Any Windows 8 laptop requires "secure boot" does it not? If I'm not mistaken that's where your issues stem from. Just Micro$oft trying to get even more control from what I've heard. — Sent from Mailbox On Thu, Oct 2, 2014 at 12:58 AM, Frank Cox <theatre at melvilletheatre.com> wrote: > Today I found myself in need of a laptop to run Centos on. And that simple statement led to an all-day odyssey. > My original plan was to purchase a laptop and install Centos 6 on it. I went to Staples and tried booting it on every model of laptop that they had in the store. They all come with Windows 8 installed, and for the edification of anyone who doesn't know this (I didn't until today) you have to conduct a real song and dance to get to the bios settings on one of those things: > boot windows > move mouse pointer to the top right corner of the screen > move down to setting menu (gear) that shows up > click on power off icon > Hold shift key and left-click on "restart" > it goes to the troubleshooting screen > click on advanced troubleshooting > click on "change uefi settings" > now we get to the bios > set secure boot off > set legacy boot priority > And then you can boot from a USB flash drive. *whew* (It's easy to put it back afterward, just go into the bios and tell it set to defaults, save and exit.) > Anyway, I tried booting a Centos 6 Live CD image on a usb flash drive on every single model of laptop they had in stock and no joy on any of them -- they either hung altogether, started booting and hung at some point along the way, started a continuous cycle of start booting, reset, start booting again, or kernel panicked. Every last one. > I then tried a Centos 7 Live CD image on another usb flash drive and then the third machine that I tried it on (Lenovo Ideapad S400 Touch) worked. So I bought that one and have now wiped Windows off of its hard drive and installed Centos 7 so it now looks and acts like a real computer. > I never would have thought that it would take all bloody day to purchase one laptop. (And I'm going to be having nightmares about that Windows Boot Manager thing.) > Since it has now become amazingly difficult to get a laptop if you're not planning to use Windows, at least around here, I'm wondering what the rest of you fine folks do when it comes to purchasing a laptop? Next time this comes up, I'd rather not have to spend all day on something that used to take fifteen minutes. > -- > MELVILLE THEATRE ~ Real D 3D Digital Cinema ~ www.melvilletheatre.com > _______________________________________________ > CentOS mailing list > CentOS at centos.org > http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos