In this configuration Fedora 18 Beta would boot and install, as would Ubuntu 12.10, and of course Mint and openSuSE would not. With UEFI Secure Boot enabled, the Live USB media for Linux Mint and openSUSE wouldn't even try to boot.įinally, I tried the 'compromise' configuration - Legacy Boot disabled Secure Boot both disabled. But Ubuntu 12.10 booted with absolutely no problem. Fedora 18 Beta would try, but failed - the necessary security certification is not yet included on the 18 Beta distribution. In this configuration, the Live USB media for Linux Mint and openSuSE wouldn't even try to boot as they don't have EFI bootloaders included. Next I went to the other extreme, disabled Legacy Boot and enabled Secure Boot. All of them boot from their Live USB stick, install to the SSD and then boot with no trouble. I found that with this enabled, I could install and boot any of the four Linux distributions I have tested so far - Fedora 18 Beta, openSuSE 12.3 Milestone 1 (Build 232), Linux Mint 14.1 and Ubuntu 12.10. The first question concerned the Legacy Boot BIOS configuration. So this time I wanted to try a few more things before settling on the final configuration. On the first pass through this, I was only interested in getting Linux installed and working, but in doing that I had come up with more questions than answers. With that done, I started investigating UEFI booting a bit more carefully. Total time to change the disk: less than 10 minutes. Put the bottom cover back on and slide it up to lock into place. One screw to remove the disk drive, disconnect the SATA/power cable, remove the frame from the disk and put it on the SSD drive, connect the cable and slide/screw it back into place. Seriously - less than a minute! If only they were all this easy. Slide the battery release tab again, and slide the bottom cover down. Slide the battery release tab and remove the battery. A quick web search shows how trivial that is - especially compared to opening the AO 522. Next job: opening the case of the Pavilion dm1-4310. That all took about an hour, but there were no major problems. Step number one in that process is extracting the SSD drive from the AO 522, which involves opening the case and remembering where I had put the original Acer hard drive, so I could put it back in again. Total time to change the HP Pavilion dm1-4310 disk: less than 10 minutes. That gave me the idea of extracting the Samsung SSD from my Acer Aspire One 522 (AO 522), and putting it in this HP Pavilion to see how that goes. So I was starting to become pretty sure that this would turn out to be my new preferred notebook system. The hardware seems very solid too (did I mention that it doesn't have the accursed Synaptic ClickPad?), and although the Wi-Fi adapter is currently ahead of most Linux distributions, that won't last long. It boots, runs, suspeds, wakes up and shuts down amazingly quickly. One thing that impressed me about it was how fast it is, for this kind of system. So, now I have had this lovely new HP sub-notebook for a few days, and I have loaded and reloaded various Linux distributions on it a lot of times. I also understand that my suggestion will amount to somewhat less than urinating in the ocean, but it's the thought that counts. I understand that the logistics of distribution and support for offering multiple operating systems for all systems would be significant, but simply offering any computer with no operating system shouldn't be too difficult. I was pleased that HP asked me to complete a 'Customer Satisfaction Survey', and in that survey I said that I thought they should offer to sell any system with no operating system installed. I knew that Microsoft would get their cut of the money, because it was preloaded with Windows 8, and I knew that I would probably not actually use Windows, but that didn't matter to me. I didn't want just any random laptop, or just whatever some OEM was willing to sell me without an operating system loaded. I purchased this new laptop because it was what I wanted, and I had been watching for it for quite a while.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |