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Comment by w1ntermute | Hacker News Reader

On my X1 Carbon, I had to go into the BIOS and disable "secure boot" in order to even boot from a Linux Live USB drive. That would already deter a good number of people from even trying. I hope things don't get any worse.

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Yeah, it's a real shame.

I wonder if any kind of antitrust case could be made against Microsoft for this, as it's clearly putting an impediment in the way of installing other operating systems.. and this is a form of anti-competitive behavior.

You disabled secure boot, or you enabled legacy boot (which requires you to disable secure boot)? Windows 8 machines typically won't boot off USB by default (not initing USB at firmware time saves a noticeable amount of time), but you can do it via the bootloader options menu without having to change any firmware settings

Apologies for OT question: Which distro are you using to (presumably successfully) boot on the X1 Carbon?

Xubuntu 12.10. See my post about my experiences here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4848375

How did you get Linux on a USB drive? That in itself is a PITA and an obstacle for me.

Personally, I think having to specifically enable boot-from-USB in the BIOS is a very valuable security measure. However, I do support the ability of everyone to control their own PC.

It's not hard at all. In Ubuntu you can set up a live USB using the Ubuntu Live USB creator[0]. More directions in the Ubuntu docs[1]. On Windows, there's the LinuxLive USB Creator[2].

0: https://launchpad.net/usb-creator

1: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromUSBStick

2: http://www.linuxliveusb.com/

Yes, I know I can do it since I've done it before.

I'm just saying I find it much more involved than changing a simple BIOS setting.

I have use this before:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_create_and_use_Live_USB...

Very simple.

IIRC the Arch isos are set up such that you can literally dd them onto a usb drive and they're automatically bootable. Not sure if any other distros do this, but they ought to.

Keep in mind though that your mainboad must support USB-HDD mode for that to work. Many mainboards don't though, for these you need to install a bootloader on the plug.

unetbootin is in the repositories.

This. It runs on the three main OSs and creates USB sticks for many distros, it's awesome.

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