Monday, May 25, 2020

Linux booting a laptop with UEFI interface is painful

I omit the term Unified but use edgy Microsoft induced word EFI.
One can use BSD to erase Microsoft EFI as a boot management utility.

I had a laptop that booted with Microsoft (paid copy) but erased it and installed TrueOs (now depreciated and forked to VOID Linux) and Linux EFI utility and mounted two copies of Debian 9.00.
i left it out for some time (I use my desktop with Debian 9.0 exclusively ) and booted it yesterday and forgot the password for both copies.
I had no alternative but to erase everything with Kali Linux and Kali Linix could not erase the (it cannot hack Microsoft) boot record and boot it.

I tried Debian it could not do it either.

Finally I had a copy of Trident net Utility and erased it in full but with Ceylon Telecom so slow it took five hours to install BSD with Illumini Desktop.

It is beautiful but its tank root file takes over the one terrabyte hard disk with no way of resizing the TANK partition.

I usually have at least two or three distributions spread over the hard disk.

I have to thank Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) profusely for its Trident Distribution (only 523 MiB) that works only when it is connected to the web.  

Tiny but powerful distribution.

it simply takes over the hard disk by default.


Linux booting a laptop with UEFI interface is painful

I am going to be on indefinite digital holiday.


So this may be the last update on booting a laptop with Linux and a welcome satire on Microsoft.

There are three things that I want to high light.

1. One is, this is about SSD disks (not rotatory disks) and my experience with them is limited.

I hacked only two of them and last (the second) one was within the last 24 hours.

2. I am distrohopper, tester of Linux distributions (live and installed) and do not use Windows at all. My understanding of Microsoft is bloated (like any American) image while wasting precise resources doing nothing (very slow to boot and poor workhorse) worthwhile like Facebook.

3. UEFI is pain in the Arxx (I have voiced it adequately, elsewhere).

4. Fourth of course, James has (below) given a very polite (unlike me) account of his undoing of UEFI. 
He deserves accolades.

Points I am raising here are SSDs do not understand GRUB Boot Manager.

Dual booting is virtually impossible and SSD is meant for booting one operating system ONLY.

Safe boot option won’t let you boot Legacy boot option nor it will let a Linux distribution boot unless Microsoft certifies it.

What a spoiled mind set?
I have found a way around with my PC.

I bought a laptop for my son with Windows installed.

He lost interest in it, in no time and I used to store my camera software (install camera software dedicated to Microsoft-Linux won’t jack them in - I have found a simple way around it) and photos.

I thought of booting Linux on it (dual booting) but failed.

I removed the hard disk and tried to install my favorite Linux distribution on the blank SSD and the boot manager won’t let me do it.

After 24 hours, I found a solution.

Only openSuse Linux supports UEFI.

After lot of fiddling for 24 hours except for my feeding and feeding my pet fish.

Good Bye Microsoff, the hard disk containing UEFI is inside a gold casket and will rest there peacefully till my son or wife (she has lost interest in laptops) asks for paid booting but not Linux rooting.

Installing Linux on a PC with UEFI firmware:


A refresher




By J.A. Watson for Jamie's Mostly Linux Stuff

Topic: Enterprise Software
What this means is that if you have UEFI Secure Boot enabled, you can only boot a certified signed image - and at least in the original UEFI specification, the only signing authority was Microsoft. I will leave the debate about the wisdom of that decision to others. All I will say here is that this decision had the effect of making installing Linux on UEFI firmware systems much more difficult.
Some OEMs (and their firmware suppliers) have put considerable effort into providing an alternate means for installing keys, certificates and signed images so that their users have at least some slim hope of regaining control of their computers. But in my opinion so far these have been difficult to understand and difficult to use, at best.


Read also my comments below.

U.E.F.I Monopoly of Microsoft Sucks

This is the first blog post of mine, after I got my two computers working only on Linux, Debian to be precise, without Indians guys/girls working for Microsoft, Meddling with Bogus Updates that really upsets the booting of alternative operating systems.



I did not lose any of my data except the Knoppix 8.1 iso (may be misplaced), the latest.

I found Knoppix hidden in a partition.



But I did make a start up SD Card and the Live DVD.



U.E.F.I. that stands for Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) sucks and is the Monopoly of Microsoft.



It intends to suppress booting other operating systems especially Linux.



This is how YOU nullify these business monopoly on new version of boot up BIOS .


I won’t go into minor details.

First go to UEFI boot up menu (press Del or F2 at boot up).



Find csm and change to other OP systems.



Find the legacy menus and change every options available to legacy.



Go to boot up and change options to boot from CD/DVD.



Go to boot up and change which hard disk to boot first if you have more than one.



There are many other changes you can make but fiddle with one options at a time.



Then save your changes and boot your Live DVD ideally, Gparted and prepare or partition your hard disks to satisfy your liking.



Boot up and install your distribution.



GRUB boot loader takes over booting (if Debian Do Not activate at boot up, UEFI even by mistake) seamlessly and YOU own your computer not Microsoft cronies.


This piece is only for Linux guys and girls.



If you have Windows and it sucks do not blame Microsoft, blame yourself for the stupidity. 
 

Read the description below, it a tiny operating system hidden in the firmware and interfere with free software freedom.


Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) is a specification for a software program that connects a computer's firmware to its operating system (OS).

UEFI is expected to eventually replace BIOS. 
Like BIOS, UEFI is installed at the time of manufacturing and is the first program that runs when a computer is turned on.

It’s not just a BIOS replacement, either. UEFI is essentially a tiny operating system that runs on top of the PC’s firmware, and it can do a lot more than a BIOS. 

It may be stored in flash memory on the motherboard, or it may be loaded from a hard drive or network share at boot.

What is BSD?

Reproduction

Greg Lehey

Abstract
In the open source world, the word Linux is almost synonymous with Operating System, but it is not the only open source UNIX® operating system.

So what is the secret? 

Why is BSD not better known? 

This white paper addresses these and other questions.
Throughout this paper, differences between BSD and Linux will be noted like this.

1. What is BSD?

BSD stands for Berkeley Software Distribution. It is the name of distributions of source code from the University of California, Berkeley, which were originally extensions to AT&T's Research UNIX® operating system. 
Several open source operating system projects are based on a release of this source code known as 4.4BSD-Lite. 
In addition, they comprise a number of packages from other Open Source projects, including notably the GNU project. The overall operating system comprises:
  • The BSD kernel, which handles process scheduling, memory management, symmetric multi-processing (SMP), device drivers, etc.
  • The C library, the base API for the system.
    The BSD C library is based on code from Berkeley, not the GNU project.
  • Utilities such as shells, file utilities, compilers and linkers.
    Some of the utilities are derived from the GNU project, others are not.
  • The X Window system, which handles graphical display.
    The X Window system used in most versions of BSD is maintained by the X.Org project. 
  •  FreeBSD allows the user to choose from a variety of desktop environments, such as Gnome, KDE, or Xfce; and lightweight window managers like Openbox, Fluxbox, or Awesome.
  • Many other programs and utilities.