UEFI or Legacy boot?

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1

Hi there!
I just got a Lenovo G500, which comes with Windows 8 preinstalled. I’d like to install openSUSE 13.1 via DVD alongside Windows 8, but here’s the question: should I configure the bios in order to use Legacy boot instead of UEFI? I know openSUSE supports UEFI, I just don’t get if using Legacy will make things easier or not.
And what if I wanted to remove Windows and leave all the space to openSUSE? Would that make any difference in choosing how to boot?
Thanks a lot guys! lol!

2

On Sat 14 Dec 2013 12:46:02 PM CST, Codalunga wrote:

Hi there!
I just got a Lenovo G500, which comes with Windows 8 preinstalled. I’d
like to install openSUSE 13.1 via DVD alongside Windows 8, but here’s
the question: should I configure the bios in order to use Legacy boot
instead of UEFI? I know openSUSE supports UEFI, I just don’t get if
using Legacy will make things easier or not.
And what if I wanted to remove Windows and leave all the space to
openSUSE? Would that make any difference in choosing how to boot?
Thanks a lot guys! lol!

Hi
I would leave it as it is, even without another OS installed. You
should use the existing efi partition and set openSUSE to ‘not format’.

I would suggest if contemplating upgrading windows to 8.1 to do it now
AFAIK, it creates another partition during the update…

I would suggest booting from a Live CD to ensure all is booting ok
before the install.

Don’t forget o backup any files etc before installing. The other option
is to leave the system as is and get another hard drive install that
and preserve the original… This is what I did with my HP 2000, then
just used dd for the winre and recovery partitions to re-install
windows.

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° SUSE Knowledge Partner (Linux Counter #276890)
SLED 11 SP3 (x86_64) GNOME 2.28.0 Kernel 3.0.101-0.8-default
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3

Ok, so I’ll leave UEFI as it is! I’m planning to upgrade to Windows 8.1 tomorrow, then I’ll try to install openSUSE following thisguide. I’ll let you guys know how it goes!

4

Sorry for the double post, but here’s how it went:

  1. I tried to install via EFI. The USB flash drive started, but I was unable to set “no KMS” (the only way in order not to get a black screen after a couple of seconds).
  2. I decided to try the legacy mode
  3. From that, I was able to set no KMS, and the installation went well. I kept the default settings, and installed /, swap and /home on the free space of the drive.
  4. After the reboot, I could only access to Windows 8. The BIOS gave me no options to start from GRUB, so I re-installed openSUSE
  5. This time, I enabled “Boot from MBR” and disabled “Boot from / partition”
  6. After reboot, I was able to enter my brand new openSUSE system lol!

Since I installed MBR and GRUB2 (instead of GRUB2-EFI), I cannot boot into Windows 8 right from GRUB, but I can still access it with no problem by changing boot order in BIOS and selecting the EFI partition.

Then I only had a small problem with my Broadcom 43142, which didn’t connect right after boot. Installing broadcom-wl and broadcom-wl-kmp-desktop via packman seems to have solved this issue!

Hopefully this might help some other Lenovo G500 users :wink: