[plug] Win 8 Secure Boot - Can Linux be installed OK?

[euan at dekock.net]

I'm running Linux on my Asus laptop that shipped with Win8. I did have it dual booting originally, but I managed to mess up the windows partition later and never got around to fixing it.

The only issue with loading Linux is based around UEFI. Linux does support UEFI, however windows adds an additional layer - Secure Boot, this requires a chain of certificates to be signed on all boot images. Easiest option is to turn off secure boot, windows will still work.

The UEFI boot support varies between Linux implementations, most solutions involve using a shim, basically a signed pre-boot image.

However the Linux kernel itself can now be built as a compatible UEFI image and directly loaded through UEFI - this is my preferred approach, but it's not secure boot friendly.

I use Gentoo, as it gives this level of control, I'd not recommend it unless you havea lot of spare time and don't have a life ;-)

Hope this is of some help - it's definitely doable - even with full secure boot support, but it does still need a lot of hacking.

regards,

Euan de Kock
President - Perth Linux User Group (PLUG)


On 28/06/13 9:29 Leon Wright wrote:

Frank,

I've not come across a Win 8 machine, but ubuntu 13.04 talks about it:

http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop



https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UEFI



Regards,


Leon


--
DRM 'manages access' in the same way that jail 'manages freedom.'

# cat /dev/mem | strings | grep -i cats
Damn, my RAM is full of cats... MEOW!!



On Fri, Jun 28, 2013 at 7:57 AM, Frank Preston <chieftiff at gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Perth Linux Guru's,
I have recently bought a Win 8 notebook PC and want to install Linux on it
so that I can have the choice of using Windows or Linux as the OS.  I
understand that this is not very straight forward as Win has a security set
- up which needs to be turned off and my research on the net has not been
conclusive.  I have not used linux yet but would like to. Can you pse
advise on this subject?
Kind Rgds,
Fred 
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