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On 18/04/13 18:13, Neil Winchurst wrote: > Thanks, that has cleared up a lot. After reading your full answer I am > even more pleased that I have nothing to do with Windows. I did > mention the possibility of buying a new computer in say a year or two > and you said it would be certainly set up with UEFI. Perhaps I should > have explained that I always buy computers with no operating system on > them. I suppose, since Windows will never have been installed on it, > that will make it even simpler? > > And I certainly agree that the situation needed to be sorted out. The > BIOS set up was never meant to be around for all this time. > > Neil > It certainly will make life a lot easier if you don't have to fiddle with dual booting windows (my situation is even worse - my main workstation has 6 hard drives and 5 bare metal OS installations to choose between, setting it up was a bit of a headache). Your hypothetical new machine in a couple of years will definitely come with UEFI firmware but whatever Linux distro you choose then will certainly have evolved to the point where it can effortlessly and correctly setup your initial disk label (which should be GPT), partition the disk (add the required EFI and other boot partitions) and by then will hopefully even negotiate with the secure boot mechanism properly for signed loading. The choice of distro will count though - I just installed win7/Mint 14 on a box the other day and the installer is so simplified it's almost brain dead, with very little in the way of advanced configuration: the partitioning step was particularly bad. No support for full disk encryption, awful and lacking manual partitioning options, I don't even remember seeing options for things like LVM. It wouldn't let me specify new disk labels either. Very, very poor, although once it was up and running, Mint seemed quite nice. I know Mint is generally aimed at shall we say 'less demanding' Linux users, but all the same, they really need to sort that out. And fix the default awful wallpaper and theme, remove a ton of bloated crap that nobody wants and fix the default repo list - some of the standard repositories are either down or useless (Medibuntu for example). Actually, come to think of it, Mint wasn't really nice at all - it's getting replaced with either Debian or Arch tomorrow anyway. Cheers -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq