Windows 8 Hardware Has Another Problem For Linux

[mithion]

Why not? It works fine here.

I was under the impression that in order to boot Windows, you need secure boot turned on. When it is so, Linux won't boot. An vice versa, turning off secure boot will allow Linux to boot, but windows will fail. If that's not true, then I stand corrected. However, I didn't simply invent this, I was told by other Linux users that's how it was working.

[TheLexMachine]

this (very wrong) assumption is based on what? i mean the first one.

but the second one i doubt too.

Prove to me they aren't true. Linux has always been distributed on CDs and DVDs and that's the preferred medium that most people are using and have been using for a long time. I've never once installed Linux from a USB drive in the almost ten years I've been using Linux nor have I ever seen any other Linux user in my social or professional circles - including LUGs - doing it. Could I do it? Yes, I could. But why would I waste a $20 flash drive for bragging rights when I can just burn a $2.50 CD-R/DVD-R that I've got laying around or just go out and buy the latest issue of a Linux magazine for $10 that caters to my preferred distro and has an install CD.

[enfocomp]

Hardly anyone installs Linux from a USB thumb drive anyway so it's not really a problem except on Ultrabooks/Ultra portables, which don't have optical drives to begin with, and those aren't very popular amongst Linux users as it is.

Who still uses optical drives to install operating systems? Not only are they significantly slower for both creating AND installing the OS, but they're also more wasteful and more expensive in the long run. When I have to setup multiple machines I use USB thumb drives, SD cards or do a network install.

[mjg59]

I was under the impression that in order to boot Windows, you need secure boot turned on.

Untrue. Windows 8 will boot fine with Secure Boot turned off, even if it was installed with it turned on. However, if it was a UEFI install, you'll still need to boot via UEFI.

When it is so, Linux won't boot.

Untrue. Just use a modern Linux distribution - Fedora, Ubuntu and OpenSuse all support Secure Boot.

[nightmarex]

Prove to me they aren't true. Linux has always been distributed on CDs and DVDs and that's the preferred medium that most people are using and have been using for a long time. I've never once installed Linux from a USB drive in the almost ten years I've been using Linux nor have I ever seen any other Linux user in my social or professional circles - including LUGs - doing it. Could I do it? Yes, I could. But why would I waste a $20 flash drive for bragging rights when I can just burn a $2.50 CD-R/DVD-R that I've got laying around or just go out and buy the latest issue of a Linux magazine for $10 that caters to my preferred distro and has an install CD.

I don't even have a dvd drive on my computer. Why the hell would I spend money for something I never use? My laptop has one but still installed Linux via usb drive. I would say your assumption that no one uses thumb drives only works on people who don't have them already (which isn't going to be the majority I would wager). I agree that I wouldn't go out and buy a drive just for it, then again I have many just sitting at my desk read to be used for backups or whatever I feel like.

[Sonadow]

Thanks for coming in to clear the air once again Matthew.

Thing is, Microsoft is managing Fast Boot via its Advance Boot Menu which allows users to 'tell' the firmware whether the next boot should be done with full firmware initialization or with just the barest minimum while letting Windows initialize the rest via the OS (which is the default behavior). Are you able to write a tool similar to the Advanced Boot Menu that allows Linux users to do this through the OS, much like what you did with shim?

[erendorn]

Prove to me they aren't true. Linux has always been distributed on CDs and DVDs and that's the preferred medium that most people are using and have been using for a long time. I've never once installed Linux from a USB drive in the almost ten years I've been using Linux nor have I ever seen any other Linux user in my social or professional circles - including LUGs - doing it. Could I do it? Yes, I could. But why would I waste a $20 flash drive for bragging rights when I can just burn a $2.50 CD-R/DVD-R that I've got laying around or just go out and buy the latest issue of a Linux magazine for $10 that caters to my preferred distro and has an install CD.

Any USB key larger than the CD image can be used, directly with the iso file. As said, you just need to dd the iso file to your thumb drive and boot with it.
When done, you can format the thumb drive again for files. Cost of the operation: 0$ for any individual with at least one thumb drive or one sd card at home. 5$ for anyone else. If you've installed linux more than two times in your life, it's cheaper (and you get a free USB drive). There are hardly any reason to use a CD actually.

That and, while it certainly depends on where you live, I know much more people that don't have empty CD/DVD-R at home than people without some kind of USB key...

[peppercats]

Why hasn't anyone complained to the EU yet about how difficult it is to install another OS on a windows laptop?
They've heard a lot of other complaints related to microsoft and acted on them.

[Grogan]

That is how fast Fast Boot is; it makes sense if you think about it: have the firmware initialize only the barest of essentials and offload everything else to the operating system.

No, it doesn't make sense to not probe for hardware, just to shave a few seconds off boot times. It just makes those systems fragile pieces of garbage. Resuming the system from an image leads to fragility too, just for the illusion of fast booting. This only impresses people who don't know any better.

I'm sick of Microsoft and their clever bollocks... the need to fool people into thinking their OS isn't bloated has gotten us systems that BSOD (and sometimes windows breaks itself and still doesn't boot even if you set it back) if you so much as change the disk controller mode in the BIOS. (starting with Vista, Windows no longer probes for disk controllers at boot, once installed.) Now this.

This is what you get, when you allow a greedy, parasitic, environment polluting corporation like Microsoft to dictate hardware implementations.

I'm not sure I agree with the stance distros are taking on this. We should not work around this, the broken hardware should be absolutely shunned if this kind of crap (fastboot and secure boot) can't be disabled in the BIOS. That "secureboot" mostly protects Microsoft's interests, not ours.

Most malware won't be affected by that, it's relatively rare to have bootkits and kernel mode rootkits. I obviously see some, but for the most part it's high level trojans and adware that antivirus software doesn't even stop (maybe later it will detect it, too late), because it comes across as a legitimate software install. I see a lot of crippling, user based malware too, using available mechanisms in the user's registry (run key, runonce, shell override/appendage or even the startup directory to load) and once it's in place, it's game over for most users. No privilege elevation prompts required for this.

This horseshit is going to make it more difficult to boot with other media to remove malware, if anything.

[mjg59]

Thanks for coming in to clear the air once again Matthew.

Thing is, Microsoft is managing Fast Boot via its Advance Boot Menu which allows users to 'tell' the firmware whether the next boot should be done with full firmware initialization or with just the barest minimum while letting Windows initialize the rest via the OS (which is the default behavior). Are you able to write a tool similar to the Advanced Boot Menu that allows Linux users to do this through the OS, much like what you did with shim?

Peter Jones was working on something to do that.