Windows 8 Hardware Has Another Problem For Linux

[mjg59]

Are you sure you need to use UEFI to be able to use GPT?

Most BIOS systems will boot from GPT, but not all of them. You also can't dual boot Windows on a GPT disk on BIOS systems.

[chithanh]

Are you sure you need to use UEFI to be able to use GPT?

Generally, the BIOS will load and execute the code from the MBR and not care about partitioning (an exception are some BIOSes that perform recovery functions). The syslinux boot loader comes with gptmbr.bin which (when written to the MBR) supports the standardized T.13 EDD-4 method of booting GPT on BIOS systems.
I understand that GRUB 2 boots from GPT on BIOS systems too using its own proprietary method.

Windows supports neither the standard nor the GRUB 2 method. To boot Windows from GPT, you need to create hybrid GPT/MBR structures and boot as you would on an MBR partitioned disk.

[chenxiaolong]

Generally, the BIOS will load and execute the code from the MBR and not care about partitioning (an exception are some BIOSes that perform recovery functions). The syslinux boot loader comes with gptmbr.bin which (when written to the MBR) supports the standardized T.13 EDD-4 method of booting GPT on BIOS systems.
I understand that GRUB 2 boots from GPT on BIOS systems too using its own proprietary method.

Windows supports neither the standard nor the GRUB 2 method. To boot Windows from GPT, you need to create hybrid GPT/MBR structures and boot as you would on an MBR partitioned disk.

All recent Thinkpads will refuse to do an MBR boot on GPT disks with an EFI partition. Of course, this is not a common scenario, but it makes debugging UEFI issues with the same installation a huge pain.

[erendorn]

But I *do* have a spindle of blank media - I think there're 30 or so left. The only thing I ever use them for is burning operating system ISOs. A fifty-pack has lasted me about 3 years now.

Seriously Delgarde, you are drawing unwarranted conclusions. Your reasoning seems to be:

WHEREAS:
you (Delgarde) have no blank DVD media, AND
you (Delgarde) would have to go to the store to get some, AND
you (Delgarde) have a USB stick that you substitute for DVD to install Linux;
THEREFORE
nobody uses DVDs to install Linux.

That's just silly reasoning.

Nope. The initial point was:

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.

What Delgarde points out is that anyone that doesn't have blank CD/DVDs at home is still more likely to use a USB drive, which is a valid counter to the "hardly anyone" claim, even considering your "the DVD writes are higher than USB writes" argument. The fact that you (hoohoo) have some at home doesn't really change that

[chithanh]

Generally, the BIOS will load and execute the code from the MBR and not care about partitioning (an exception are some BIOSes that perform recovery functions).

All recent Thinkpads will refuse to do an MBR boot on GPT disks with an EFI partition. Of course, this is not a common scenario, but it makes debugging UEFI issues with the same installation a huge pain.

Yes, if you have an UEFI system and not a BIOS one, then you will see much more parsing of partition tables and filesystems going on. But you can create an EFI boot partition on MBR too (type EF), so I don't see why it needs to be painful.

[Grogan]

Since this machine clearly doesn't have UEFI that partition cannot be an EFI system partition (not to mention that I understand that EFI system partitions must be formatted as FAT32 and not NTFS). Furthermore, I performed a 'Refresh My PC' operation on this notebook once just to play with the feature and it did not ask me to provide the Win8 DVD for the restore operation. Based on this I am of the idea that this partition stores, at least, something that is related to the restore operations offered by Windows 8.

What you're looking at there is just the Windows boot loader partition. The boot loader and the BCD (boot configuration data store... a binary database) are there. If you were to partition up your hard disk with another utility before starting Windows setup and not letting it blow them away, it would be a directory, c:\boot. Vista/7/8 all work that way. I forgot this time, but I sometimes do all my partitioning using the Linux fdisk utility (changing the partition type to "7" for NTFS and just leaving it unformatted for Windows) to avoid that silly little partition getting created. In previous versions of Windows that partition is 100 Mb. Increased to 350 in Windows 8.

What you are thinking of, with the restore operation, is just files on the hard disk that restores Windows back to its default configuration (not to be confused with "system restore" (system protection) either. OEMs create recovery partitions.

[Grogan]

LILO is not official bootloader. Security software is prescribed requirement by microsoft itself.

I don't care what Microsoft likes or dislikes, I'll run whatever I want.

LILO is the best boot loader in my not so humble opinion and I'm going to keep using it for as long as I can get it to compile. (It's still maintained so that will be easy for the foreseeable future)

By the way, there are still real motherboards where you can disable UEFI boot itself (not just the secure boot) and the bios will load a compatibility module and emulate a "PC BIOS" so you can use whatever bootloader/operating system you want. That's what I do with those, when I install Windows 7 or Linux on them.

[brosis]

That's very nice but what does hibernation have to do with crypto-protected boot?

Read from here.

I don't care what Microsoft likes or dislikes, I'll run whatever I want.

LILO is the best boot loader in my not so humble opinion and I'm going to keep using it for as long as I can get it to compile. (It's still maintained so that will be easy for the foreseeable future)

By the way, there are still real motherboards where you can disable UEFI boot itself (not just the secure boot) and the bios will load a compatibility module and emulate a "PC BIOS" so you can use whatever bootloader/operating system you want. That's what I do with those, when I install Windows 7 or Linux on them.

Well, I can boot straight to linux on 785 chipset, ignoring BIOS altogether. This isn't common case. Exactly like using non-ms bootloader on ms machine without security software, that ms requires. So, your 20 second boot is corner case that does not apply to ms systems at all. But gentoo with systemd is a common case, same as debian with tuxonice.

[Artemis3]

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.

You must really live in the past. Optical drives? That is very slow, error-prone and wasteful, most of my installs in recent years have been either PXE or USB. PXE is the way to go when you need to install many, and USB for the occasional non networked situation.

Optical drives are disappearing faster than floppies, i particularly don't see any use for them anymore.

[Artemis3]

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.

The cheapest of thumb drives are lower than that. You only need one with about 1gb capacity, how much is that? Let's see... 2$ according to amazon.

How many times can you reuse your optical media? How about your optical burner failing? Not to mention slow, or a small scratch damaging a sector of the disc you won't notice until it's too late or you are already committed to the middle of install process.

ISO to thumb drive is just a dd command away, as most images are now "hybrid" and can be DDed in that fashion; can be done even from windows using a dd for windows app instead of hunting from the gazillion iso burners.

Also the time wasted waiting to the optical media to read (assuming no errors) compared to the thumb drive is plain nuts. This wasted time you can't recover anymore, ever. And you already wasted time writing to the media in the first place.

A LUG install fest event is set up with a LAN, bring your machine, plug and boot pxe to install from a plethora of choices very quickly using local mirrors, apt cacher ng; etc. Few USB sticks as install fallback just in case. Optical discs are RARE.