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So, installing Ubuntu was a breeze. Make a bootable thumb drive, restart, hold alt, boot into it.

But Ubuntu isn't for me, so I thought I'd try Mint.

If I reboot and hold alt, I get a few choices to boot from. If I take out the thumb drive one of them disappears, and if I put it in it reappears. All good. And if I choose to boot from my thumb drive with Mint on it, Ubuntu starts with no message of any sort as to why.

This goes against everything I hold dear in programming. The idea that it would be so easy to install and then went about changing core functionality (without a proper warning: better love Unity!) of my computer which led to giving me no feedback whatsoever on why things aren't working, and then casually booting into itself..

I'm still kind of floored. But anyways..

Did I mess up my EFI? How do I fix this? Is there any easy way to get Ubuntu off my computer?

Seph Reed
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  • Is GRUB the best-bootloading solution? Is there an easier alternative? If you want to learn about EFI http://rodsbooks.com is best (in my opinion). You can recover, no worries, your problem is that grub is designed to work like the worst kind of rootkit, and will worm into in the root of your boot device - thus the name. – mikeserv Dec 08 '15 at 02:44
  • This seems pretty interesting. It's kind of a lot of information, but I guess it does answer the question of how hard it is to install or try out a different distro. But I can't believe it. Do I really have to learn all this just to try out Mint? It seems like trying different distros should be promoted rather than require a knowledge of how bootkits work. – Seph Reed Dec 08 '15 at 02:54
  • no. you dont have to learn all of that to try out Mint. Mint will happily worm in just as easily. you just have to install it. the installation part is never hard - it never is with parasites - its the removal that sucks. – mikeserv Dec 08 '15 at 03:40
  • What's the title of the boot option that only appears when the thumb drive is present? (And @mikeserv, comparing GRUB to a rootkit is deliberately misleading: it gets installed in the same way as any other bootloader. For EFI, it's a single file in the EFI system partition and a corresponding NVRAM entry.) – Wyzard Dec 08 '15 at 03:58
  • @Wyzard - thats entirely untrue - you dont install an EFI bootloader. EFI is the bootloader. and copying a file to a filesystem which the EFI mounts is a lot different than wedging a raw binary into the head of a disk - especially when you must wedge multiple such chunks, and squeeze into space between filesystems. the UEFI var change isnt necessary if you just copy your menu app to a default path. – mikeserv Dec 08 '15 at 04:00
  • @mikeserv, "wedging raw binary into the head of a disk" is how PC BIOS booting has always worked; it's not unique to GRUB. It's also not relevant to EFI. And by "bootloader" I mean things like GRUB, ELILO, and rEFInd. If you want to nitpick, let me restate: the EFI implementation of GRUB is an EFI application that gets installed just like any other EFI application. – Wyzard Dec 08 '15 at 04:09
  • @Wyzard - i didnt say it was ever pretty, or else that it wasnt at some point a necessary wickedness. but it definitely isnt pretty or necessary today. and it doesnt always get installed just like - most distributions have merely halfheartedly adapted their old installations - UEFI/BIOS partitions and other nastiness. grub has always been hugely complicated anyway. – mikeserv Dec 08 '15 at 04:10
  • @Wyzard - GRUB is not just "a single file in the EFI system partition." GRUB consists of many files. Even GRUB Legacy consisted of more than one file. – fpmurphy Dec 08 '15 at 04:21
  • @fpmurphy1 - i seem to remember reading that you can compile the whole kit and kaboodle into a single EFI executable, actually. – mikeserv Dec 08 '15 at 04:23
  • EFI has its own built-in bootloader which is used to load GRUB which is a multi-bootloader. – fpmurphy Dec 08 '15 at 04:23
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    @mikeserv. You certainly can compile all the .modules (*.mod) into a single image, you still have a number of other files such as the message catalogs and configuration files. – fpmurphy Dec 08 '15 at 04:27
  • @fpmurphy1, as far as the EFI firmware is concerned, GRUB is a single file: grubx64.efi. Once that's launched, it reads other files too. But this question seems to be about the wrong copy of GRUB being launched by the firmware, so only that single file seen by EFI seems relevant. – Wyzard Dec 08 '15 at 04:29
  • @fpmurphy1 - good to know, I guess. the next time im feeling abnormally masochistic i might give it a shot. by the way, even i say bootloader because every one else does, but i dont really think it is. the whole bootloader concept was originally a workaround for the OS becoming too large for the BIOS to call. it is anathema in an EFI context - there isn't such a problem that you need to work around with bootloading. you know what i mean? – mikeserv Dec 08 '15 at 04:30
  • @Wyzard. True, the default EFI bootloader actually only loads a single image which in turn generally loads various GRUB .mod files. The name of that image is immaterial to EFI for the most part and is not necessarily GRUBX64.EFI – fpmurphy Dec 08 '15 at 04:36
  • @SephReed, please disregard the bashing and FUD above: there are other bootloaders out there that you may want to explore when you have the skills/experience, but GRUB works fine in general, and sticking with your distro's default bootloader is your best bet if you're not an expert. It sounds like your problem is related to EFI's NVRAM variables, but there's not enough detail in the question to determine exactly what's going on. It could also be that the GRUB on the Mint install drive is confused, and EFI isn't the culprit at all. – Wyzard Dec 08 '15 at 04:39
  • @Wyzard - im fine with it being described as bashing - because it is, and, as i think, it is well deserved. but it isnt FUD. i know how it works - as much as any regular guy might understand the scripts that write scripts that write scripts - and i think its nonsense. i also consider it is strange for you to say that the guy should use any intermediate at all - all that is necessary is copying the kernel to the esp. the EFI will call the kernel. grub is nonsensical even in its premise. – mikeserv Dec 08 '15 at 04:45
  • @mikeserv, Ubuntu installs GRUB by default. Ubuntu's kernel updates run scripts that automatically regenerate grub.cfg with an entry for the new kernel. Those scripts correctly handle a variety of advanced scenarios, such as having the vmlinuz file on a RAID or LVM device. In short: Ubuntu makes GRUB "just work". The kernel's EFI stub is a neat feature, but unless the distro automates installing kernels that way, it fails the "just works" criteria that a non-expert wants. – Wyzard Dec 08 '15 at 04:52
  • @mikeserv, yes, Ubuntu could engineer their boot process that way. But currently they use GRUB, and the comments on a StackExchange question are not an appropriate (or sensible) place to lobby for that to change. Please take your bashing elsewhere; none of it, except maybe the link in the first comment, has been constructive in resolving the OP's problem. – Wyzard Dec 08 '15 at 05:06
  • @Wyzard - perhaps. though, as i consider, the actual problem is that people keep telling other people to do things the hard way. still, though, i wasnt suggesting Ubuntu do it. the distribution has nothing to do with it. do it or dont - its the user's decision. – mikeserv Dec 08 '15 at 05:07
  • Alright. So perhaps the GRUB in my Bootable Mint thumb drive is seeing Ubuntu and going for it, rather than being somehow tied to it's own drive?

