Install siduction onto a UEFI motherboard / laptop

[dibl]

Can anybody tell, what the advantages of UEFI are and whether one can really benefit from?

UEFI is the replacement for legacy BIOS firmware.  For any new computer that you buy, you will have a UEFI firmware, instead of the BIOS that you have been accustomed to.  So it really isn't a question of "benefits" -- we simply must adapt to this new piece of technology that has been adopted by the industry.

[towo]

But any UEFI Firmware has ha legacy or csm mode, and for Linux there is no benefit for using UEFI.
Specials, which UEFI is able to give for the user are only helpfull for installed Windows systems.
So there is no need to use UEFI for linux systems. Even for Windows or dualboot systems UEFI is not nessesary to use. Only Secureboot depends on UEFI.

[mylo]

Hi guys,

thank you both for your informations. Now I know what to do on this, this is to say nothing. Good for me!

[mdmarmer]

I purchased a new Dell desktop with Windows 8.1 Pro, UEFI.  I wanted to dual boot Windows and siduction.  I followed the guide above but the USB stick I prepared does not boot.  The error lines (there are only 2 different lines repeating over and over) scroll by very fast, but they appear to read
error: failure reading sector 0x0 from 'hd1'
error: no such device (then a longer line that I haven't read in full, ends with the 11-23-2014 date of the siduction Indian Summer .iso)
I am able to install siduction with UEFI turned off but then Windows won't boot.
Any ideas?  TIA -- Mike

I did turn off Secure Boot and I turned off Fast Boot in the Windows Power Options.

[mdmarmer]

OK -- I now have UEFI and dual boot with windows working.  I was able to fix my legacy (MBR) install of siduction with boot-repair.  I prepared a usb stick of boot-repair and it booted correctly in UEFI mode and repaired my siduction install (it set up a chroot and uninstalled grub and installed grub-efi and did some other magic and I now have a grub menu that allows me to select either windows or siduction and everything works as it should

[KrunchTime]

This didn't work for me.  First, there were 6 folders, not 5, for the IndianSummer release.  Perhaps the [BOOT] folder should not be copied?  Second, when I opt to use the UEFI boot option for the USB drive, the following error continuously scrolls on my screen:

error: no such device: /boot/grub/x86_64-efi/2014-11-23-04-45-08-00

[melmarker]

KrunchTime: the next release will support UEFI - until then, it will be hard - best chance is to install siduction in compatibility mode - after that one could use a UEFI-capable Live-System like Kanotix, chroot into siduction an install the needed parts (grub for UEFI) - done. Or one could wait for a few weeks, i'm working on UEFI right now

[mdmarmer]

What melmarker has described to fix a legacy install of siduction is what the boot-repair usb stick (I made this usb just by extracting the files from the .iso of boot-repair and copying them to a usb stick) automated for me. The chroot and other commands i needed were set up for me, no problem.

[terroreek]

This didn't work for me.  First, there were 6 folders, not 5, for the IndianSummer release.  Perhaps the [BOOT] folder should not be copied?  Second, when I opt to use the UEFI boot option for the USB drive, the following error continuously scrolls on my screen:

error: no such device: /boot/grub/x86_64-efi/2014-11-23-04-45-08-00

I had the same problem KrunchTime, you can work around it, by copying the same file from the x86-efi folder to x86_64-efi folder.  Its an issue with the ISO image. 

[KrunchTime]

@melmarker:  Thank you for the additional info.

@mdmarmer:  Thank you for your response, but I don't want to hose my current setup and then use boot-repair to fix it.  There's always a chance that boot-repair might not work or something unforeseen could happen.  UEFI is the standard now...it's time to learn and use it.  BIOS isn't coming back.


@terroreek:  Thank you for your suggestion.  I'll give it a shot.

[terroreek]

No worries, it should work, it did for me.  After that its just follow the guide that GoinEasy9 outlines.  If you plan on using btrfs subvolumes, /boot can't be in a subvolume, I don't know if UEFI or the EFI stub understand or comprehend what a subvolume is.  So as an example this is how my T440's drive is split up. 

sda1 -> /boot/efi        100Mb/fat32
sda2 -> /boot/           1Gb/ext4
sda3->  @ > /            100Gb/btrfs
sda4->  @home > /home        260GB/btrfs
sda5 -> /home/terroreek/VMs  100Gb/ext4

[KrunchTime]

Okay, I'm making progress; terroreek's tip helped.  I am now able to use the UEFI option in the UEFI boot menu and I am able to boot into fluxbox.  Before I commence to attempt an install, is there a way to change the keyboard layout to Dvorak?  I didn't see a Dvorak option under the keyboard options in the Grub boot menu and I've tried adding the following to the boot line without success:  kbd=dvorak.

[melmarker]

We simply ignored neo layouts for a few years - the man page will help. Btw, if anyone interested - we could add this, we accept patches, that should be (relative) easy.

[KrunchTime]

@melmarker:  I was able to change the keyboard layout to Dvorak booting IndianSummer in BIOS mode.  I forget which function key enables you to do that.

[melmarker]

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