Saturday, June 9, 2018
Installing Linux on Asus X502CA Laptop with Windows 8
Installing Linux on Asus X502CA Laptop with Windows 8
I recently bought my son a new laptop and had lots of problems getting Linux installed on it. Its a ASUS X502CA and came with Windows 8. I created a bootable USB flash drive with Ubuntu 12.04 just like ive done multiple times before, but the install kept hanging after selecting any option from the initial Ubuntu menu. I tried Ubuntu 12.04, Ubuntu 13.04, Fedora Core 19, and CentOS 6.4, and Mint 15. I had the exact same problem with all the distros. It took a while to find the solution, but i did finally get it working. Hopefully this post will save other people some time.
It would always hang after this menu.
The first thing you need to do is create a bootable USB flash drive. Ubuntu has instructions on their website. After getting the flash drive ready, youll need to reboot and modify your BIOS so it can boot from a flash drive. Press F2 as soon as you power on the laptop and it will open the BIOS configuration menu. Go to the Boot menu and change the first boot option to be your flash drive.
Next is the step I was missing. Go to the Security menu in your Bios and disable "Secure Boot Control". Secure Boot is a feature of UEFI which was designed to a replacement for BIOS. Microsoft is enforcing the use of Secure Boot on PCs that come with Windows 8. It is possible for Linux to be installed without disabling Secure Boot, but the linux distribution has to include a type of digital signature and most are not doing that yet. Ubuntus says its supported with version 12.04 and above, but their documentation also says it still has problems with certain types of hardware.
Save the changes to your BIOS and everything should work correctly now!
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