Before you Dual Boot – MS, OEMs and Linux

http://www.eightforums.com/installation-setup/19739-before-you-dual-boot-truth-about-ms-oem-s-linux.html

by dopkew • 12 years ago

149 233 12 years ago

voltagex_5• 12 years ago

I really don't understand all these people having issues booting in UEFI mode. Fine, disable Secure Boot (or boot Fedora/Ubuntu if you care about it), load a recent distro and get on with your work/play.

CSDude8• 12 years ago

If you disable UEFI, you need to install your system again, and you cannot use your old license to install it, at least in Win8. So you either buy another Win8. So disabling UEFI is not an option, for dual boot.

higherpurpose2• 12 years ago

Holy cow, how are we just now finding out about this? So Microsoft is forcing you to buy yet another Windows license, after you already paid for the one included with the laptop, if you want to dual-boot?

This should been a scandal when Windows 8 launched.

ntakasaki3• 12 years ago

The parent poster said, disable UEFI Secure Boot, not UEFI, in which case Windows will continue to boot normally.

thefreeman• 12 years ago

Since when can you not use a windows license more then once.

noir_lord• 12 years ago

at least in Win8. So you either buy another Win8. So disabling UEFI is not an option, for dual boot.

I don't use Windows however that would be the point where I'd just pirate it, if I buy a single user license for a piece of hardware I expect to be able to run it on that hardware.

Fortunately my life and work (web dev) is better on Linux than Windows.

yuhong8• 12 years ago

I believe this is a myth. The product key is stored using ACPI, not UEFI. Even MS mentioned that you can switch to BIOS mode in order to install 32-bit Win8.

oofabz2• 12 years ago

Same here, I boot Linux from UEFI on several computers and it works fine. It boots faster and uses native display resolution instead of VESA. I dual boot Win 8, chainloading from GRUB.

I think there are just a lot of people who don't know how to install GRUB to the EFI partition, or don't know how to edit their EFI boot menu with efibootmgr. UEFI is more complex than BIOS booting and if the only mental model you have is of a boot sector, you will have trouble understanding why a misbehaving system is acting as it is.

I don't enjoy needing to fix my boot loader when I install Linux or update Windows, but I'm always able to make it work. I always had boot loader issues when I dual-booted BIOS systems too, so although it's still unpleasant, it's not any worse. It's just different and requires learning some new concepts and command-line tools.

voltagex_5• 12 years ago

From some of the replies below me, it looks like there are some horrible UEFI implementations. Your other option is to shove GRUB (or similar) on a FAT32 drive and boot from that when you want to boot Windows.

FWIW, my key/activation is stored in firmware on my Lenovo X1 and I had no trouble when I disabled Secure Boot.

wheaties• 12 years ago

Let me explain this for you then,

I have a Windows 8 Sony Vaio. If I disable Secure Boot and install Linux on a partition, the Bios doesn't work. Period. I've seen that a number of people got it to work for a while by modifying the grub loader and other hackery but then try updating Linux. Why? Buggy UEFI that is not "standards" compliant.

If I try to use UEFI with a Linux distro that supports UEFI, I get a message saying something like "Can't find Windows."

oofabz2• 12 years ago

I also have a Sony Vaio and I got UEFI working. The trick is, it is hardcoded to load the bootloader from /EFI/Boot/bootx64.efi - it does not respect the EFI boot menu.

Linux is installing its UEFI bootloader to someplace like /EFI/debian/grubx64.efi. Move that file to /EFI/Boot/bootx64.efi and it will boot GRUB. You can chainload the Windows bootloader from GRUB.

varkson2• 12 years ago

I had a tough time installing Ubuntu on my Vaio Pro 13, but got there in the end. I had to do a lot of messing around to get the shitty UEFI implementation to read Grub. Didn't have to disable SecureBoot or do anything much to Grub, besides a particular boot flat necessary for the SSD.

It took about a day to get it up and running, but I've had no issues at all since.

brerlapn• 12 years ago

I have a Sony Vaio for work, and was completely unable to get it to run Linux even with a live USB or CD. My research turned up the issue you've identified--their UEFI software doesn't work right.

CSDude8• 12 years ago

Hear my fucked up story of UEFI, Secure Boot and Windows 8:

I have a Windows 8 laptop. It had 2 HDDs, so I easily installed Ubuntu 13.04 to second HDD. However, during a Win8 update process, it hanged for hours and I force closed. Then even my recovery partition was corrupted. So, I wiped my first HDD, and since the OEMs don't give DVDs anymore, I could not install it. I live in Turkey, and there is a special version of Win8 Single Language, not found on internet. You cannot confirm checksum of them because it is not widely used, and depends on the region I think (maybe wrong). Therefore, even If I found a iso on Turkish forum I could not verify it, but tried to install Single Language version anyways. But It could not verify my key, that is burried in my motherboard. I tried to install Windows 8 Pro from MSDNAA, and it said it cannot because of the internal license on my pc. I tried dozens of way to disable it. When I got Windows 8.1 Pro from MSDNAA as well, It installed without problems. That is really f*cked up. I did not like flatness of even windows, I disabled Secure Boot, removed my partioning from GPT to MBR, installed my Ubuntu with Windows 7 as it is used to be, before these dark times.

Now I'm a teaching assitant of operating systems course, students need to use Linux for assignments, and almost all of them uses VirtualBox, which is not a very good replacement for native experience. It is fast, but not fast enough.

ntakasaki3• 12 years ago

What has this got to do with Secure Boot?

nosefrog• 12 years ago

"But It could not verify my key, that is buried in my motherboard."

Secure Boot systems verify your OS against a key stored on your hardware.

graycoder2• 12 years ago

I think he was referencing secure boot checking the keys as being the main problem/cause of all the issues.

tanzam754• 12 years ago

What has this got to do with Secure Boot?

It's got nothing to do with Secure Boot. If he had gone into the UEFI and disabled Secure Boot, the problem would still have occurred.

Secure Boot has become this scapegoat for everything that could possibly go wrong.

As its name suggests, Secure Boot prevents the OS from booting. If the installer is complaining about a product key mismatch, then it's got everything to do with the installer and nothing to do with Secure Boot.

kefka2• 12 years ago

Just download one of those Win7 activation-removed torrents. They just work, and loads better than the Win8 cesspool.

Spearchucker2• 12 years ago

No way I'd trust an OS like that.

CSDude8• 12 years ago

Then become a part of botnet, or goodbye bank accounts

yuhong8• 12 years ago

Did you try the ei.cfg trick?

CSDude8• 12 years ago

Yes, it did not help

yuhong8• 12 years ago

I think on a OEM Win8 system with an embedded product key, you are supposed to install Win8 Core first, then enter the Win8 Pro product key after setup. Do you mean that Win8 setup still prompted for a product key? I believe there are utilities to find the embedded ACPI MDSM key if you need to. On the solution you found, your computer comes with only Win8 Core right, so even if you used ei.cfg etc you'd get only Win8.1 Core, not Pro as your MSDNAA subscription allows.

CSDude8• 12 years ago

Problem is my installation was Windows 8: Single Language, not Core. I tried ei.cfg methods, not helpful. I found my key through a tool. But it does not even allow me to enter. With ei.cfg tricks I could enter but it did not accept. In Pro, it did not even ask for a key and said that I just can't install. Even supplying it with ei.cfg does not help.

higherpurpose2• 12 years ago

There's another insane thing I've recently heard about - that Intel intends to lock the OS to their own (new) chips, and you can't dual-boot or install another OS. If they do this, yes I expect them to say that "the OEM has the choice" to allow for dual-booting or whatever, but I bet you 90 percent of PCs will be locked to Windows, when this arrives on Windows machines:

https://plus.google.com/+GuidoStepken/posts/bD2VHB4LcEU

marcosdumay2• 12 years ago

Well, once they do that, the same way that one should avoid Windows 8 if he wants to have a chance of running Linux, one will also be recommended to avoid an Intel processor if he wants control of his system.

Except that Intel has less of a monopoly than Microsoft, so that's way easier.

jcastro• 12 years ago

This would be worse on laptops. It's braindead easy to just snag an Intel-based laptop and know everything will work out of the box. (Other than the Poulsbo netbooks generally speaking they've done a great job supporting Linux on their hardware).

With AMD laptops you might end up with a Broadcom wireless card and an AMD GPU.

varkson2• 12 years ago

There's no proof of this, just a Google+ translation of some news article.

userbinator5• 12 years ago

I like how they use antivirus/antimalware software as an example, because it's what is almost universally considered "a good thing".

The flip side of it is that this security software can also be used as a tool for mass censorship, and I certainly don't want something like that being impossible to remove and running in "ring -1".

codelap3• 12 years ago

This isn't about UEFI, I've had no issues with it. Primarily because I don't use Windows on it. Microsoft is up to it's old tricks here. Then again, try to run OSX on a Dell. I just wish all these guys would get their heads out of there asses.

pritambaral6• 12 years ago

try to run OSX on a Dell

I don't get what you're trying to say here, so pardon me if this response is totally orthogonal to your point.

OS X isn't supposed to be run on PC's (laptop+desktop). Nor is it expected. Desktop Linux, however, is.

rjbwork• 12 years ago

Except that OSX does run on PC's. The architectures are identical now. My MacBook Pro can run windows natively because it is an x86/x64 architecture from the ground up.

codelap3• 12 years ago

Supposed to because Apple makes it hard, not because of any technical requirements.

witty_username• 12 years ago

True. I have a computer with no OS and UEFI and there were zero problems installing Linux. UEFI!=Secure boot

pyre• 12 years ago

I don't get how UEFI is still "getting the kinks worked out." Hasn't Apple been using it since they converted to Intel? How many years ago was that? How long does it take to "get the kinks worked out?" Or is this more of an issue between Windows / Linux implementations of UEFI support?

rapala• 12 years ago

It's the classical problem of a standard that nobody actually follows. Every UEFI firmware that I have come across has behaved differently.

My current laptop has an UEFI implementation that only boots from a hardcoded path in the EFI partition. You guessed right, the path of the windows 8 bootloader.

The UEFI in my home server overwrites the UEFI boot manager list every time you save & exit the configuration tool.

If I remember correctly, the UEFI implementation of a MBP that my friend and I tried to make dual boot Ubuntu required a blessed HFS boot partition for every OS.

yuhong8• 12 years ago

My Acer require setting a BIOS password before modifying secure boot settings. Fortunately I can set it back to blank after modifying them.

zanny9• 12 years ago

I'm really biased against Intel processors now because of this - I endure my distaste for how horribly documented and black box their parts are, but the fact their firmware for going on 6 generations has no documentation to enable coreboot on these boards drives me to AMD.

Yea, they don't open up all their stuff, but if you dig around you can usually find a board on most chipsets that works with coreboot. That gets my purchase. Plus they are doing good work with the radeonSI mesa driver, even if they still pack binary power firmware with it (I've read a few articles decompiling and inspecting it to know it is mostly just init command code to start the hardware).

AnthonyMouse• 12 years ago

Apple makes both the OS and the UEFI implementation for their hardware. If the UEFI implementation caused any trouble for OS X, they could fix it before shipping the hardware. They also use a non-standard EFI implementation (IIRC the EFI partitions are HFS+ rather than FAT; whoever thought it was a good idea for EFI to read the partition table whatsoever should be fired).

The issue with PC hardware is, as it ever was, hardware vendors not following the standard. Much like Apple and OS X, they build some implementation and only fix bugs if they break Windows. So if you want to build a Linux implementation, you have to implement workarounds for all the quirks in different vendors' EFI implementations, and in the meantime you can't install on their hardware.

keithpeter• 12 years ago

I currently use a couple of recycled core duo 2 thinkpads. BIOS so of course GNU/Linux installs easy either whole disk or dual boot with windows.

In the future, I suppose I'll need to look to a Chromebook as a cheap platform for my GNU/Linux.

Unless people actually start making open hardware...

grannyg00se• 12 years ago

No need to fear. I have a recent Thinkpad (T530) and it boots ArchLinux painlessly from USB or internal 32gig ssd. Also boots into windows8 from the main 120gig ssd if necessary. It's UEFI with secureboot disabled.

lsiebert• 12 years ago

Yeah I did something similar on my T530. Booting into Windows is a pain, compared to Mint. Everything wants to update and reboot.

userbinator5• 12 years ago

I'm now happier than ever that I bought one of the last pure-BIOS motherboards of the i7 era, and a laptop (Thinkpad X60) that can run completely free software (https://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/gluglug , although I didn't know that when I bought it several years ago ), and I plan on holding on to these machines and making the most of them for as long as I can, because the future of the PC is looking more and more closed with each new change.

