Re: [orca-list] what computer for linux

[Alex Midence <alex midence gmail com>]

Oh, it'll become a problem, all right.  going through UEFI situation
now with a brand new Asus machine with Windows 8 pre-installed.  In a
nutshell, here's what you have to do as far as I am able to make out:

1.  Get Windows 8 to start up in the uefi bios with holding the shift
button while you hit restart in the control panel's restart button in
power settings
2.  Holler for a sighted friend to come a-running and lend a hand with
what comes up.
3.  Have them hit troubleshoot and go in the advanced uefi settings.
4.  root around in there and pray to god they didn't make secure boot
locked on (mine did!)  Oh, and you have to have your friend really dig
for it and hope they don't hit something that makes the machine go
ca-boom in the process only to find it locked.  How NICE!
5.  Caper madly, rant and rail a bit to get things off your chest.
(Very important!)
6.  Hunt down csm compatibility settings and see what they do, if they
change things to legacy bios or let you, at last, shut secure boot
off.
7.  If this fails, you need to go grab a distro that supposedly works
well with secure boot, go back into the bios again and make sure it
can and will boot from the optical drive.  (Note, more rooting around
required until boot options are located.)

What comes next?  I don't know.  This is where I am right now.  Oh,
and sorry about the vagueness.  turns out each and every single bios
is different and there's not a standard interface and set of steps to
be had for love or money for miles and miles around.  Got to go now.
All this made me want to crack open a nice porter from the fridge.
Black butte (that's pronounced bute, mind, not what E-speak says) his
ime ... yum!

Alex M

On 1/12/14, Jude DaShiell <jdashiel shellworld net> wrote:
> I tried installing debian on a Dell Inspiron 1545 and don't recommend it
> to anyone.  It needed nonfree firmware drivers since what used to be
> done by hardware is now both software dependent and proprietary driver
> dependent.  A contact I have who is sighted ended up going to the lenovo
> website and building his computer with that company and had no problems
> with his computer installing Fedora on it.
>
> On Sat, 28 Dec 2013, Kyle wrote:
>
> > Pretty much anything non-apple works without many problems, although
> > uefi may still have some issues. I haven't yet been able to test
> > uefi-based computers, so can't give you anything definite about them
> > other than the fact that people have been able to get them to boot some
> > Linux distros. Still, there is apparently a way to make uefi run in
> > legacy mode if it becomes a problem. Hope this helps.
> > ~Kyle
> > http://kyle.tk/
>
> jude <jdashiel shellworld net>
>
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