On Tuesday, April 02, 2013 23:41:36, Gary A Mort wrote: [...] > Secondly, I had no end of heck dealing with UEFI. I could install Linux > Mint[a Ubuntu derivative] just fine but when it came time to reboot, it > kept going to windows. In the end, I disabled UEFI since I was doing a > separate hard drive anyway and just switch it back on when I go to windows.
In the short run disabling UEFI is fine. However I recommend watching the following talk regardless, because there's a tool available to manipulate the UEFI keys so that you "own" your own system. By default the root key is one owned by Microsoft, and you can replace it with your own, as well as other things. http://mirror.linux.org.au/linux.conf.au/2013/mp4/Making_UEFI_Secure_boot_work_for_you.mp4 > I have a low end, slow laptop and Linux Mint was nice and zippy, did > everything at the speed I wanted.....except the silly Realtek wireless > card would not work properly. It constantly dropped my connection, > would not connect, would not connect to open wifi networks, etc. > > It got to the point that I finally gave up and am unhappily using > Windows 8 and counting the days until I can upgrade to a new > computer....this time I will double check the network card compatibility > before getting it and then I will finally be back on Mint and happy. Out of curiosity was this in combination with using ndiswrapper? Wireless on Linux is sometimes still in a troubled state because the kernel developers can't get specs on the devices from the manufacturer, and the firmware is sometimes buggy. Some kernel versions have better support for specific devices than others. And yeah, unfortunately when buying hardware desitined for Linux, there's a lot of "let the buyer beware" to take account for. :-/ So I agree that it takes research beforehand. -- Chris -- Chris Knadle [email protected] _______________________________________________ Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) Vassar College Feb 6 - Raspberry Pi Mar 6 - 10th Anniversary Meeting - Linux where you least expect it Apr 3 - Typography: Physical Art to Digital Art