It was only a few decades ago when IBM released the PC AT, complete with a full set of documentation, even the full source code of the BIOS. Now you're lucky if you can even get a datasheet for the SuperI/O chip or processor VRM controller. I've observed this decrease in openness through the years, but it's only most recently (post-Nehalem?) I've noticed this happening at an accelerated pace.

Throughout this time, all the changes that have been made for "security" appear to me as more and more like attempts to secure systems against their users, taking control away from them and forcing them to trust some authority instead. Code signing, secure boot, TPM, patch protection, etc. It is becoming more difficult to stay in control of the hardware you bought.

It is true that several years ago, it was probably much easier to infect systems with malware, but at the same time, the users had more freedom; including the freedom to explore, use, and modify the OSes of their choosing. Is this freedom something we should really be sacrificing? The well-known quote comes to mind: "Those who give up freedom for security deserve neither."

pwg• 12 years ago

Throughout this time, all the changes that have been made for "security" appear to me as more and more like attempts to secure systems against their users,

"The right to Read": http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html RMS was right all along.

"The Coming War on General Purpose Computing" http://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html, Cory Doctorow, 17 years from now most will realize that Cory was also just as right as RMS was 17 years ago.

derefr5• 12 years ago

I think it all comes down to the death of what was, in the 90s, called the "power user."

There have always been two kinds of computer users: Administrators--those who can be trusted to administer their own systems; and Users--those who cannot, who need someone else to Administer their system for them.

The Power User emerged as a gross hybrid because of the limitations of Personal Computer OSes. In Windows 98, for example, everyone was implicitly considered an Administrator, even if they had no idea how to Administer anything. (They were Users with the full Power of an Administrator.)

What would frequently happen is that one person in an extended family would have such knowledge as to be capable of actually Administering computers, and would frequently have to drop in to perform Administrative maintenance for relatives, who had no idea they had to do such things themselves. Nobody would be looking out for the computer in the interstice.

This era is thankfully over. What do we have now? No greater number of people capable of Administering their own computers, certainly.

Instead, what happens now is that the hardware manufacturer provides hooks (the Secure Boot certificate store et al.) such that the computer's Owner can delegate Administrative power to the OS distributor (Microsoft, Apple, Canonical, etc.), leaving the Owner as a plain User. "That guy in the family who knows computers" no longer has to be involved--effectively, the OS distributor is "that guy."

This is only really a problem for people who want to Administer their own computers (though in any form-factor where you can buy a motherboard separately, all these protections can be disabled.)

Frankly, though, I see less and less of a need for people to Administer personal computers. PCs (I'm including both desktops and mobiles in this set), these days, are basically the equivalent of VT-100 terminals: fancy screens you buy, take out of the box, and plug directly into the internet.

This is what I would call the "modern tinkerer mindset":

• "Real Software" runs on Impersonal Computers: servers, either racked in your office, or existing nebulously in "the cloud." When you are developing this software, you keep a VM that simulates such an Impersonal Computer running on your Personal Computer, and interact with it as if it were a network resource.

• Development of new Operating Systems occurs using a hardware emulator (really a more precise VM), like qemu. It then moves to ordinary VM software. Everyone else who tries your hobbyist OS will only want to run it in a VM themselves. Getting it running on Real Hardware is a 1.0 feature.

• If you want to fiddle with hardware yourself, you get a Raspberry Pi, or any of innumerable other devices aimed squarely at tinkerers. You could develop an OS using these, too, although it's a much greater hassle than just using emulation software. These devices are open in ways Personal Computers never were, having everything from schematics to JTAG pins available.

Given that mindset, what do you gain by having Administration rights to your new-age VT-100 Personal Computer?

You might answer "the surety that Microsoft/Apple/etc. will never ban VM software from its platform", but no OS distributor would dream of doing this: after all, how, then, would its first- and third-party developers do their jobs? They rely on VM software just like the rest of us.

null_ptr4• 12 years ago

My new-age VT-100 PC is still a general purpose computer, and if I want to use it as such I should be able to. I see the advantage of shipping it as a VT-100, but I don't see any advantage in blocking power users from unlocking its full potential.

Nobody wants to work on hobby projects that have no chance of ever running on real hardware. What's the point then? Even if you'll never get to run your hobby OS on real hardware, that possibility still serves to motivate the developer. Nobody likes to work on things they know beforehand nobody will ever use for anything.

As an example, coding a toy shell in JavaScript that runs in a web browser and prints some text to a canvas is not the same as coding a toy shell that can touch the actual file system and be used for real work.

Life is too short to write toy software for emulators, I want to write software that people use and get something out of. I'm an engineer, if I buy a computer it's because I want to make cool things with it and for it, not because I want a dumb terminal to connect to some rented server.

userbinator5• 12 years ago

Given that mindset, what do you gain by having Administration rights to your new-age VT-100 Personal Computer?

The freedom and power to control what's yours. A chance to explore, to learn more about the system you're using and possibly adapt it to fit your needs. IMHO giving users that chance is very important: how many experienced developers started out as power users - who also were originally only users? By taking away these chances, keeping regular users relatively oblivious, fewer of them will want to go through the increasing hassle of "becoming a developer"; it becomes an abrupt decision instead of the continuum of knowledge it once was. This divide between "users" and "developers/administrators" only makes it harder for users to cross that gap, and takes control away from them.

If you want to fiddle with hardware yourself, you get a Raspberry Pi [...] These devices are open in ways Personal Computers never were, having everything from schematics to JTAG pins available.

Funny you mention the RPi, as it's nowhere close to being as open as the PC/AT was.

comex2• 12 years ago

I don't think it's fair to group measures that have a valid security justification along with those that do not. Code signing, secure boot (including TPM when used as a part of that), and patch protection do, and can be disabled. Linux distros really should probably have more rigorous protections along those lines, but manage to avoid it because nobody targets Linux (not because it's that much more secure); Chrome OS has them anyway, despite almost everything being open source, including Chromebook bootloaders, and I like that fact.

