EFI is now mandatory? Canonical strikes again.

[mr_raider]

Try burning your USB stick with a different program. Unetbootin or the direct method with dd

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[claydoh]

• I had no option to install without EFI.
• The only reason I'm aware of that one might need EFI is to dual boot with Windows, like I do on my laptop.
• There is no known advantage or benefit to using GRUB-EFI vs. GRUB that anyone has been able to point out.
• I can name a couple disadvantages to EFI.

I'm still waiting for any good reason to convert...

These are not necessarily my own opinions:

Technically faster booting

You are running a compatibility layer on top if efi anyway

2tb drive size limit on bios

Efi is not itself an MS thing. More Intel but is an open spec. Secure boot is a separate thing

For dual booting efi is safer and more robust ( multiple boot loaders versus one mbr)


https://www.howtogeek.com/56958/htg-...lace-the-bios/



https://www.howtogeek.com/56958/htg-...lace-the-bios/




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[oshunluvr]

Actually, you've made the same incorrect assumption that many other do with this comment "2tb drive size limit on bios". The fact is the limit (2.2TB to spiit a hair) is on MBR partitioned drives - which is what I assume you meant by "bios". This has nothing to do with EFI at all. ALL of my drives are GPT partitioned and neither my desktop or server (with 3 drives well over 2TB each) and neither of them is using EFI. I've posted about this before, but to recap: EFI requires GPT ... GPT does not require EFI. The limitation is purely one of EFI, not GRUB. Grub can boot to any combination of MBR, GPT, EFI or Legacy with the exception of EFI+MBR which is an EFI limitation.

To the other items: a few seconds I don't care about, nor most of the other items. I do use EFI booting on my laptop and it got screwed up just as easily as any legacy install. The primary boot OS (Manjaro) had a failed update that left the laptop un-bootable - no accessible boot menu. Luckily, the UEFI on the laptop allowed me to pick a different distro to boot to, but it took me hours to un-screw it fully. I've also encountered problems with EFI installs where the installer created a second EFI partition and really wreaked havoc. So it's about 50/50 on "safer" or "more robust" IMO - yes, UEFI let me reboot (once I figured out I could) but I've never had a screwed update kill GRUB legacy like that - as long as I didn't actually delete the entire distro with the grub files. Since I use a dedicated grub install now, that can't happen. Frankly with multiple drives EFI is far less safe because it's a single point of failure - All your boot loaders on a single partition. All 5 of my drives are bootable using GRUB so I don't need to desperately seek out a bootable USB device to recover. I know of no way to do that with EFI - although it may be possible.

As far as the compatibility layer: yes, that's there, but it's transparent. Whereas EFI is anything but transparent. IME, it's several layers of extra crap to manage for no real benefit.

Whatever, since it seems most distros are now forcing it on me, I may have to adjust. But I'm old and cranky and don't want too dammit!

I won't have time to get back to researching this further until later in the weekend. Still, always good to have a discussion.

[oshunluvr]

Actually, there's a fairly easy work-around for me on this desktop. I can just create an EFI partition an a secondary drive. Not sure I can then install normal grub to the distro or what the effect of the EFI partition lurking about would be.

My current setup is a dedicated grub installation that I boot to. It has a custom boot menu that lets me select any distro on the machine by linking to it's local grub.cfg. Maybe there's a way to duplicate this functionality using EFI that I don;t know about. The main part being having a bootable backup EFI installation with it's own partition. I'm not sure that's possible.

[oshunluvr]

Here, I just found this. Another strike against EFI:

No you really can't. There can only be one ESP and that's in the spec. You can have multiple partitions each assigned as /boot for a different OS, but there can only be one ESP which is used by the firmware to store its settings, etc.The EFI spec [0] is officially silent about the presence of multiple EFI system partitions on non-removable hard drives, but explicitly forbids multiple ESPs on removable disks, per §11.2.1.3:
> For removable media devices there must be only one EFI system partition, and that partition must contain an EFI defined directory in the root directory
But in practice, Bad Things (TM) happen if you have more than one ESP on the boot disk.
An ESP isn't just a partition mounted to /boot or one that has bootfiles or a bootloader, it's (in practice) a FAT32 partition that has a different filesystem ID, in particular, the magic GUID {C12A7328-F81F-11d2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B}
I'm the author of EasyBCD and numerous other boot utilities and spent a hell of a lot of a time (too much time) researching and working around the various UEFI deficiencies in various desktops, laptops, firmware implementations, bootloaders, and operating systems.
Here's a Microsoft bulletin on the matter: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2879602/unable-to-b...
(long story short, the Windows kernel may bork if it runs into multiple ESPs and fail to load. Our bootable boot repair CDs wouldn't boot into the WinPE kernel because the disk management subsystem would hit an infinite loop in certain cases (not this case). We ended up switching to FreeBSD for our live CDs and writing our own disk repair subroutines to get around cases where even Windows live CDs wouldn't boot so we could fix the customer's PCs)
Linux may not hang if there are multiple ESPs (except it sometimes does), but it certainly doesn't support treating multiple partitions as the ESP simultaneously, either: https://superuser.com/questions/688617/how-many-efi-system-p...
[0]: https://www.intel.com/content/dam/doc/product-specification/...

This guy is the AUTHOR of EasyBCD - a utility designed to allow custom booting on Windows machines (like concurrent Windows installs). IMO he probably the most qualified to comment on EFI since booting is his business, literally.

tl;dr - You can't have multiple EFI boot partitions without creating problems. Therefore you are forced to a single point of failure for your ability to boot.

[claydoh]

I stand corrected on the drive size. I think that a true bios firmware itself has a size limit. Efi does not, and Im betting that legacy mode on EFI hardware is getting around that by it being a layer on top of the EFI but I need to verify that.


I have an efi partition on each of my drives, on both my systems. I don't think I set it up that way on myself. One has windows boot loader which really doesn't count as it is rarely used.


Ill wager that with modern cpus and nvme drives the difference in boot times is negligible at best. I Didn't notice a difference when I stopped using the legacy bios option circa 2014 and that was with spinny hdds.





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[GreyGeek]

A possible fix which requires some modifications of the LiveUSB while it is running.
https://itectec.com/ubuntu/ubuntu-ue...og-how-to-fix/

Unless you've created a persistent LiveUSB the changes won't survive a reboot.

It's sad to see Canonical forcing users to use Microsoft's VFAT 32, and ancient file system, so that they can install Ubuntu.

When we forget history, or misremember it, we get snookered again.
https://learnlinuxandlibreoffice.org...ft-kill-switch

Despite these issues, Microsoft has required all computer manufacturers to use UEFI with Secure Boot on all of their Windows 8 and 10 computers. If Microsoft was really concerned about speed or security, they would have insisted on using Core Boot. So the insistence on UEFI with Secure Boot seems to have only one purpose – to make it difficult to impossible to install Linux on your computer – in order to maintain the Microsoft Windows monopoly (and/or to help the NSA).



To make matters worse, Microsoft has insisted that manufacturers use a special key controlled by Microsoft – rather than a key controlled by the manufacturer. This gives Microsoft total control over your computer – not just the backdoor and the front door – but also the Startup program.


Can’t we just turn off Secure Boot?
You can – sort of. You can switch from Secure Boot mode to legacy mode. But this is not the same as going back to the old BIOS Start Up program that starts all Windows XP and Windows 7 computers. You still have the UEFI program controlling whether your Windows 8 or 10 computer starts and the kill switch is still there. There are reports of folks switching to the UEFI Legacy mode only to have Microsoft switch the mode back to secure boot at the next Microsoft Update. And there is no way to close this backdoor to your computer because as we now know, Internet Explorer is tied into the Windows operating system. Finally, the UEFI code is ten times bigger than the BIOS code. What do you think that extra code is all about?



But isn’t UEFI a nice program created by a non-profit group?
Since UEFI with Secure Boot is capable of destroying the entire world economy, by giving Microsoft or hackers the ability to suddenly turn off all Windows computers, it is worth understanding how this nuclear weapon came into being. Microsoft claims to be an innocent bystander in the creation of Secure Boot.
But the facts tell otherwise. According to the UEFI official story, around the turn of the century, Intel wanted to update the BIOS Startup program to help their chips start up faster. So they used an “open source” operating system called BSD to create a new Startup program called EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface).


There are several things fishy about this official story. ...
...
Beginning in 2008, just a few months after Microsoft joined the NSA PRISM program, strange things began to happen. The biggest change was with UEFI version 2.2. With UEFI version 2.2, the purpose began to change, the tools began to change and even the code began to change.

