Secure boot and UEFI
 

I'm planning on installing linux onto a dedicated hard drive in my pc. I already have a windows 10 installation on a different hard drive I plan to simply unplug to make installation simple, then plug it back in and choose boot order in BIOS (no care or desire to have slick grub menu with Win 10 on it).

My question is regarding Secure boot and UEFI, I'm running a z87x-ud4h motherboard, and have boot mode as UEFI and Legacy, secure boot is enabled.

I was hoping to install Ubuntu Mate 16.x, and if possible then go ahead and dual boot (from my linux drive) Manjaro. I've been reading a few horror stories and mixed threads on what to do about secure boot. Should I turn secure boot off? Can I leave it on? What about the UEFI and Legacy option, should that work fine?

I could just go trying things, but I really don't want to hose my Windows install in the process.

Thanks,

Yes, turn secure boot off and keep UEFI, I have asus z87 myself and it's what I did

Any chance you also were dealing with a seperate Windows install on your PC? I think it should be unaffected by turning secure boot off. Thanks for the tip.

No Windows here, sorry. The setting for secure boot off is called 'OS Type > Other OS' on mine (I just checked manual)

Anyway it's quick test, just set secure boot off (Other OS on asus z87), then try to boot Windows, see if it works

If you are planning to dual boot windows 10 with Ubuntu, I would suggest you read the Ubuntu documentation at the link below which explains some potential problems. First one is you need both systems UEFI or both MBR so you need to determine that first.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UEFI

Windows 10 and Centos7 (and Fedora) dual-boot fine with UEFI/Secure Boot enabled. No bios changes necessary.

I don't think there is any risk to windows if you disable secure boot, but upcoming policy changes may remove the ability to disable secure boot in future hardware. https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/win...ng-secure-boot

Not dual booting
 

Thanks for all the replies. I'm installing on a separate hard drive, selecting OS through the bios, with no boot loader aware of both OS's, therefore I don't think I'm dual booting technically. That being the case, the dual boot issues shouldn't apply, and I should be fine, just disabling secure boot and proceeding with any UEFI compatible distros, no?

Yes, just try it. If your Windows boots fine with no secure boot, it should be ok

Hope you don't find the hard way what happened to me. Turns out that even if I only installed Linux on this Aspire E-11 I had to use uefi for it to work properly. Legacy BIOS was a total nightmare from not booting properly to all kind of issues.

Once i realized this, and installed using UEFI no more issues.

Don't want to learn the hard way
 

I'd love not to find out the hard way. I disabled secure boot and am back in windows with no problems. For boot mode I have UEFI and Legacy selected, so, are you saying I should select install in UEFI mode? I just checked and it looks like my Windows install is not in UEFI mode, so actually I think in my case, I can similarly should install linux not in UEFI mode.

For this laptop it ended working properly using an UEFI install. I could not reboot or power off properly. Had issues with touchpad. After disabling secure boot I reinstalled using UEFI no more problems.

That way you can dual boot or as in my case, wipe out Windows and install LUBUNTU (I only have 2 GB of RAM and it is shared with the video card). MATE would run good, but a bit sluggish. OPERA + LXDE excellent combination for this little laptop.

If Windows is not installed in UEFI mode, you definitely do not want to install linux in UEFI mode.
- (as yancek mentioned previously)

Identifying Your Windows Boot Mode:
You can boot into Windows and check using these instructions -
Press the Windows + R keys to open the Run dialog, type msinfo32, and press Enter.
In the right pane of System Summary in System Information, see if the BIOS Mode value says Legacy or UEFI.


http://www.eightforums.com/attachmen...o32_legacy.jpg

http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials...gacy-mode.html

Then be sure that you are installing linux in Legacy mode. Before installing, enter the command:
The next question is: Is your partitioning on the new hard drive GPT or msdos?

Weeks later I finally got the nerd nads to go through with the install. And it went great, I disabled secure boot prior, left boot mode as UEFI and Legacy, and installed Ubuntu 16 on the new drive, no hitches. Plugged old drives in, adjusted boot order for preference, re synced the system clock after booting into Windows 10 and everything is is in order. Now to see about installing Manjaro on the linux drive. Thanks for the tips, very helpful community.

edencorbin,

Indeed it is.

Please go to your original post, click on the Thread Tools tab at the top, then click on Mark this thread as solved.

Thanks.