Meanwhile, proprietary software and closed hardware specifications have nothing to do with security and should be criticized more harshly.

mindslight3• 12 years ago

The idea of secure boot could theoretically be a no-tradeoff security positive, but the implementation would be quite different from what it is currently. For starters, any non-user-hostile solution is going to have something like a usb device header on the motherboard as the highest-privileged interface to the system (with something like mandatory time delays to prevent against evil maid attacks). But to large manufacturers run by business people, the attraction to a hardcoded manufacturer-administered signing certificate for the trust root (which obviously erodes the owner's control) is just too strong for us to see a proper implementation any time soon.

null_ptr4• 12 years ago

Gluglug is cool but is not a solution for the future - there's only so many working X60's they can salvage. I think the sustainable way is to embrace Linux-friendly companies that cater to general computing.

When my Sandy Bridge laptop dies, I will buy my next computer from System76 who sell Ubuntu laptops. My next laptop may not even be an Intel laptop - I don't need x86, when most programs I use are open source and can be compiled to run natively on anything. I hope we will have a healthy number of Linux ARM laptops to choose from in the near future.

dublinben• 12 years ago

You might not care about free software, but all System76 laptops use proprietary firmware for their Intel wireless cards. The laptops from ThinkPenguin do not.

If you're going to support "Linux-friendly" computing, you should also support free software. If not, you might as well just get a Dell XPS Developer Edition or Asus Zenbook and slap Ubuntu on it.

r0h1n• 12 years ago

This seems to be an explanation of how to install Ubuntu on an Acer laptop with Windows 8 - http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2176273&s=3a5c2ecb6...

I can't believe how convoluted and snafu-prone the process appears to be. I bought my Aspire V7 laptop in December and have never gotten around to installing Ubuntu on it simply because I dread the almost-guaranteed loss of 1-2 working days trying to undo whatever screwups happen.

I can't imagine even one lay, non-Linux lover even thinking of attempting something like this.

mahouse• 12 years ago

So, I have a Lenovo laptop, running dual boot (formerly Gentoo, now Ubuntu) with Windows on UEFI using rEFInd. Zero problems so far. Am I lucky or what?!

fhars• 12 years ago

You are at least lucky that you didn't run into this issue https://plus.google.com/+MarcMERLIN/posts/4RDPCGYCDWq where booting linux on certain UEFI enabled Thinkpads would reproducibly brick the machine.

cannam• 12 years ago

I have that machine, and I run Linux on it. His post was quite valuable, and that was obviously a bit of a horror on Lenovo's part, but it looks as if a subsequent BIOS update fixed it -- or at least I got a newer version of the BIOS than he refers to and I didn't get bricked.

The machine has a terrible single-button trackpad arrangement, but is otherwise fabulously good as a Linux development box.

(I do also run Windows, in a VM rather than dual-booting)

vetinari2• 12 years ago

You don't need rEFInd with Lenovo. The built in EFI boot manager is good enough.

kclay• 12 years ago

I ran into this problem with an Acer laptop, somehow I got it working by disabling something in the bios (think legacy mode) then installed ubuntu from live cd and made that my boot loader. Ended up returning the laptop since I didn't like win8 and got a thinkpad T530 and mostly use ubuntu on it.

zokier• 12 years ago

I guess you get what you pay for; http://i.imgur.com/wZcxCGZ.jpg

junto• 12 years ago

Or more appropriately, you get what you don't pay for! :-)

marincounty• 12 years ago

I have come to the decision just not to buy anything HP. I had two horrid experiences with two HP laptops, and two printers that went too soon--1 less than a year--the other less than a week. Off subject, but when ever I hear HP I cringe.

buro9• 12 years ago

The key there is to only buy expensive HP stuff.

Their office laser printers are great, and their workstations (e.g. the Z820) are pretty awesome.

Their cheap stuff on the other hand... I agree with you on every point.

ganeumann• 12 years ago

The article claims: "One reason all PC's that come preinstalled with a Microsoft operating system is cheaper than regular laptop is that Microsoft subsidizes the cost of the hardware."

I had always thought that PC makers paid Microsoft for Windows. The article claims that, instead, Microsoft pays the PC makers to install Windows. I don't see how this could possibly be true if most copies of Windows are sold pre-installed on PCs.

ams6110• 12 years ago

I've never heard that Microsoft pays OEMs but they certainly do give them a discounted price. Also it is my understanding that they do have some contract terms that either forbid sale of the same hardware with other OSes preinstalled or forbid sale at a lower price with other OS or no OS.

This is all from years ago, I don't know what terms are these days. Obviously Dell, HP, etc. do have a few preinstalled Linux systems in their catalogs now.

ChuckMcM• 12 years ago

I too don't think this is accurate. What Intel and Microsoft have done is contributed marketing support dollars which, from a pure business analysis point, might be considered part of the cost of the system but it isn't what you or I would consider subsidizing the hardware. In marketing support programs Microsoft pays for a television advertisement for your product (very expensive) which points out how great it is because uses Microsoft Windows. Similarly with the Intel inside advertisements.

naner3• 12 years ago

Microsoft charges for OEM licenses. PC manufacturers, however, will include other software with Windows for a fee (e.g. Imagine Adobe pays Dell for Adobe Reader to be included on Dell consumer systems).

It is also plausible that Microsoft has a patent agreement with PC manufacturers so that they have to pay Microsoft a fee to ship systems with Linux installed. I know we've seen similar situations with companies that run Linux servers or sell Android devices.

Zigurd2• 12 years ago

What they probably meant is that Windows is a profit center for HP because of the 3rd party crapware/bloatware loaded with Windows. They don't have similar deals for Linux, and that would probably chase off their Linux customers.

patcheudor10• 12 years ago

I learned my lesson long ago. Linux is for VMs. I run vanilla Windows as my boot OS and then use Linux from within a VM, thus getting the benefits of Windows hardware compatibility where I need it. This lets me do things like run nine monitors when my laptop is docked by chaining DisplayLink adapters. Note that Windows with DisplayLink will only support eight monitors so for the ninth I bind the DisplayLink adapter to the VM for dual monitors with my Linux VM. Going above more than two monitors with a Linux host OS is akin to beating one's head into a wall, especially if you move between monitor configurations often, but just works in Windows.

