GregS wrote:nelz wrote:You need to disable Secure Boot. Then hold down a key (Esc on my Asus notebook) to bring up the boot menu within a couple of seconds of power on.
Unfortunately, didn't help (although on the right track - see below).
After an hour on the phone to ASUS Tech support, finally managed to (a) have the tech understand what I wanted to do and then (b) work out the solution (BIOS is AMI 2012):
Disable Secure Boot
Disable Fast Boot
Enable Load CSM
Once that has been done, hitting ESC on boot enables selection of boot medium. Ubuntu 12.10 on LXF 166 now runs perfectly well -.all that remains now is to accomplish an install...!
Stand by for the next exciting episode.
OK - Finally solved.
Step one was installation of Ubuntu 12 from the recent cover disk - supposedly, it is UEFI compliant. Installation went OK until GRUB installation, at which time it refused to install anywhere...
More internet searching and a download of Fedora 18 - KDE (which is the distro running on all our other systems); and after burning a W8 system image in case it all ended in tears, using Gparted to free up some space, with some trepidation we booted up the live distro.
SWMBO wanted the experience of setting up her own system, so we did a lot of reading of help messages etc. Just as well because it isnt't as straight forward as in the past.
First lesson:
permanently disable "secure boot" on any BIOS.
Second lesson: enable 'legacy' boot (AMI call it 'CSM', others may use other terminology) so that booting from other than W8 can occur.
Without both these actions, nothing but W8 will boot.
Third lesson: to install on a UEFI system, the installation media
must be booted in UEFI mode.
Once we had established these criteria, boot up and selection of install to hard disk went as usual (as an aside, the only significant visible difference with the new installer is that it identified and automatically allocated appropriate sizes to /; /boot; /home and swap -as a separate aside, W8 allocation of partitions and hogging of space by recovery partitions et al is horrendous, nearly all of the 120 Gb HDD is used up prior to installation of any applications...)
Installation, including GRUB, then proceeded without needing any further intervention, other than the usuall setting of passwords, until invited to reboot.
Fedora then faultlessly booted up as normal. The only issue is that GRUB, despite menu entries to the contrary, cannot find a bootable W8 installation...however hitting ESC on boot, to select boot source, provides boot selections for both W8 and F18 in BIOS, both of which work perfectly.
I understand, but have not (yet) gone down that path, that the entire system could be wiped, UEFI included (by booting into BIOS mode during installation) and both W8 (or earlier) and any desired *NIX distro installed in traditional mode; given the grief UEFI incurs, I would recommend that if you have an option to do so.
In the words of a famous philosopher, UEFI appears a 'solution to which there is no problem'!