Restoring backups and effect on GRUB

[Liam Proven]

On Tue, 6 Aug 2019 at 00:03, Rashkae <ubuntu at tigershaunt.com> wrote:
>
> Legacy Bios or EFI.  EFI makes life *much* easier

:-o

*Boggle*

I really could not disagree with this statement more.

As an example, in April I spent TWO DAYS trying to get a new Dell
Latitude working for a newly-hired colleague. I failed, I got
colleagues in to consult, they failed. In the end I went to in-house
tech-support who took half a day, but did get the machine to boot
Linux.

I found _three_ different root directories on it afterwards. They
replaced mine, _twice_, in an effort to get it booting.

Note: I work for a Linux vendor and this was a machine from our
corporate compatibility list. (Our parent company was at that time a
Windows tools vendor.)

My own machine, a high-end Dell desktop, I inherited from a colleague.
He got it when his previous workstation died. He spent days trying to
get it to boot Linux from its hard disk. He failed and in the end use
a USB key with the kernel on, permanently.

I failed too. I spent days on it too.

I tried Ubuntu, Fedora and other distros. Nothing could boot.

In the end, I put Windows back on it, then dual-booted. That worked.
I'm typing on it now. It triple boots Windows, stable release and
rolling releases and it's solid now.

My girlfriend has a Lenovo desktop. It came with Win10. It is
dog-slow. I put Mint 19 on it. It's massively quicker but it won't
boot or even show GRUB unless you press F12 to bring up the boot menu
first. She always forgets so she only runs Windows.

UEFI is a catastrophic nightmare of poorly-designed, half-implemented,
under-specced bloatware. It is not merely a disaster, it is a cluster
of disasters.

It is also, IMHO, Microsoft's latest effort to destabilise and
marginalise Linux and FOSS OSes except for the big enterprise ones who
are willing to pay and sign contracts to get their kernels signed and
approved. And it's a very successful one, notwithstanding that it's
illegal, anti-competitive, dishonest and treacherous.

I am learning my way through booting FOSS OSes via UEFI but I
_despise_ it. It is a strong driver to me to move off modern x86
machines -- especially bloody Dell kit -- and restrict myself to older
Apple and Lenovo hardware as until there are good enough ARM machines,
or we can finally replace Unix, or climate catastrophe destroys our
civilisation and the entire thing becomes a moot point.

-- 
Liam Proven - Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
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