Thus far, with the ability for the VM to bind specific hardware directly and not shared via the host OS I get all the benefits of a Linux host OS without the hassle of broken driver implementations taking me down for long stretches at a time. As an example, I can bind my ALFA WiFi adapter directly to the Linux VM and run aircrack-ng all day long.

Yes, there are drawbacks. You will need a bigger hard-drive (best if you can fit two in your laptop) and more memory, but those are cheap these days. The benefits, however are massive. I keep multiple VM versions and can instantly recover from anything stupid that I might do in the Linux kernel without impacting my ability to actually get my work done.

dm2• 12 years ago

I do the same thing, it works well. Do you use Windows 7 or 8 as your parent OS?

I use VirtualBox and have found it reliable for years.

The Windows host OS can then be kept very clean and it remains fast and relatively secure.

Then in those rare instances when you need to download something insecure or that you don't want cluttering your Windows install you can put it in a virtual machine that acts as a sandbox.

If you organize your files right you can even wipe your windows partition and reinstall with very little downtime and setup (other than the several gigs of updates that will be needed during the first few boots).

patcheudor10• 12 years ago

I ran into some odd problems with the DisplayLink drivers after a couple years of success in Win 7 so I recently made the jump to Win 8.1. Most of my real work happens in my VM's so I don't mind it. My laptop has two 500 GB SSD's and has room for two more drives via mSATA cards. When I run out of room for VMs I'll go ahead and start populating the mSATA slots. I recently picked up a USB 3.0 256GB thumb drive and use it for VM portability between machines so I can leave my big laptop docked at work & take a lighter one on business trips.

And yeah - you are right about very little downtime when reinstalling stuff. While my peers will be out for a week because of an OS or hardware failure I can be up and running again in no time at all.

jmnicolas• 12 years ago

9 monitors ? May I ask what you use them for ?

patcheudor10• 12 years ago

I figured someone would ask. I do a fair amount of pen testing in addition to development. Because I work with a lot of hardware solutions I need to run multiple instances of my tools. In a typical assessment I'll have a VM running a raw packet capture & another running an HTTP interception proxy. These will be "watching" the hardware device. I'll then replicate that same configuration to watch host browser traffic. Right there I'm at four monitors just to watch my instrumentation. I'm at a fifth for the web browser to interact with the environment & a sixth for taking notes. I typically like to have a chat going with other members of the team as well as e-mail so that's seven right there. Many time's I'll need to write rules for on the fly packet manipulation so now I'm at a solid eight. If I must also instrument the server side then I start compromising on having e-mail open.

For years I dealt with alt-tab between windows as well as using various windows managers so I could have multiple desktops but the problem was that I couldn't have eye's on what was going on in the instrumentation. This setup saves me a massive amount of time.

Here's a picture with two additional monitors mounted to the wall next to my desk which are connected to another system I use:

http://www.defaultstore.com/mydesk.jpg

yulaow• 12 years ago

I have the problem that in my windows os I need to run hyper-v to use the emulator of windowsphone and windowstablets for work purposes.

Why is it a problem? Because if you active hyper-v (and you need a reboot to change from active/deactive) all other VM, if started, will crash your os, show a blue page of death, restart your machine and show a "I am trying to recover your system" for like 20 minutes.

And hyperv is like the shittest VMm ever to run linux over it, also with the "officially supported" linux versions.

bananas8• 12 years ago

Hyper-V user here. It's fine - I run 12-15 VMs (4 of which are Linux) at a time (full production environment with virtual networking) on a 4 year old Dell T3500 Quad Xeon with 32Gb of RAM. Sounds like your hardware is broken/crap.

kyriakos• 12 years ago

out of curiosity what kind of work do you do with 9 monitors?

patcheudor10• 12 years ago

Security researcher.

drdaeman• 12 years ago

Have you considered/tried using hypervisor and putting Windows in VM, too? If so, what were drawbacks?

I ask because, considering popularity of Windows as malware/spyware target, running it as bare-metal host OS doesn't sound like a completely good idea to me, even if owner's really cautious.

pjmlp4• 12 years ago

If you use Hyper-V, Windows is already running in a VM as well.

plg• 12 years ago

Seems like a business opportunity: for companies to make their own linux friendly hardware ... or to modify existing laptops to be linux friendly.

HeyImAlex• 12 years ago

Girlfriends laptop is an HP pavilion g7 and no number of tutorials can get grub to load up on boot. She wants to boot to Ubuntu? Gotta remember to F12 into the bios and manually select it...

But it seems like this is less of a UEFI issue and more of an HP shitty UEFI issue, since plenty of other manufacturers don't cause any problems.

bananas8• 12 years ago

I never dual boot. It's a PITA with UEFI or not and has been since the dawn of time. It's Linux -or- Windows. UEFI is not a problem though - people need to stop badmouthing something they really don't understand.

I settled on using Windows as a host OS[1] and use Linux on VMs because to be fair, Windows power management, suspend/resume and hibernate and driver support is miles better i.e. it actually works more than once. Oh and they really don't fuck up the kernel every 2 minutes like on Ubuntu and don't throw out buggy shit like Apple do.

I used a 2011 MBP for the last 6 months or so however (with virtualbox) and I had to go back to an older and slower T400 as it was more reliable as well.

So virtualbox on windows 7 it is. And it works really well. I'm pretty happy and I'm a picky as they come when it comes to hardware and software.

On my desktop (a Dell T3500 with piles of RAM), it's 8.1 with Hyper-V with Linux in it as that works pretty damn well too.

Is suspect the problem here is users rather than hardware and vendors.

[1] On my Lenovo T400.

TazeTSchnitzel6• 12 years ago

I also find dual boot painful. On my old machine I switched main OS several times (back and forth from Windows to Linux). I couldn't dual-boot because it just wouldn't be fun. There's no real way to share data properly between the two OSes, I wouldn't have the exact same set of available apps, etc.

Now I have a MacBook with OS X. It combines the things I want from Windows and Linux, so I have no need to change OS. If I really need Linux or Windows for something, hardware virtualisation makes things easy.

andrewflnr2• 12 years ago

A FAT32 partition doesn't do it for you? That's where I have all my music.

johnchristopher• 12 years ago

Are you using any desktop environment with the Linux VMs you run ?

bananas8• 12 years ago

No. I run windows as a desktop. I wouldn't run any Unix derivative as a desktop - they've all been horrible to me (that includes OSX). Server-side though, it wins a lot of the time.

naner3• 12 years ago

I've reached a similar conclusion but have wildly different experiences.

