Re: "Secure Boot" motherboards (to avoid)?

On Sat, 10 May 2014 13:50:00 -0700, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote:
> For whatever new motherboard I buy, do I need to be on the lookout
> for the possibility that it may incorporate some form of non-easily-
> disablable UEFI/SecureBoot firmware that will prevent me from booting
> anything other than Windoze?  Or is this generally a non-issue for
> stand-alone (sold-alone) consumer motherboards?

The easiest thing is to completely disable CrippledBoot
("SecureBoot") in the BIOS. It's also possible to have
a "shim" in place to deal with the even more complex task
of getting UEFI boot working.

Examples can be found here:

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

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

I'm not sure if a comparable approach exists for
FreeBSD. I hope to avoid this stupid topic as long
as possible, constantly resisting the urge to buy
some "modern" hardware. :-)

So if you can, disable CrippleBoot and UEFI at all.
It's easier that way.

Remember: As soon as something fully works, it will be
obsoleted by something that doesn't really work, see
for example APM and ACPI, HAL and so on. :-)

> P.S.  I don't know if this is relevant or not, but for the record, it is
> my intention at the present time to *never* run Windows 8.anything. 

You're doing a good service to your mental health. :-)

> I do
> however use Windows 7 on occasion, and would almost certainly be using
> that on this new system I'll be building... in addition to a variety of
> other operating systems, including FreeBSD.  (Horray for cheap sATA
> hot-swap racks!)

It should be possible to run "Windows 7" in the normal mode
("legacy mode" or "compatibility mode"), along with other
operating systems. Just make sure that you either use a
partitioning scheme that doesn't cause trouble, or you use
"single disks" (a real disk per OS), either selectable or
hot-swappable (so one of them doesn't trash the others).

-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...
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