[arch-general] UEFI experience - recommendations needed.

[David Benfell]

On 1/5/2013 12:23 PM, Mike Cloaked wrote:
> 
> Does anyone have experience with such a UEFI system on this list? Apart
> from the info on the arch wiki and the install wiki info (which I have been
> reading), are systems like this reliable once installed? Does the routine
> pacman update process for kernels lead to issues requiring manual
> intervention with EFI/GPT or it is as generally reliable as BIOS/MBR?

I am responding to this email from a Windows system.

The reason it is a Windows system is that I was unable to find *any*
distribution, even those that claim to support EFI in their installers,
that in fact successfully installs on this particular system. The
problem is not, by the way, the weirdness with keys; Linux just doesn't
boot following the installation. grub-efi isn't getting it right.

There are instructions for dealing with EFI on the Arch Wiki. They did
not work for me.

It's too bad, because from everything I can see, EFI and GPT are not, in
principle, such bad ideas. But right now, trying to get Linux to run on
such a system is problematic.

*If* you have the option to choose between EFI and legacy BIOS on your
hardware, your situation is different from mine. But I would suggest
that you need to *really* understand EFI and have debugging tools for it
available.