Tuesday 24 September 2019

Can Linux OS Boot off MBR in Native UEFI?


While UEFI & GPT go together, I was wondering if Linux can be instilled and boot off MBR Partition type while in Native UEFI Mode?



Answer



Linux can certainly boot off an MBR disk in EFI mode. The trouble is that this type of configuration is poorly tested, and you may have problems getting your boot loader registered with the EFI. You might need to name your boot loader EFI/BOOT/bootx64.efi and rely on the EFI using this fallback filename.


Also, most Linux distributions' installation programs won't make it easy to set up this sort of configuration; you may need to install to GPT and convert that to MBR, or install in BIOS mode and then install an EFI boot loader after the fact.


All of which brings up the question: WHY? MBR partitioning offers precious few advantages over GPT. The main reason I can think of for favoring MBR is that it's supported by older OSes (DOS, BeOS, OS/2, etc.) -- but those OSes all boot exclusively in BIOS mode, so if you're dual-booting with one of them, you'll be better off installing Linux in BIOS mode, too, because boot-mode switching is pretty awkward. To be sure, it can be done, and there are tools that can help, but without understanding the reason for wanting to do what you're suggesting, it's hard to advise on what the best course of action would be.


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