Re: UEFI

[Joe <joe@jretrading.com>]

On Wed, 9 Jul 2014 16:49:51 +0200
Thierry de Coulon <tcoulon@decoulon.ch> wrote:

> On Wednesday 09 July 2014 15.53:22 Bzzzz wrote:
> 
> > BTW, sorry to hijack a bit this thread, but what could
> > be the advantages to use UEFI (I just have Debian on my
> > laptop and disabled it from ancient posts I read).
> 
> 
> AFAIK it could be usefull for *very* big disks (but I can't see their
> use on a laptop).
> 
> Other than that, I can see only multiboot systems (Hackintoshes  need
> it). I don't really know about Win8 - that I don't have or use. My
> undestanding is that *pre-installed* Windows 8 require UEFI & secure
> boot. But I once downloaded a test version of Win 8 Enterprise (free
> from M$) and it installed perfectly (well... as perfectly as Windows
> can) on the IDE harddisk of an older dual-core machine, with, as far
> as I know, no UEFI (at least none I could turn on/off).
> 

To add a bit of general information, I unfortunately require Windows
on a laptop, and all the cheap laptops come with Win8. I have an HP
255G1 (AMD processor) and chose not to disturb the Win8 system.

When necessary, I boot to a Sid installation on a USB hard drive (I
also have a Sid VM within Windows on Virtualbox, but to use public
wi-fi I insist on having a proper OS running on the hardware). I needed
to adjust the BIOS to enable legacy mode, which disabled secure boot.
Win8 still boots quite happily in that mode.

OEM Windows hasn't come with installation media since before XP, so one
or more partitions on the original drive will contain the recovery
installation, and could (probably) be removed, and replaced if recovery
of Windows were ever necessary. But since Windows is probably severely
booby-trapped to try to prevent copying, if I was going to mess about
with the original installation, I'd buy another hard drive.

-- 
Joe