Hi, thanks for that report.

I was having issues with a similar laptop here.

I'd like to try out your exact procedure, and was under the apparently erroneous impression that Debian live USB sticks didn't support UEFI boots.

Would you point me to the Debian iso url, and the exact statement / procedure you used to produce your stick, if a stick it was?

The LIVE Debian sticks do not (reason I'd like to but can't try Q4OS, built from Debian live and doesn't support UEFI, and I have no interest in using the archaic legacy mode on anything I touch), but the Debian INSTALLER sticks do.

I use http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/...64-netinst.iso

I downloaded everything I'd need to then compile the wireless module along with wicd-curses and it's dependencies on a seperate USB drive, installed with and from there build the system as I wished. Maybe not the EASIEST way to do it, but it's how I prefer to do it.

The wireless compilation looks daunting to me. Actually I see RockDoctor has a more tempting offer:

RockDoctor, would you point me to your exact iso url and the bs (block size) you used in the dd statement?

Thanks

I mostly rsync another install onto a usb boot medium with semi-normal partitioning. Update the /etc/fstab of the usb boot medium to represent it's new location. Chroot into the usb boot medium and install grub while in the chroot and run update-grub. A quick glance at /boot/grub/grub.cfg to make sure it's using UUIDs and not /dev/ names for root=... and it's effectively bootable at that point.

AFAIK most linux's now support UEFI. But only a select few (ubuntu, fedora, ...) are signed with the microsoft keys. So there's extra steps to boot the others using UEFI (like adding non-microsoft keys). But it can be done. I've never quite done it, since disable secure boot and enable legacy/CSM is an option on all my existing computers (or they use uboot). And none of my storage devices are > 2GB so I don't "need" to use the GPT partitioning option just yet.

The block size (bs) of the dd only determines how fast dd proceeds. AFAIK 512 bytes is the default block size. So bs=1M would use 1024 kilobytes, or some such which is 2000 times the size of the default block size that dd uses. None of which changes WHAT is copied by dd.

I just grab the latest development builds of Fedora and Ubuntu. I have not tested bluetooth with either Fedora or Ubuntu, but Fedora gives me an error message regarding bluetooth, even on my bluetooth-less desktop. I'll stay with Ubuntu for now. Here's the link to the latest Ubuntu-Mate iso: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-mate/daily-live/20151109/xenial-desktop-amd64.iso where /dev/sdg is my USB stick. The command I use to copy an iso file it to my usb stick is:
Ubuntu only keeps today's and yesterday's images. I'm downloading today's image as I type this, and plan check it out as soon as I'm done writing this note.

As for dragging windows (with Fedora, anyway), it's apparently click and drag while holding, just like with a mouse.

Updates: Today's Ubuntu-Mate works fine. Click & drag works on Ubuntu also. In both cases, I have to drag the finger that's holding the click

Update on click-and-drag:
It's fixed. I've got left click, right click, and a proper (left) click-and-drag.

Credit to SaltSpork. Replicating here for convenience.

1. Copy /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf to /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/

2. Add the following line to the first InputClass section:
Option "ClickPad" "true"

3. Log out, then log back in.

For those concerned about needing Ethernet, I would try a USB Ethernet adapter. Not surprisingly, the Apple one works well on Linux.