Fortunately, it appears manufacturers are still in at least some cases equipping their computers with Secure Boot off switches. Umm, no thanks, if I can't have a DIY, my choice OS, I'll just get a Mac.Īnd there are Secure Boot hacks and shims that work just fine if you get every one of a hundred variables just right. Yes, I know, I know, certain distributions have bought secure boot keys from Microsoft and now work with Secure Boot. In my world, having an off switch for Secure Boot is a must. It was clearly marked, and easy to set to 'off'. It was pretty easy to do: About 25 minutes: 15 to discover that the F12 was the key that invoked the 'BIOS Setup', and 10 minutes exploring the BIOS Setup to find Secure Boot. My first move was to turn off secure boot. According to the instructions that came with my computer, there's even a Ubuntu version of it available. They seem less wedded to Microsoft than others I've seen. Once I even had to use the Dell restore to factory state because I borked the C: drive partition and maybe another one.īy the way, my first impression of this Dell is it's a pretty good machine, and that I'll be buying Dell more often. In hindsight the process was fairly straightforward, but at the time there seemed so many alternatives that it took me more than a day of work to complete the installation. This was my first Windows/Linux dual boot installation this decade, my first detailed UEFI boot installation dualboot ever. Launching Windows from Grub2 isn't something I'd look forward to. This installation had to be a dual boot.Īlthough my Dell has a 'legacy mode', I decided to do the entire boot in UEFI mode. One downside of not buying pre-loaded from a specialty shop is that Windows and its diagnostic utilities must run on the computer in order that your warranty be honored.

Did I mention this 12GB RAM computer cost $399.95, including 2 year warranty? Don't try that at System 76 or Penquin Computing. Some might question why I bought a Windows computer at Costco instead of getting a Linux-preloaded computer from a specialty shop. Had that been impossible, I'd have returned it that night. I did two things the day I bought it: I charged the battery, and I made sure it was possible to turn off the monopolistic 'Secure Boot'. Plenty of time to make sure they run Linux.

I buy my laptops from Costco because if I don't like them, I have 90 days to return them. In mid July, 2018, I bought a Windows 10 equipped Dell Inspilaptop from Costco.

SystemRescueCd 10.02 instaling