UEFI, Windows 8, and Linux
 

I was just wondering if anyone out there has gotten a Windows 8 PC with UEFI and installed Linux on it? It would be nice to know if the new PCs are compatible with Linux or not.

While I do not know about computers shipped with Windows (last time I paid for Windows and used it was not in this millennium) this might be useful for you http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/secureboot.html

Do you have one? Or are you still shopping? If you're still shopping around and want to make life easy for yourself, you should avoid anything which comes with Windows 8 pre-installed.

It is actually pretty easy to get Linux booting with UEFI, as long as the machine doesn't have "secure boot" or the "secure boot" feature is disabled.

I recently bought an ASUS K55A laptop which had Win7 pre-installed. It has UEFI without "secure boot".

Windows 8 laptop and linux
 

I recently purchased a new laptop with Windows 8 and after figuring out how to get into the BIOS/UEFI interface I was able to disable secure boot, change to BIOS instead of UEFI and install Slackware 14. I am currently researching the best dual-boot method for me and so far it looks like rEFInd is currently the best option. That being said in order to boot Windows 8 again I have to manually change back to UEFI instead of BIOS then the GPT can be read and booted.

I have burned a live-cd of rEFInd and played with it slightly just to verify the ability to actually load & it does but I haven't begun installing and trying to dual-boot just yet. Kinda excited and overwhelmed by the laptop in general especially after installing Slackware.

The 1st boot was successful and sound works but there's quite a bit of tweaking to be done. Both wired and wireless nics aren't working out of the box but I am working on that now. I am using stock 3.2.29 kernel but looks like if I compile the latest stable kernel 3.8.2 the drivers should be there already.

Qualcomm Atheros AR8161 wired needs the alx driver

Realtek RTL8723AE wireless needs rtlwifi driver

Thats where my research has brung me so far.

Model- Toshiba Satellite S855-S5164

CORE i5, 6GB RAM, 750GB HDD, Radeon HD 7670M

Its nice to know that the secure boot feature is able to be disabled.....as also Linux is compatible with machines that come with Windows 8. I'll keep all of this in mind when I start shopping. ;)

It doesn't has to be. If you go shopping for a new laptop make sure that it has the Windows 8 Logo certification, this makes sure that you are able to disable Secure Boot.

Yes, I understand this; I was more thinking along the lines of a PC that doesn't have the Windows 8 logo attached......or a PC that comes with a blank hd. This might also apply to a PC that comes used with Windows 8 installed.

Preinstalled or not, laptops are exactly the same hardware and firmware-wise (maybe the preinstalled Win8 ones have preinstalled cerificates in the firmware?), and you have the exactly same options in their BIOS. If Win8 is preinstalled, you certainly WILL have the secure boot option enabled by default since this is needed by the OS, but nonetheless it can be disabled.

The preinstalled Win 8 (or any Windows for that matter) machines all have stickers on them AFAIK.

It really depends where you live, here in Romania many laptops are sold without an OS (or come with the useless FreeDOS, probably to circumvent some laws?). But if you take a look at the US retailers like newegg, there everything has Windows on it.

BTW there is only one device that has secure boot and it cannot be disabled - the Windows RT Surface tablet. The standard x86 Surface has the option to disable secure boot it seems.

Well, even if all computers come with Secure boot and friends, they can all be disabled. Thanks everybody!