Adventures in Linux
(Yes, these are distro / use-case issues more than Linux ones)
Moving to a new laptop - old laptop was non-UEFI and dual booted between Solus Linux and Windows 10, which each being on a separate SSD and each using disk encryption. New laptop is UEFI only and has two NVME drives and planning for a similar setup. I boot into the default Windows 11 install and copy drivers, etc, use Win11 Media Creation tool to make a Win11 install USB drive, then proceed to format both disks.
1st Problem: Solus doesn't support Secure Boot
2nd Problem: Native resolution is 2560x1600. Solus is limited to integer scaling (1x,2x,3x) but 1x is native and too small for text while 2x is crayola res. Windows does fractional scaling just fine and so does Ubuntu/Gnome (and KDE), where 1.25x seems just about right.
3rd Problem: Graphics are either hybrid or discrete/mux. Solus works okay with the IGP-only or with the discrete, but not hybrid to use IGP for dekstop and games with the discrete. It sees the Nvidia discrete and tries to install the drivers but just fails. I do test installs with Ubuntu and it works, allowing me to run apps with either the IGP or discrete GPU in hybrid mode, and of course discrete works just fine, except...
4th problem: Ubuntu chokes if I swtich between hybrid and discrete in the BIOS - it will sort itself out, but the screen is garbled until it does.
5th problem: Solus installer wants to share the drive with Windows 11 (because it sees the EFI partition) but won't install onto the second drive. I change the partition type from EFI to MSdata and this allows me to install. This requires me to use the BIOS to select the boot disk (rather than the bootloader Solus uses, although GRUB can do it) - not ideal but workable.
So, switch to Ubuntu. Which has Secure Boot support, so re-enable that in the BIOS. With 3rd party drivers like Nvidia one needs to sign the drivers with a Machine Owner's Key (MOK) and enroll that in the TPM. After a trial run, I get that figured out (it's automated). Go to setup my dual boot with Windows 11 and Bitlocker and...
6th problem: Bitlocker with a TPM will not let one set a pre-boot password. Edit Group Policy and get close, where the preboot PIN can be up to 20 characters (instead of just numbers). Less than my old Bitlocker passphrase but workable. Install Win11, enable Bitlocker, etc and
7th problem: Ubuntu won't install because Bitlocker is enabled and it wants to install onto the same drive.
At this point I am going to pull drives out and install OSes seperately. I can use the BIOS to swtich between them and I can likely add Windows as a boot option once I get them working individually.