Read on to learn the not so thrilling conclusion...

At this point I have to ask a question: "What did Canonical have to give up in order for Ubuntu to be added to Win10?"
The answer may be staring us in the face.

Meanwhile, If nearly all computers now have UEFI, what computer should I buy?

You currently have only five options:

Option #1: Keep your current computer.
Linux works really well as a direct replacement for Windows XP. You can even run Windows programs with Linux using a process we will describe in a later chapter.

Option #2: Repair any dead computers you have.
It is likely that the old computer in your closet still works or can be made to work like new just by replacing the hard drive chip. I have done this myself and it is not hard. But if you are not thrilled about opening your computer, then take it to a repair store. You can likely get a new hard drive installed for less than $200.

Option #3: Buy a used Windows Windows 7 computer
Actually, this is no longer a real option. Effective with Windows 10, Microsoft has been forcing all Windows 7 computers to “upgrade” to Windows 10. They also seem to have a way to backport UEFI onto all Windows 7 computers. So do not waste your time or money on any Windows computer.

Option #4: If you want to buy a new computer, and you are on a limited budget, buy a Google Chrome Book
All Chromebooks comes with Coreboot and a stripped down Linux operating system called Chrome. It takes a couple hours to switch this to a full Linux Mint system – a process we describe in a later chapter.

Option #5: Buy a laptop with CoreBoot and Linux Preinstalled

In Nov of 2017 Intel announced that it was going to phase out the last remaining relics of the PC BIOS by 2020, marking the full transition to UEFI firmware.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017...-bios-by-2020/

System76 has a series of commands to determine if your system uses eufi in any way
https://support.system76.com/articles/bootloader/

[jglen490]

Here, I just found this. Another strike against EFI:

This guy is the AUTHOR of EasyBCD - a utility designed to allow custom booting on Windows machines (like concurrent Windows installs). IMO he probably the most qualified to comment on EFI since booting is his business, literally.

tl;dr - You can't have multiple EFI boot partitions without creating problems. Therefore you are forced to a single point of failure for your ability to boot.

Well golly! Either you sure don't like UEFI, or you you are trying to use up a word quota for the week

But you are right about btrfs and choice, and I suspect shortly after I shuffle off the mortal coil ext4 will no longer be an option, and someone else will deal with btrfs.

But, along that line, life is too short man. No need to get so wound up. UEFI is not Satan incarnate. Everything evolves, and change eventually is good.

[jglen490]

A possible fix which requires some modifications of the LiveUSB while it is running.
https://itectec.com/ubuntu/ubuntu-ue...og-how-to-fix/

Unless you've created a persistent LiveUSB the changes won't survive a reboot.

It's sad to see Canonical forcing users to use Microsoft's VFAT 32, and ancient file system, so that they can install Ubuntu.

When we forget history, or misremember it, we get snookered again.
https://learnlinuxandlibreoffice.org...ft-kill-switch

Read on to learn the not so thrilling conclusion...

At this point I have to ask a question: "What did Canonical have to give up in order for Ubuntu to be added to Win10?"
The answer may be staring us in the face.

Meanwhile, If nearly all computers now have UEFI, what computer should I buy?

In Nov of 2017 Intel announced that it was going to phase out the last remaining relics of the PC BIOS by 2020, marking the full transition to UEFI firmware.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017...-bios-by-2020/

System76 has a series of commands to determine if your system uses eufi in any way
https://support.system76.com/articles/bootloader/

Sigh. Not entirely FUD, but close enough.

I wouldn't give System 76 any amount of money for any system. Talk about imposing a corporate will on a consumer. Their idea of "freedom and in free beer" is a few thousand bucks more than mine. Oh, they are pretty - pretty damned expensive.

[oshunluvr]

Well golly! Either you sure don't like UEFI, or you you are trying to use up a word quota for the week

But you are right about btrfs and choice, and I suspect shortly after I shuffle off the mortal coil ext4 will no longer be an option, and someone else will deal with btrfs.

But, along that line, life is too short man. No need to get so wound up. UEFI is not Satan incarnate. Everything evolves, and change eventually is good.

Well, I can't argue with any of that!

[GreyGeek]

Sigh. Not entirely FUD, but close enough.

I wouldn't give System 76 any amount of money for any system. Talk about imposing a corporate will on a consumer. Their idea of "freedom and in free beer" is a few thousand bucks more than mine. Oh, they are pretty - pretty damned expensive.

One man's facts, another man's FUD. If, however, you think EUFI isn't designed to 1) expose your machine to outsides access, 2) be able to kill your machine remotely, you've never followed Gate's speeches. He's quite honest about why HE created UEFI and what it does. You diss on System76 because you think it's expensive. How do you think Gates got to be a Billionaire? By selling cheap OS's and software? That's a case of NOT getting what you pay for, and that's besides the fact that you only rent WinX.

Right now, IF I were shopping for a new laptop I'd get a chromebook i7 with 16GB of RAM and 500GB SSD, front facing camera, microphone, headphone jack, delete the chrome os and install KDE, probably using openSUSE Tumbleweed, assuming Canonical doesn't reverse course on its UEFI plans. But, this is just speculation. As I've said before, I have Kubuntu 20.04 installed with legacy mode and no hint of an EFI partition under /boot. As long as things stay that way I'll be running 20.04 until it EOL's or software support ceases, which ever comes last. IF a future update sets up a UFI folder then I'm moving to another distro.

Besides, no one has answered my question: "What did Canonical get, and have to give up, in order to get the Ubuntu shell installed as WLS on Win10?"

My suspecion: security and privacy.

[claydoh]

Right now, IF I were shopping for a new laptop I'd get a chromebook i7 with 16GB of RAM and 500GB SSD, front facing camera, microphone, headphone jack, delete the chrome os and install KDE

Good luck with that. Not impossible, but it definitely depends on the machine.To replace chromeOS with another OS, coreboot needs to be replaced with an EFI firmware, though one just needs a modified stock bios for dual booting. Then there is the (lack of) full hardware support on most all newer machines, particularly sound. Being System-on-Chip designs, it is not the simple detect- and-configure we get with Linux. Binary blobs are usually needed fro Intel to get support, and they can be tight lipped.

Then there is the SSD factor. Good luck finding a CB with not only an i7, but also having an actual SSD or replaceable ram. They will have soldered memory, and the slower emmc on-chip 'ssd', non-upgradeable storage.

Source: me and my number of years using CBs with Linux.

Somewhat outdated list that shows general linux compatibility
https://wiki.galliumos.org/Hardware_Compatibility

Firmware
https://wiki.mrchromebox.tech/Supported_Devices


As to EFI taking over our machines remotely, still waiting for thus all to happen. Been waiting for ages. And ages...... It is FUD, narrow-viewed, blinder-wearing, rabbithole following, circularly-sourced fud.

With phones on the other hand.......it ain't gonna be Gates doing it.

[mr_raider]

Here, I just found this. Another strike against EFI:

This guy is the AUTHOR of EasyBCD - a utility designed to allow custom booting on Windows machines (like concurrent Windows installs). IMO he probably the most qualified to comment on EFI since booting is his business, literally.

tl;dr - You can't have multiple EFI boot partitions without creating problems. Therefore you are forced to a single point of failure for your ability to boot.

You can only have one EFI partition per disk. You can have multiple efi partitions on system with multiple disks. I do that for all my dual boot systems. One for windows and one for linux.

You just need firmware robust enough to manage EFI boot orders properly. That's one reason I'd stopped buying bargain basement laptops from best buy and go with refurbs if business grade laptops.

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[Qqmike]

You can have as many EFI partitions, anywhere on 1 or several disks. I should say, not YOU, but I can have as many ...
My how-to's show how, it's trivial (during sequential OS installations, you just have to turn all EFI's off (by disabling the boot flags) so that only your one target EFI shows (for the OS you are now installing), etc. ...)
I have done this on a standard, stock ASUS motherboard, and it is not new, maybe 5 yrs now, ASUS H-97-PLUS.

mr_raider:

You can only have one EFI partition per disk. ... You just need firmware robust enough to manage EFI boot orders properly.

So I, not YOU, will disagree with his first sentence and agree with his second sentence! ;-)

[Qqmike]

btw, if there is ever any doubt, you can settle it for YOURSELF (not for me) by simply trying it -- experimenting. Just follow the rules (as in my how-to).