[Discuss] Disabling UEFI and dual booting Linux and Windows

[bogstad at pobox.com (Bill Bogstad)]

On Fri, Nov 16, 2012 at 12:34 PM, Rich Pieri <richard.pieri at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 16 Nov 2012 11:57:58 -0500
> Bill Bogstad <bogstad at pobox.com> wrote:
>
>> It looks like at least some Lenovo UEFI systems are SERIOUSLY broken.
>>  This actually has nothing to do with whether secure booting is turned
>> on or it.
>
> An OEM shipping a broken firmware? That never happens. :)

There's broken and then there's deliberately checking for alternative
OSes and refusing to boot them.   I seem to recall that Microsoft got
into trouble in the early days of Windows where they would check for
DR-DOS and refuse to run.

> But seriously, I find it interesting (in the "glad it's not me" sense)
> that the firmware includes an explicit check for RHEL but Lenovo does
> not offer RHEL as an option for this system.

They may very well have large customers who have contracts requiring
RHEL to be usable on any hardware they purchase.
Just because Lenovo doesn't "offer" the option doesn't mean they don't
have to (minimally) support it.

Bill Bogstad