boot Win 8, chainloading from GRUB.

I think there are just a lot of people who don't know how to install GRUB to the EFI partition, or don't know how to edit their EFI boot menu with efibootmgr. UEFI is more complex than BIOS booting and if the only mental model you have is of a boot sector, you will have trouble understanding why a misbehaving system is acting as it is.

I don't enjoy needing to fix my boot loader when I install Linux or update Windows, but I'm always able to make it work. I always had boot loader issues when I dual-booted BIOS systems too, so although it's still unpleasant, it's not any worse. It's just different and requires learning some new concepts and command-line tools.

From some of the replies below me, it looks like there are some horrible UEFI implementations. Your other option is to shove GRUB (or similar) on a FAT32 drive and boot from that when you want to boot Windows.

FWIW, my key/activation is stored in firmware on my Lenovo X1 and I had no trouble when I disabled Secure Boot.

If you disable UEFI, you need to install your system again, and you cannot use your old license to install it, at least in Win8. So you either buy another Win8. So disabling UEFI is not an option, for dual boot.

Holy cow, how are we just now finding out about this? So Microsoft is forcing you to buy yet another Windows license, after you already paid for the one included with the laptop, if you want to dual-boot?

This should been a scandal when Windows 8 launched.

It was, but the number of people spreading misinformation (like the top of this thread, or the article's author just a few days ago) was huge, and since nobody had firsthand experience with it, most people simply ignored.

Any problem you have with your computer now, you are required to buy another Windows copy.

I'm confused, could you please elaborate on this? I successfully dual-booted a second-hand (wiped hdd, etc) Lenovo Carbon X1 w/ Ubuntu and Win8 from MSDN media. It picked up the pre-loaded Win8 license without issue.

Not really. Installing Linux on a computer running UEFI is perfectly possible. It's just really hard. I'm typing this on just such a machine and it involved activating BIOS emulation and then when the Ubuntu purple loading disk screen came I needed to do a magic key-combo and set some options I don't remember. Then I needed to run bootrepair and instruct it to make Ubuntu UEFI bootable and finally I could turn off BIOS emulation.

It's hard as fucking hell.

The linux experience now extends before installation ;)

I installed Debian 7.4 on a Dell XPS 13 using a live hybrid ISO (`debian-live-7.4-amd64-standard+nonfree.iso`) two days ago. After enabling UEFI and adding the USB stick as a boot device, I had to do nothing out of the normal to get it to work. It was incredibly painless.

Anecdotal, but: I have linux installed on two machines with UEFI, and neither was much harder than a BIOS install. An extra step or two, but it didn't require more than a couple additional minutes.

Sounds like the Ubuntu installer might just suck for UEFI.

My last two systems (desktops, I don't even have a working notebook right now, waiting for Broadwell) used Asrock and ASUS boards with EFI implementations that worked pretty well out of the box under Linux. One runs Suse 13.1, the other runs Arch. They both have their bugs - the Asrock system wipes the EFI boot table every firmware update, and the ASUS one can only have one entry in the EFI boot table, and neither has a working EFI shell - but I did my research to know they worked.

The parent poster said, disable UEFI Secure Boot, not UEFI, in which case Windows will continue to boot normally.

Since when can you not use a windows license more then once.

The license key gets tied to certain system internals upon first use, and is checked against the existence and value of the same internals in subsequent checks. Apparently, toggling UEFI (and/or Secure Boot) modifies one such internal.

EDIT: license -> license key

Don't confuse the technology with the legalities. "The license" is a contractual right that you have legally purchased. If Microsoft's piracy-detecting hair-triggers are firing in a situation where you still have a license per the contact - oem licenses are usually "on this PC" or the like, so toggling UEFI alone shouldn't breach the terms - that should be their problem. You're entitled to your license.

And then you call Microsoft on the phone and they issue a reactivation, or whatever they call it, and everything is fine. Unless this works differently with OEM versions of Windows (different, more obtuse support people?) than it does with retail, I can't imagine it's actually a problem.

Most people don't realize this.

> at least in Win8. So you either buy another Win8. So disabling UEFI is not an option, for dual boot.

I don't use Windows however that would be the point where I'd just pirate it, if I buy a single user license for a piece of hardware I expect to be able to run it on that hardware.

Fortunately my life and work (web dev) is better on Linux than Windows.

I believe this is a myth. The product key is stored using ACPI, not UEFI. Even MS mentioned that you can switch to BIOS mode in order to install 32-bit Win8.

Let me explain this for you then,

I have a Windows 8 Sony Vaio. If I disable Secure Boot and install Linux on a partition, the Bios doesn't work. Period. I've seen that a number of people got it to work for a while by modifying the grub loader and other hackery but then try updating Linux. Why? Buggy UEFI that is not "standards" compliant.

If I try to use UEFI with a Linux distro that supports UEFI, I get a message saying something like "Can't find Windows."

I also have a Sony Vaio and I got UEFI working. The trick is, it is hardcoded to load the bootloader from /EFI/Boot/bootx64.efi - it does not respect the EFI boot menu.

Linux is installing its UEFI bootloader to someplace like /EFI/debian/grubx64.efi. Move that file to /EFI/Boot/bootx64.efi and it will boot GRUB. You can chainload the Windows bootloader from GRUB.

I had a tough time installing Ubuntu on my Vaio Pro 13, but got there in the end. I had to do a lot of messing around to get the shitty UEFI implementation to read Grub. Didn't have to disable SecureBoot or do anything much to Grub, besides a particular boot flat necessary for the SSD.

It took about a day to get it up and running, but I've had no issues at all since.

I have a Sony Vaio for work, and was completely unable to get it to run Linux even with a live USB or CD. My research turned up the issue you've identified--their UEFI software doesn't work right.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com