Install Ubuntu [GNU/Linux] on troubling Acer Aspire ES1-533 EFI

Install Ubuntu on troubling Acer Aspire ES1-533 EFI

1. Boot Ubuntu Live DVD/USB in testing mode and open terminal

2. Run the installation process without installing the bootloader by:
   

sudo ubiquity -b

Press Continue testing after installation is over.

1. Mount the newly installed file system on /mnt:

   sudo mount /dev/sda2 /mnt
   sudo mkdir /mnt/boot/efi
   sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot/efi
   for i in /dev /dev/pts /proc /sys; do sudo mount -B $i /mnt$i; done

(where sda2 is the root partition and sda1 is the EFI system partition)

1. Load efivars by:

 sudo modprobe efivars

1. Reinstall grub-install for a 64-bit version

sudo apt-get install --reinstall grub-efi-amd64
sudo grub-install --no-nvram --root-directory=/mnt

1. Change root to /mnt and update grub

sudo chroot /mnt
update-grub

1. Move and rename the installed bootloader

cd /boot/efi/EFI
cp -R ubuntu/* BOOT/
cd BOOT
cp grubx64.efi bootx64.efi

1. Reboot the system.

IF YOU WANT TO DUAL BOOT IT

If you install Ubuntu alongside Windows, you will encounter long BIOS boot times (10 seconds or more) and inability to perform hardware shutdown from Ubuntu OS (via, Power Off option), it will just hang when Linux kernel finish closing all services (usual shutdown operation), so you would need to force shutdown it via long holding power button 4 secs, until it restarts To work around this, you need to do this.. And also, Ubuntu won't boot GRUB2 as it's supposed to do.. And long BIOS time is because, as BIOS have one excess folder Microsoft that contains bootloader files for Windows, but we don't need those as we chainloaded Windows bootloader via GRUB2, BIOS is indexing those excess Microsoft files, from which BIOS won't boot, as we have GRUB2

You need first to disable Windows bootloader via Easy UEFI Trial Version, disable Windows bootloader first, and then boot into Ubuntu Live DVD/USB, open Terminal, and mount EFI partition, and delete Windows partition

In Live Ubuntu, on terminal do:

mount EFI partition, to look into it's contents

sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot/efi

Look inside, and see if there's Windows folder, Microsoft

cd /mnt/boot/efi/EFI
ls

(you can back up whole EFI partition on external device, just not to bother fixing it later in case anything goes wrong; just cp /mnt/boot/efi <path_to_ext_device>)

And then just delete that folder

sudo rm -r Microsoft

If you go into GRUB2 succesfully, but don't have any options to boot from (it doesn't boot any OS properly, wrong paths) With this, we can easily boot Ubuntu manually via GRUB2 instructions how to do that here, or just using Live Ubuntu Look into lower section how to add OS entries in GRUB2

Whichever path you choosed, we need to update GRUB2 configuration file, so we don't manually enter path for booting OS

COMPLETELY MANUAL WAY OF UPDATING GRUB2 CONFIG FILES

you need to manually create grub.cfg , so it can detect where are your OS located, and to add them into entries

grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
update-grub

it will generate grub.cfg and grubenv

grubenv is used for holding GRUB2 customizations accros reboots

you need to change your working directory to:

cd /boot/grub

in EFI/BOOT and EFI/grub you first need to delete existing grub.cfg and grubenv located there and then you need to copy grub.cfg and grubenv in EFI/BOOT and EFI/grub

and at boot time (just after BIOS gives control to bootloader, GRUB2), you get some errors at top of screen, take a note, and you need to copy files it complains about from /boot/grub into EFI/BOOT and EFI/grub

Note: GRUB2 bootloader folder don't have to be called ubuntu , you can install only GRUB2 without ubuntu at all and call it grub folder, or debian

You can customize GRUB2, with available GRUB2 documentation

AUTOMATIC WAY OF DOING IT

Or you can just execute command

sudo update-grub

if it doesn't freeze, good, if it freezes, up here, is completely manual way of doing it

INSTALLING OTHER DISTROS (like Manjaro)

You can do everything same, only omit Load efivars as itsn't needed, but you still need to work around diffrent names, and all errors that occur, are pretty similar, and follow same routine of solving them You can install other bootloaders if you like.