    So maybe if I try to install OSX it will not do the same thing?

    What more information can I possibly give? I REALLY REALLY don't want to be stuck with Ubuntu.

     – Seph Reed Dec 08 '15 at 06:26
  • @Wyzard The title of the boot drive is EFI. – Seph Reed Dec 08 '15 at 06:27
  • I was hoping the name might be a little more descriptive, but as a best guess, that may refer to the EFI fallback bootloader (bootx64.efi) which is the usual way that removable media like flash drives are made bootable under EFI. Not a certainty, but it points toward the flash drive's GRUB that's running. Press Escape quickly after choosing that EFI option to try to get a GRUB menu, and see if it says "Ubuntu" or "Mint". – Wyzard Dec 08 '15 at 06:34
  • It says Ubuntu. Also, there's one other option to boot from at first called "Windows" which just gives a black screen that says "no operating system found".

    And when I installed Ubuntu I checked the box for virtual hard drive partitioning (or something like that). I looked it up, it was able to combine hard drives and make partitioning a lot easier.

     – Seph Reed Dec 08 '15 at 16:11

1 Answers1

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I ended up fixing my computer by reinstalling OSX. Everything works fine now, I could go on to install anything I like from here.

https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/164975/going-back-to-mac-os-x-after-installing-ubuntu

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