[ubuntu-uk] heads up - Secure Boot Problems for Linux Users Are Here Already

[Michael Holmes]

On 30 October 2011 18:59, Colin Watson <cjwatson at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 30, 2011 at 04:22:05PM +0000, Michael Holmes wrote:
>> On 30 October 2011 15:19, alan c <aeclist at candt.waitrose.com> wrote:
>> > ....... “My friend recently got an HP s5-1110 with Win 7 installed.
>> > UEFI has prevented the installation of GRUB on this machine.
>>
>> This is going to happen even if you don't have Secure Boot. UEFI and
>> BIOS *do not* have compatible boot systems. You need a UEFI compatible
>> bootloader like eLILO or a UEFI compatible version of GRUB - which as
>> far as I know, doesn't ship with Ubuntu by default.
>
> Actually it does (on 64-bit images), but of course that doesn't
> guarantee that it will work as it's generally less well-tested at the
> moment.

Well, my apologies - guess I should do my research! Of course, it
doesn't preclude the possibility that this person downloaded the i386
ISO, which doesn't include the UEFI-capable GRUB.

Of course, this is still hardly specific vendor lock-out to Linux -
OSes shipping with UEFI bootloaders can still boot, and Vista or the
i386 edition of Windows 7 wouldn't be able to boot either.