I've never had issues setting up dual boot. It works fine and I can read/write NTFS if needed from Linux or just rely on Dropbox for simple stuff. The problem is it is too inconvenient to reboot so I usually just run Win 7 from a VM inside Linux. I also had a number of issues with Windows being glitchy (this persisted on three different Thinkpads with Windows 7 and, back in the day, Windows XP) and a pain to maintain, which is why I use Linux as my primary desktop OS.

I also don't have a problem with power management and suspend on Linux, though I know it probably isn't as good as Windows. I don't use hibernate so I'm not sure if it is awful. For my next PC upgrade I'm not getting a laptop, however, since I hardly ever travel with it...

I like OSX fine enough, too, but I rely on a lot of Linux tools so I have no real reason to have an OSX machine.

TazeTSchnitzel6• 12 years ago

What Linux tools that you use can you not get for OS X?

wyager2• 12 years ago

Oh and they really don't fuck up the kernel every 2 minutes like on Ubuntu and don't throw out buggy shit like Apple do.

It seems my experience with computers has been radically different from yours.

The only kernel I've ever had problems with is the NT kernel, and one of the reasons I stick with Apple portables is that they're generally the least buggy devices I can find.

TazeTSchnitzel6• 12 years ago

Apple's been getting slightly worse of late, though. They're spreading themselves too thin.

bite• 12 years ago

I've been using GNU/Linux as my only OS for years, and honestly, I have never had any issues with it; of course I may have other use cases than you, I don't play video games or anything - but when working on a project, that for instance relies on gstreamer, it's better to use Linux natively. VM's have always been a pain for me, they're slow, IO issues, and you'd waste more battery having to run a VM anyway, so the trade off doesn't make sense. Also, how could you say the problem is from users? Why should installing another OS be so difficult? You should give GNU/Linux another try, and try fixing your kernel panics rather than giving up and switching to windows.

zanny9• 12 years ago

One issue though is that people consistently try Linux on a computer built for Windows and say "what the hell, it doesn't work out of the box flawlessly, fuck this".

If you really want to try Linux, you need to buy a computer designed to run it, or at least vet your hardware before a purchase. I haven't bought a computer with a Windows license attached in over a decade because that isn't buying a Linux capable machine - its buying a Windows machine you might be able to run Linux on.

My most recent system was a build I made last year and I vetted every part for LInux support (and boy, did it take a while to verify Asus z87 motherboards had a working EFI that could boot a linux kernel, albeit they have a busted EFI shell and can only have one EFI boot table entry).

ithinkso• 12 years ago

I've been using linux as my desktop OS for more that 8 years. It has ups and downs but there is no comparison in user experience to windows and thats why I have it changed. That being said, drivers in linux are mostly painful, for instance I've spent several days and nights fighting with this ridiculous bluetooth stack and I'm still nowhere to go. It is not only linux fault because they are doing wonderful job but hardware manufacturers just don't give a shit. Almost every piece of hardware out there has 'Compatible with Windows XP,Vista,7,8!' and that's it...

crististm• 12 years ago

You do know that there is life beyond Linux and Windows, do you?

unsignedint2• 12 years ago

suspend/resume and hibernate and driver support is miles better

While it is not apple to apple reason, this part is why I actually moved away from Windows -- yes, resume and hibernate (mostly) works on Windows, but with a great pain of waiting forever for that process to complete.

bananas8• 12 years ago

I have an SSD. Windows resume from hibernate in about 8 seconds. Complete cold start takes 12 seconds (less than OSX). That's windows 7. On windows 8.1 it's even faster.

donniezazen4• 12 years ago

Generalization that Windows has better "power management, suspend/resume and hibernate and driver support" is grossly wrong. Noob friendly Linux distributions like Ubuntu provide excellent support of all the points you mention.

bananas8• 12 years ago

They really don't. Suspend doesn't always wake up all devices, different kernel releases break hibernate completely. Also Ubuntu just disabled hibernate for a vast chunk of time. It's never worked properly. And don't get me started on all the playing around you have to do with powertop to get usable battery life.

And that is Ubuntu (12.04 LTS) noob friendly edition on standard Intel Centrino hardware.

pjmlp4• 12 years ago

So maybe you can explain to me why Ubuntu 12.04 LTS hangs on hibernate on my Asus Netbook.

pjmlp4• 12 years ago

Same here.

I have a small Asus netbook for traveling with Ubuntu LTS, bought from Amazon with Linux already installed.

My home system, a more beefy laptop, has Windows with VMWare for Linux related stuff.

Since 1995, my first Linux experience, there are things that hardly have changed in terms of hardware support.

My latest issue is trying to make MTP support work properly.

joyofdata• 12 years ago

For me precisely this was the final reason I needed to simply erase Windows 8 64bit Professional (which I paid for half a year earlier) and install Ubuntu 13.10.

I was worried about driver issues and spending too much time adminstering my system instead of using it for being productive. I cannot emphasize enough how unnecessary those worries were - I f love it! As an IT guy using R, Git, Python and further Linux tools this made actually a lot of tasks way easier!

My recommendation - f* dual boot - get rid of Windows and switch to Linux!

dopkew• 12 years ago

If you mention what your system is, then it could help others in making buying decisions. This would then send a message to hardware vendors that linux support gives them visibility and appreciation.

zanny9• 12 years ago

https://www.system76.com/

https://www.thinkpenguin.com/

https://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-13-linux/pd

And others. Really, if you are buying a new system for Linux, and it isn't a custom desktop, just buy a notebook from a Linux provider so you know modern kernels support the thing out of the box flawlessly.

derekp7• 12 years ago

Here's my rant on how Secure boot should be done. Currently, you have Microsoft's public key certificates in the firmware, and you can either boot with secure boot on or off. I would rather that the certificates be treated similar to a web browsers, where you have a list of "official" certs belonging to multiple independent entities. In addition, when in secure mode, you shouldn't be able to boot from unsigned media.

