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You need to install the rEFInd Boot Manager. I was able to install Linux Mint from CD on my 2006 MacBook.

http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/

Even if they can't directly modify the DB/DBX directly from Windows, they could easily drop a new executable in the UEFI boot sequence -- authenticated by their Secure Boot cert -- which would do it for them.

So, yes, based on those readings, I regard this as technically feasible.

I don't have any plausible theories as to why that isn't an option.

Based on my recent experience with installing Linux on my 2006 MacBook, the process is a PITA. After installing an alternative boot loader (see link below) and partitioning the hard drive, not every version of Linux will install correctly. I installed Mint Linux because the installer recognizes that it was on a MacBook and booted up fine without issue.

http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/

For those not wanting to read anything historical. The confrontation comes because the Secure Boot option of UEFI (if enabled) only ships with Microsoft keys in the firmware. Thus, Microsoft's signing service is the only practical signing service and will only sign a PE executable. The solution that Matt and company came up with was to have a module vendor wrap their keys in a PE executable, have Microsoft sign them, and then ship the signed PE executable with the signed Linux kernel module. Verification of the signed Linux module thus requires the Linux kernel to load the PE executable, verify its signature, then extract the vendor keys and continue on.

Linus rightly called out the idea as moronic and stupid. The retorts basically came in the form of "Microsoft created the standard, and is the only viable signing service for the standard". Even though alternative options could of been had, they were deemed to complicated and involved.

Life would of been much easier of Microsoft would just sign X.509 certificates like the rest of the world.

Read more about it here.

The only way to do an EFI-booted install is to install it as if it's the only OS present.

Ok, this I know something about. This is an UNTRUE statement. With a boot manager such as rEFind you can install as many os' as you want.

Ubuntu has been bootable on a Mac from a USB drive for a while. Before 12.04.2 it was harder to then install the system sometimes. See UEFI for comments on what changed. Everything should work at this point on versions after that one. Recent changes in Knoppix should allow this latest version to work too. There are a lot more people working on Mac support in Ubuntu than Knoppix though.

If you have a PC system available, it's helpful to test booting there, so you can be sure the drive is fine before moving on to fighting with whatever EFI issues pop up. It should be possible to make the drive bootable just by holding down the Option key during boot. But there are a few common EFI headaches that get easier if you just install rEFind on your boot drive, that's what I always do.

It's not an issue of "competent". It's an issue of "willing".

A major source of Linux's desktop growth is the use of live CDs. Just drop in a disk at boot, and you've got yourself a working Linux desktop to play with and perhaps even like. You can see the filesystem's different layout, you can see each application's settings saved to plain old files, and you can see the package manager's simple installation of useful software. Perhaps you can even like it and decide to install. If not, there's no changes to your computer.

That's all changed now. Now, either you your computer must be prepared for Linux first, through some means of adding a new key. While not really beyond the average user's level of competence, it is beyond their level of ambition just to try "that Linux thing". The longstanding promise of "try it without changing anything" that has fueled trials isn't wholly true any more. Supposedly Windows' bootloader will let you boot unsigned CDs, but I've tried that three times with three failures on known-good disks, so I expect there's something screwey hidden in that route, and that doesn't really solve the problem of booting once the installation's complete.

To make matters worse, there's no standard mechanism for adding the boot key. One option is an BIOS-based tool, which with come with the typical polish of a motherboard manufacturer we've had on BIOS setups for years. Expect a keyboard-based menu with unique brand-specific names. Another option that might be viable in the future is a Windows tool to add a key, which will inspire Windows to raise scary warnings about compromising security and never starting again, which will do wonders for the user's confidence.

Microsoft surely knows that Secure Boot won't affect savvy nerds from converting to Linux. They also surely know that Linux is still growing organically, relying on word-of-mouth and firsthand try-before-you-buy experience. By requiring Secure Boot to be user-modifiable, they've thrown a roadblock in the path for Linux's growth, without looking like they're being blatantly nasty. They can keep exaggerating the threat of bootloader rootkits to justify locking everybody out, then point to the key-adding ability to dispel accusations of abusing their monopoly.

I can't !@##$%^& believe how Redhat and Fedora can't handle GPT right to save their !@#$@#% lives...

