The "guide" to secure boot

[ATeal]

This is a lazy post, kind of, my /friend/ has a laptop, first device I've seen with secure boot and because it's not my laptop I'm slightly lazy towards fixing it. I do not support secure boot so I'd never buy one with it on, I support secure booting but not the way it's been done btw.

With this in mind I did some reading, and some more reading and it's hard to care but I cannot let him use Ubuntu, It's now more crap than ever (I left with 11.04 now it's .. wow) I left for MATE btw

Is there a guide, a how to, something with clear instructions (this is not something I've ever had to do as I said, or anything like) on how to get it working, Secure boot cannot be disabled - first thing we checked for.

There probably is like a critical term I missed when conducting searches, I tried small varients of "Linux mint secure boot guide" but when I encountered talk of other boot loaders, stuff like that, I was reduced to (almost) the guy who just tries stuff in the hope it works with no understanding, only I chose to back out and try and read.

Please do help me with this, I recommend Linux Mint MATE to all potential converts (as opposed to Ubuntu, all those years ago) but this is a BIG problem if it wont actually work, I cannot recommend Ubuntu because well... Look at it.

Thanks guys.

[bigj231]

I don't believe anyone has come up with an easy, reliable way of disabling secure boot yet. If it's an ARM based system, you're SOL. On x86 systems, you can try EasyBCD.
<rant>This whole fiasco is the exact reason that I did not buy Windows 8, will not buy Windows 8, and will recommend that all of my friends and family avoid Windows 8. This is aside from the fact that it's interface is garbage (at least it was in the consumer preview) and that it's much slower on my hardware than 7 was. (Which was already painfully slow compared to Mint)</rant>

[ATeal]

Could you give more information? Or keep this bumped. The UI is one of the reasons I don't recommend Ubuntu any more, it is infact THE MAIN reason.

[bigj231]

As I said before, you could try EasyBCD to disable secure boot and then install whatever you want. I'm not sure how it works, or if it works, since I've never needed to use it. I've only seen others recommend it through other forums. Google comes up with approximately 339000 hits for "how to use easybcd" The first result is a youtube video. It doesn't get much lazier than that. No reading required.
If your friend bought an ARM based laptop, there is no way of disabling Secure boot. He is stuck with Windows 8 on an ARM based system.
I don't care for Unity either. That's precisely why I use Mint with Cinnamon. I even used Cinnamon on Ubuntu 12.04 before Mint 13 was released.

[srs5694]

Is there a guide, a how to, something with clear instructions (this is not something I've ever had to do as I said, or anything like) on how to get it working, Secure boot cannot be disabled - first thing we checked for.

If it's an x86/x86-64 computer with a Windows 8 logo, then Secure Boot can be disabled. The user interface might not be obvious (maybe it's behind a door marked "beware of the leopard"), but Microsoft requires that Secure Boot can be disabled on x86/x86-64 computers with Windows 8 logos. If it's an ARM-based computer, OTOH, Microsoft requires that Secure Boot can not be disabled. On a computer like that, your best bet in the short term is to return it and make it clear why it's being returned. I expect that a workaround will be available within a few months, but I can't promise that.

The only page I know of that provides anything resembling step-by-step instructions for dealing with Secure Boot is this page of mine on the topic. It's still a little rough and unclear on a few points, though, because the relevant Linux software is still under development and because details vary greatly from one computer to another. You could also check out Matthew Garrett's blog. He's a former Red Hat developer who wrote the Shim boot loader, which is Red Hat's/Fedora's tool for booting with Secure Boot active. SUSE and Ubuntu are apparently going to be using the same software, so it's starting to look like Shim will soon be semi-standard in the Linux community.

On x86 systems, you can try EasyBCD.

No, EasyBCD is useful only on BIOS systems, according to its own FAQ.