Now here's where I think this can be improved. Usually, hitting something like F12 at boot time gives you a list of devices to boot from (internal drive, USB devices, DVD, network, etc). What I'd like to see added to this is an item labeled "Boot from unsigned DVD/USB/Network [for OS installation mode]". Once this is selected, whatever you boot would have access to adding additional certificates to the firmware. Or, more appropriately, you should be able to select 3 boot options: 1) boot from signed media; 2) boot from unsigned media; 3) boot from unsigned media with write access to certificate key store [OS installation mode]. That way, the end user can still maintain complete control over their hardware, yet still get the benefits of protection against boot sector malware / low level root kits.

Locke16892• 12 years ago

This sounds like secure boot's "Custom Mode." 'Certified for Win8' requires that all non-ARM machines support either Secure Boot Custom Mode or SB disabled. I would hope they would support custom, but that's the manufacturer's prerogative.

yc-kjh7• 12 years ago

Asus does not support disabling Restricted Boot for their model 1015E.

betterunix• 12 years ago

I have a simpler solution: the bootloader is kept on a separate storage device, which can only be written to if the computer is booted up in a special mode. No signing needed, prevents common bootloader viruses, respects user freedom.

lunulata• 12 years ago

"My journey into hell began about two months ago when I purchased a new HP laptop computer..." That'll teach you. Next time don't buy HP. Those super cheap laptops come at the price of quality and decent support. You pay for it one way or another. As for the UEFI being bad or not working well with Linux, I disagree. I think you just don't know what you're doing and HP support is bad with no documentation.

zyztem• 12 years ago

Actually, it is not that difficult to dual boot Windows/Linux with UEFI. You just need more understanding about this whole thing. I can recommend Arch wiki article: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Unified_Extensible_Firm...

And http://www.rodsbooks.com/efi-bootloaders/

Kernels 3.3+ can be loaded from EFI partition directly without additional bootloader, no need to wrestle with grub-efi. This blog explains required configuration: http://wolfwings.dreamwidth.org/224805.html

zanny9• 12 years ago

efibootmgr makes it really simple to set up. When I get a new computer with Arch, once I install the base system, my bootloader is literally just:

efibootmgr -c -l /vmlinuz-linux -L "Archlinux" -u "initrd=/initramfs-linux.img root=<root partition uuid> ro quiet splash security=tomoyo"

Assuming /boot is my efi system partition.

The real problem is that most motherboard manufacturers have absolute garbage bloated proprietary messes of EFI implementations, and we are stuck with Intel jamming this shit down our throats in the first place rather than opening up their chipset documentation so we could have coreboot support on these boards.

Adam503• 12 years ago

We know all about Hacker News "not that dificult"

I smell a simple 26 step process that can't legally be done in some parts of the Middle East and N. Korea, a few assembler and brainf*ck scripts, and a little simple arc-welding.

harrystone• 12 years ago

No problems here, I just don't dual boot. I recently got a new machine at work and the first thing I did was wipe it and install Slackware. It was my maiden voyage with UEFI which was a pain in the ass but no big deal.

sherr• 12 years ago

A lot of commentary here and in the article was worrying to me. Directly relevant since I bought a cheap (good value) Lenovo G510 laptop today that came with Win 8.1.

I didn't want to use Windows at all, just boot Clonezilla straightaway, clone the HDD and then install Debian. No go on booting from CD - "not allowed" due to the security setup. Ah, OK .. so it then boots Win 8.1 and I had to go through various Windows setups I wanted to avoid before rebooting and trying again.

It was then I had to figure out the BIOS side of things and saw it was all UEFI. I just turned it off and switched to "legacy" mode (BIOS legacy I assume) and disabled secure boot. Cloned the HDD, booted the Debian Testing CDROM and now have a "Jessie" install on it.

voltagex_5• 12 years ago

Lenovo laptops will boot the beta/new Clonezilla fine. Just disable Secure Boot. Debian will boot in about 5 seconds with UEFI and an SSD.

nitrogen3• 12 years ago

I'm still using a BIOS-based i7 system with a successful and stable triple-boot setup with XP (for some old music software), W7 (for games), and Linux (for work and everything else). It sounds from comments here I may be in for an adventure when I upgrade to a UEFI system, though the UEFI workstation I have at work seems to handle dual-booting fine.

mindslight3• 12 years ago

With the locked down antics that manufacturers are pulling these days, the only way to protect yourself is to root your device and install your preferred environment on it immediately after you obtain the device. Don't delay or procrastinate with excuses like wanting to try out the manufacturer's experience, waiting until you need the functionality, or wanting to prepare more. Every day you put it off, the more likely you will end up stuck with and dependent on a user-hostile device that you were tricked into.

You need to run into every possible incompatibility or bricking while you're still well within the return and credit card dispute periods. And if you're actually unsure of how to proceed in making sure that shiny new device actually works for you, please please ask a technical friend for help. The future of society very much depends on it.

Zigurd2• 12 years ago

Back when I did dual boot, I found I seldom used the Windows partition because, for the reasons I'd need a Windows machine, it wasn't a very good one.

If you boot Windows for games, you are far better off buying or building a rig designed for gaming. Conversely, if you need a fast Linux software development system, swap out the hard disk of any decent Core i7 machine for an SSD, which will usually be smaller than the rotating media, which makes dual booting less attractive. And if you are shopping for a Linux machine that's less likely to be a hassle in any way, look for one that uses Intel graphics and has no 3rd party GPU.

Mikeb85• 12 years ago

This is why you should buy machines meant to run Linux, or known to run it well... System76, Dell dev laptop, ThinkPads, and custom parts for a desktop.

If you do your homework, you'll always have a perfectly functioning system. My ThinkPad runs Ubuntu (and Suse) like they were meant for each other.

And dual booting is always a PITA... Just delete Windows...

annasaru• 12 years ago

I am forced to dual boot because my colleagues use Skype. Luckily, my laptop has a mSata slot , so a 128 Gb card dedicated to Linux. Never been an issue with dual booting my Thinkpad.

Tobu• 12 years ago

Skype is available on Linux. On Ubuntu, it's in the "partner" repo.

listic2• 12 years ago

Yep, my only problem with Skype on Linux is that is an older version. Mumble taught me to use Push-to-talk, but it is only available on a newer version of Skype.

jrockway2• 12 years ago

In this thread: a bunch of people who know nothing about computers spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

The reality is: Windows boots fine with Secure Boot disabled. Linux boots fine from UEFI; the Debian installer sets everything up perfectly.

yc-kjh7• 12 years ago

OpenBSD doesn't support UEFI, and will never boot from it.

UEFI (better called Restricted Boot) takes away the user's freedom.

I want to own my hardware. I don't want the manufacturer to own it. I don't truly own it unless I can run whatever software I want on it. I don't own it if it prevents me from doing anything I want to do -- no matter what that is.

just_bytecode• 12 years ago

I guess I don't understand how UEFI is inherently less free than BIOS. I assume most of of the opposition is due to secure boot, but every implementation I've used let the user manage keys for secure boot or disable it entirely. Are there other reasons that UEFI is a threat to computing freedom?

yc-kjh7• 12 years ago

OpenBSD does not support UEFI, and probably never will. http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.os.openbsd.misc/196288

Please note that OpenBSD has no problem handling large disks, greater than 2 TB. The problem is with the horrible Restricted Boot (UEFI) system.

The Asus model 1015E is in violation of the requirement that UEFI (Restricted Boot) can be disabled, and that Legacy Boot can be enabled. I am boycotting all future Asus products, because I had to deal with this problem after I had already purchased one. It was difficult and painful to get my money back.

If any manufacturer purposely builds systems without Restricted Boot, I will patronize them (even for non-Arm products). I am hoping that some manufacturer will build a line of Arm-based devices without Restricted Boot. (Yes, I know about BeagleBone, Raspberry Pi, etc. But these are not full-featured laptops. They are embedded machines aimed at embedded uses. I do use them for that purpose. Also note that the Raspberry Pi has the craptastic Broadcom chip, and it is anything but free [as in liberty] and open. http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.os.openbsd.misc/192942 Also, the recent release of source code from Broadcom is only open source wrappers that call proprietary binary blobs. Fsck Broadcom.)

sounds2• 12 years ago

Please post a blog link to your Asus 1015E and Broadcom experiences. I want to reshare and help build community awareness.

yc-kjh7• 12 years ago

I don't blog.

xarball• 12 years ago

I want to make this very clear:

Dual-booting with UEFI is entirely possible, provided that your hardware allows entering EFI vars manually, in a SIGNED OS ENVIRONMENT. Every comment I've seen thus far doesn't seem to grasp that this is MANDATORY before you have the ability to finish installing a new bootloader. This is how UEFI protects itself from unauthorized OS signing!

I have my own custom EFI vars set up with grub2 running on a GPT partition table, all booting beside windows, as purely as the air you breathe, and I'm loading custom Linux kernels daily and haven't ran into an issue since I originally set it up. Grub2 itself is my primary boot partition, which can then jump into the windows boot manager on the other disk.

Grub2 itself has the capacity to act as a custom-signed EFI boot partition (Not sure if I've got the wording on that correct -- but the gist is there!). This means grub can be what your bios looks for the signature from. You don't absolutely need your kernel to be signed, provided you can get a signature produced from grub, OR you have the ability to write one while in a signed O/S.

IF you want the easiest approach, look no further than any Linux distribution that purchased a key to find such a signed environment that permits the further writing of EFI variables.

Or, even easier -- just write then boot grub 2's EFI-signed bootloader to a usb key to get started. After that, writing a new OS entry to UEFI should be the most straightforward thing to do in the world!

*(You can even boot any kernel in the world with such a signed grub2 USB disk!)

linuxhansl• 12 years ago

The other part that really bugs me is that I cannot buy laptops without Windows from a lot of vendors.

First thing I do is wipe any Windows/Recovery partition from the drive and install Linux. Yet, I know that Microsoft got their cut and there is nothing I can do about it.

How this passes any reasonable antitrust test is beyond my comprehension; on the other hand what we call capitalism these days has not much to do with actual capitalism, so maybe I should not be surprised.

anon4• 12 years ago

Strange.

When I built my current PC, I specifically set it up to boot in UEFI mode with secureboot disabled, so that windows won't thrash the mbr. Then I happily installed arch, everything worked fine (even though the double-bootloader, i.e. UEFI->grub->linux still makes me queasy).

The only trouble was when afterwards I tried installing windows. At least at the time, windows 7 DVDs weren't able to boot in UEFI mode, therefore weren't able to use the GPT-partitioned hard-disk. The fix was easy enough at least - just copy the bootloader to the correct location on the DVD and it boots just fine.

listic2• 12 years ago

I plan to buy Microsoft Surface Pro 2 http://www.microsoft.com/surface/en-us/products/surface-pro-... and install Ubuntu 14.04 on it, however idiosyncratic that may sound: from reading the reviews, I like this hardware and I want its features (note that 64/12). I choose a model with 256GB SSD because it has 8GB RAM. I'm aware of numerous issues with Surface Pro 2 and Ubuntu http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2183946 but I'm counting on 1) making it all work with community's support, as have some people in that thread 2) things improving in 14.04.

I would use it solely with Ubuntu, but I'm not sure whether I can make Ubuntu run in a usable state right away, so I might dual-boot.

What should I know beforehand about running Linux on UEFI computers before my Surface Pro 2 arrives?

blueskin_• 12 years ago

Restricted Boot has been worked around for some time with Shim.

girvo2• 12 years ago

All of this faff is the reason why my next laptop will be purchased with Linux already on it. System76, most likely, although I want the Dell XPS 13 Developer edition--you can't buy one from Australia. Which annoys me to no end (and if any lovely soul in the US feels like helping me...)

For me, day to day, Linux makes an amazing desktop and development machine. It's been 7 years since I ran a Windows computer daily (although my iMac has a Bootcamp partition for DayZ), and I don't miss it, so I'm voting with my wallet. If you'd told me I could do that a decade ago, I would have thought you were nuts, but I'm happy that's the case now. I understand the Secure boot frustration, but without needing to dual boot it's a lot easier.

We've ceded a lot of control, and yet I wonder if we ever had a real say in the matter. Oh well, I can buy Linux laptops, and that's what matters to me. Heck, it might be easier to get them to dual boot than a Windows laptop ;)

Before you Dual Boot – MS, OEMs and Linux

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