Again, one can take the harm out of UEFI/EFI Firmware/BIOS:
DISABLE "SECURE BOOT".
That frees you from the dependency of MS-signed keys for OS or software... And saves you from a lot of configuration trouble.

To be fair, coreboot + intel me disabled can be done up until Intel Gen 10 on quite a few processors.

If you wonder why I know this, look up Nitrokey.com and then check NitroPC on their website.

Nitropc uses that.

My point being, UEFI is very often a pile of unneeded crap.

The only exception is for people who work for people who have the gall to think that windows serves any purpose on any rational level.

Which is  a "deceptive, stupid, or morally depraved" argument

Then again, bosses who feel like Windows serves a purpose are very common... so the above criteria does alas apply.

Note that UEFI offers a vast attack surface compared to traditional BIOS booting and SecureBoot does actually help mitigate some of this, which is why the Debian developers have gone to the trouble of supporting it. If you're using a UEFI capable machine then SecureBoot should be enabled. "Legacy" (CSM) boot support is emulated through the UEFI firmware and so does not improve security in any way; using UEFI boot with SecureBoot enabled is more secure than using "Legacy" boot.

You will have to get accustomed to efi and GPT with new HW. I bought a new Acer laptop about 2 years ago that does not have the possibility anymore to configure CSM.

efi and GPT are mandatory.

New HW, yeah... but quick question,

Why would we want *new hardware*

I refuse to use uefi, as much as possible, because I don't care who it is, especially the big three corporate goons whose names I tire of saying, but even like RIAA, another bullshit artist corporation, hollywood, a hugely awful corpse,  or any of them, etc...

Their real reason for data collection has nothing to do with anti-terrorism or any of that lying crap...

Look up ciphersaber.com, for the real reason.

Btw, I think in particular, they want to have assurance that even if their copyright infringement issues happen, they will still make money enough to cover that which they are, but they are so greedy, there is no limit to how far they will take this. This feeds their ego, to be able to amass ungodly amounts of wealth and if they lose it, it hurts their egos, so that's why they do this.

They need to know this, but:

They *DO NOT* Need *OUR INFORMATION!* *EVER!*

They just don't need to collect it. I wouldn't care if the government and corporations could be trusted, which its clear is a huge false usually anyhow.

The problem is, they aren't the only ones who can take advantage of UEFI.  There are huge, serious vulnerabilities that the original bios never had that UEFI has due to there being a remote connection usually before the OS even is loaded.

There are malware safe havens anyhow across the globe... so yeah... no.

Unless you have coreboot + intel me disabled or libreboot, or something on that level or better.

Point being, we actually don't need to get used to using uefi, its a trash setup that serves no good purpose on any level.

I feel like it would have been nice to have a *drop mic emoji for this message*

Meh... oh well!

It's been a while since I did it, but I do seem to remember seeing two entries for the USB flash drive. I'll have to wait until I have an entire day free to make sure I have a working system when I'm finished.

Normally all PCs have a boot override. Use that and have a close look. on a efi system you should find the boot stick twice, without note and with (efi) or similar. For an efi installation use the efi marked option.

I don't know if that's true for my laptop. When I tried it with the default (UEFI) BIOS settings, I could not boot Linux at all. I would have preferred to have the BIOS support UEFI, as then everything would be current, but I could not make it work. I might try it again, though I'm not thrilled about going through the BIOS settings again.

it's UEFI which prevents Linux booting via external drives

UEFI is perfectly capable of booting via external drives. Just use the removable loader location (/EFI/Boot/bootx64.efi on the EFI system partition). The grub-install command provides a --removable option to do just that.

See also https://www.rodsbooks.com/efi-bootloade … ive-naming.

Thanks for the link. That's one of those things that's really difficult to find via a search.

@rolfie and Camtaf

My laptops are both HP, which still offers legacy boot as a BIOS option, though my newish laptop offers a Frankenstein legacy boot. And yes, GPT isn't really the problem, it's UEFI which prevents Linux booting via external drives. One advantage of changing to legacy boot is that Microsoft is not downloading Windows 11 for me, even though the hardware would otherwise support it.

efi and GPT are mandatory.

Up until now, I've had no problem installing Linux using MBR. However, the latest Linux Mint and Fedora mandate that GPT be used. I gave up on both of them. Sparky Linux does it right, advising the use of GPT, but allowing MBR.

For 5.0, please don't mandate GPT.