Ubuntu installer and UEFI

[Little Girl]

Hey there,

Volker Wysk wrote:

>The Ubuntu 18.04.3 installer seems to not support UEFI. It creates no
>EFI System Partition (ESP), and doesn't make a protective MBR. It
>looks like it supports MBR only. I've just used the default, "format
>hard disk and install ubuntu".
>
>This can't be, can it? Or is it because Ubuntu 18.04 is too old?

Just curious, but does the drive you're trying to do this on have 1
MB of free space before the first partition?

>How to tell the installer to make an UEFI system?

Below are the notes I created when I used UEFI for Ubuntu MATE 16.04
LTS and they worked for me. I haven't installed 18.04 yet, but I plan
to follow the same steps when I do. Note that I partitioned my drive
before I did the Ubuntu MATE installation and instructions for that
aren't in these notes because there are plenty of them all over the
internet already. Please disregard any part of these notes below that
you're already familiar with, but hopefully they'll contain something
helpful:

====================

When you install Ubuntu MATE with your new hardware, you'll want to
pay attention to whether your BIOS (or whatever they refer to it as
nowadays) is set up for UEFI or Legacy before you install since you
need to partition your drive in a specific way for each one.

UEFI is modern and legacy is for backwards compatibility. Do some
research on UEFI and see whether it's something you want or need. If
you decide that it is, then some additional research would be in
order to see how it's used. Some recommended reading that you'll want
to supplement with additional research elsewhere:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UEFI

https://askubuntu.com/questions/647303/uefi-or-legacy-which-is-advised-and-why

https://askubuntu.com/questions/446968/legacy-vs-uefi-help 

If you can't partition your drive properly for UEFI, you may have to
change the BIOS setting from UEFI to Legacy. You have two choices:

	* You can enable UEFI in your BIOS (your motherboard handbook
	  will tell you how) and you will not have to make a BIOS
	  boot partition at all.

	* You can disable UEFI in your BIOS (choosing Legacy instead)
	  and make a 1 MB BIOS boot partition, because GRUB requires
	  it on a GPT-partitioned hard drive. 

Important: If you get an "unable to satisfy all constraints on the
partition" message, this is a Gparted bug that's been around since
2010. You must have at least 1 MB of free space before the first
partition on the drive no matter which way you partition the drive.
To solve the Gparted bug issue, you'll need to shrink one of your
other partitions so that you have that free space on the drive.

Additional note: While inside the BIOS, instead of changing the boot
order of your devices so that it will boot from USB first, you can
leave the boot order as is and press F12 during boot to choose which
device to boot from when you want to boot from USB.

Additional note: Dismounting USB is sometimes quirky in Ubuntu. If
you put a USB stick in and boot from it to try out the Live CD and
then decide to shut down and reboot from the USB stick so you can
install the operating system (instead of clicking the Install button
on the desktop), you must physically remove the USB stick when
prompted as part of the shutdown (or remove it and plug it back in
after shutting down) or it won't boot from it when you restart.

Additional note: If you get nothing but a purple screen on boot,
press Ctrl + Alt + F2 to get to a prompt and type sudo apt-get
install lightdm followed by sudo dpkg-reconfigure lightdm and reboot
and you should have a reusable desktop.

====================

-- 
Little Girl

There is no spoon.