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Any modern Motherboards without UEFI & Secure boot technology built into them?

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Ottawagrant

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I'm asking this because I don't know, and it may help. Does anyone know what the bios is set for in Chromebooks? They may soon start showing up used.
 

 

WytWun

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UEFI is motherboard firmware, just as the traditional BIOS is.

I very much doubt that you will find new any of the cheaper laptops and pre-packaged desktops that come with Windows pre-installed without UEFI only booting as I seem to recall Microsoft demanding its OEMs make these available with Secure Boot enabled for Win10 pre-installs.  Some of the more expensive such machines more intended for use by gamers and developers _may_ still support Legacy (or CSM) boot mode, but I expect that it will soon become impossible to avoid UEFI on new machines in this category unless manufacturers support generic Linux installs.  The only exception I've heard of, though there may be others of course, is Purism which sells laptaps with coreboot firmware specifically for a Linux derivative (they package PureOS).  Dell supports Ubuntu on some models and System76 sells machines with Ubuntu pre-installed, but both of these have EFI+Legacy firmware.

For motherboards and barebones systems sold without drives, as well as server hardware, the firmware seems to be more likely to support both UEFI and Legacy.  I suspect that this will only continue until Microsoft decide that disabling Secure Boot makes a firmware off limits to Windows installs.  Whether coreboot can be more widely installed I haven't yet investigated...

FWIW I have a current model Intel NUC (bottom end model but not the one with Win10 pre-installed!) which has firmware that supports Legacy fallback if the boot drive isn't setup for UEFI.

BTW, was there any firmware update ever released for your problematic Asus laptop  (e.g. to add Win10 support)?  If there was and you haven't done so already, it may be worth trying it.
« Last Edit: August 25, 2017, 08:46:40 AM by WytWun »
 

 

m654321

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I think at least some of us,  here on the LL forums, would agree that UEFI (and Secure Boot) is a needless and complicated technology that has been forced on consumers buying modern computers.

At home we have 4 laptops: three older BIOS-only laptops and one more modern gaming laptop that has UEFI & Secure Boot technology - an Asus G750JS. See all setups 1 to 4 in signature).

All the BIOS-only laptops work excellently: they appear very stable & trouble-free.  This is the case with either  a Linux single-boot set-up or with a Linux/Windows dual- or triple-boot  one.  My favourite laptop is a 10 year old Dell Lattitude D630 (see setup4 in sig), which I bought 2 years ago for £70 on Amazon - excellent value for money.

In contrast, our most troublesome machine is an Asus G750JS UEFI laptop, which came preinstalled with Win8.1 - it cost a small fortune at  £1200 ... 

What did I get for the money?  Well, a machine that's limited to only running smoothly with a Windows OS single-boot system (either 8.1 or 10; Win7 wont work at all in UEFI and crashes in Legacy) - that's basically it. 

When Windows is dual-booted with Linux on our Asus G750JS (i.e. with those distros having a  UEFI support package), the system will periodically crash, which is extremely frustrating, not to mention the work that's lost.  Even with a Linux single-boot UEFI setup, I can get stability issues. Following such a crash, I'll go to the laptop's boot settings: often I find that the Boot Device List has been mysteriously wiped, i.e. there is nothing listed to boot from !   I also have stability issues when I run in Legacy/CSM on this machine.

From the above experiences, you can understand why I find the use of UEFI / Secure Boot technology in modern Motherboards to be both burdensome and unnecessary.  Are there Motherboard brands (good enough for gaming) that are supplied without this technology?  If there are, I'm quite tempted one day to build my own PC Tower and call it a UEFI-and-Secure-Boot-free-zone - oh what bliss ...! 

Looking forward to reading any of your views, experiences on this, etc ...

Mike
« Last Edit: August 25, 2017, 09:32:17 AM by m654321 »
64bit OS (32-bit on Samsung netbook) installed in Legacy mode on MBR-formatted SSDs (except pi which uses a micro SDHC card):
2017 - Raspberry pi 3B (4cores) ~ [email protected] - LibreElec, used for upgrading our Samsung TV (excellent for the task)  
2012 - Lenovo G580 2689 (2cores; 4threads] ~ [email protected] - LL3.8/Win8.1 dual-boot (LL working smoothly)
2011 - Samsung NP-N145 Plus (1core; 2threads) ~ Intel Atom [email protected] - LL 3.8 32-bit (64-bit too 'laggy')
2008 - Asus X71Q (2cores) ~ Intel [email protected] - LL4.6/Win8.1 dual-boot, LL works fine with kernel 4.15
2007 - Dell Latitude D630 (2cores) ~ Intel [email protected] - LL4.6, works well with kernel 4.4; 4.15 doesn't work
 

 

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Linux Lite 6.6 FINAL Released - Support for 22 Languages Added - See Release Announcement Section