RHEL5 should have included the GRUB patches to handle booting from GPT partitions... They did not. When it was released, 1TB SATA drives were available. RAID-5 with 4x1TB drives? Sorry, no, can't boot from it, unless your RAID controller is smart enough to divvy it up into pieces to make up for for the idiots at RH. I've gone through all kinds of !@##$% because RHEL5 is THE enterprise Linux operating system, and yet it doesn't !@##@$% support installing to, or booting from GPT partitions, which means you're limited to 2TB volumes, max.

Okay, so they made a bad decision, but newer versions will solve all our problems, right? Wrong! Fedora goes back and forth with @$#$%%$^@ bugs around ANACONDA and GPT. Today, I can boot-up with a Fedora 15 disc, go through the menus, take a quick look at the layout, and find I've got 1/3rd unallocated on my 3TB hard drive, because it's using old msdos partitions, and there's no way for me to tell it to use GPT. @#$#$^$%! Put a GPT signature on it you say? Okay, now ANACONDA detects the disk is corrupted and asks if it should abort or wipe it out...

Partition everything manually, you say? Well I would, but GNU parted is absolutely the most god-awful tool I've ever used...

Okay here goes... mkpart 1GB 10GB
WARNING: Not aligned, performance will be terrible... Ignore/Cancel?

WTF? It converts my human units into billions of sectors, and can't be bothered to round it off to the nearest multiple of 8, or friggin' ask me if I want it to do so? Who the hell made this crap? Math is what computers are so damn good at, WTF do I need to pull out a pocket calculator to partition my !@#$#$% computer in the year 2011?

Redhat drives me nuts. Imagine if the most popular luxury sports-car maker out there engineered their cars so that they couldn't be driven for more than 1hr straight, before shutting-down and needing to be restarted. That's the kind of fundamental stupidity we're talking about, here. Middle-of-the-road consumer hardware is over 2TB now, when are they going to fix this !@#$#%?

I know, I know, I don't need to use parted. Someone else had half a brain and hated parted, too, and made gdisk just for this purpose: http://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/ It doesn't take away from the sheer idiocy of either project...

The BIOS isn't the limiting factor when booting from a GPT disk - the OS is or rather the OS's boot loader.

Windows will not let you boot from a GPT disk on a non-EFI machine, but Linux (using GRUB2 or a patched GRUB1) works perfectly fine with GPT on my two machines here.

Take a look at this page: http://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/booting.html

If you're on windows, you'll either need EFI or a separate boot drive.
Windows cannot boot from driver larger than 2 TB

The issue is, MBR doesn't support drives that big, so you have to use GPT (which Windows won't boot from w/o EFI).
So if you're on Windows, but without EFI, you're SOL. ;)

Also, kind of a pain on *nix+BIOS combos too.

(U was helping my sister with setting up her new XP machine, only to find that OpenOffice, Mozilla, and the other goodies all had 8.3 filenames on the CD.)

THX-1138 was an admirable piece of work. Despite the fact that seemingly few even know of it, it's nonetheless managed to influence the interesting side of popular culture.

Nine Inch Nail's "The Downward Spiral" album, for example, opens with a sample from the movie even. On the other hand the Star Wars films have at times had a deleterious effect (the original---and actually Asimov approved--- I, Robot screenplay was trashed by the studio to a large part due to Star Wars . And for that alone, Star Wars actually robbed us of good sci-fi, not the opposite).

I find it interesting that, having watched the original version and then the directors cut when it recently came out, THX-1138 actually benefitted from the modern additions; it helps smooth over the production values (and is a treat to see widescreen), instead of, I dunno, changing details to make characters more kid-friendly and less edgy (*cough*).

Lucas started out with talent and vision; but mainstream audiences wanted none of that. Somewhat bitter, he created a little fantasy movie. Audiences loved it! He had learnt his lesson, and continued along those lines . . . but it would be nice if the old Lucas could safely come out now. It's not like spending lots of money on something that doesn't quite succeed will make all that much of a dent in his absurdly large bank account balance.

An excellent FreeBSD book is Michael Lucas' Absolute BSD. His Absolute OpenBSD book arrives soon.

Enjoy,

Helevius