Running Ubuntu on UEFI mode

Question

I tried installing Ubuntu 11.04 on physical machine selecting UEFI mode. It displays GRUB menu and nothing gets displayed. Any idea if Ubuntu 11.04 supports UEFI mode? if yes, how shall I make it work. When I am trying the default BIOS mode, it works fine.

Answer 1

Ubuntu does support EFI-mode booting, but this support is still relatively new, and EFI implementations vary greatly from one machine to another. Without further details, it's impossible to say why you're having problems. I recommend you post the following information:

• What hardware are you using (computer or motherboard make and model)?
• How large is your hard disk?
• What firmware are you using, if you know (InsydeH20, Award, AMI, etc.)?
• Are you trying to install from an optical disc or a USB flash drive?
• Were you able to install, or does your description ("it displays GRUB menu and then nothing gets displayed") refer to booting the installer?
• What precisely do you mean by "...and then nothing gets displayed?" That is, were you able to select an item from the GRUB menu, or was the system unresponsive at that point? If you could select an item, what happened? (Did the screen clear and then nothing happened, did the GRUB menu not disappear, etc.?)

Another point: Ubuntu 12.04 makes significant improvements in its EFI support vs. 11.10 and earlier. I can't recommend you try to use 11.10 or earlier in EFI mode.

One more point: It's relatively easy in Linux (compared to Windows) to switch between EFI-mode and BIOS-mode booting. Thus, you can install in BIOS mode and then switch to EFI-mode booting. This is most easily done if you install to a GPT disk and if you partition it with both an EFI System Partition (ESP) of 100-500 MiB and a BIOS Boot Partition of ~1 MiB.