this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023
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Linux 101 stuff. Questions are encouraged, noobs are welcome!

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Dualbooting windows and ubuntu (ubuntu is mostly working) and as in the picture, grub shows up in the boot order list as a bunch of gibberish.

Why is this? Could it hint at something wrong? How can I fix it even if just to make it look nicer?

I did have to restart the installation a bunch. Including once because it failed to create the partition, but the installation completed once that was done.

EDIT: I reinstalled grub and this persists so Im still curious.

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[–] recursive_recursion 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

I just noticed fhat you have
Secure Boot: [Enabled]
you're gonna want to switch that off to Disabled as it'll prevent you from booting most if not all Linux distros(Archlinux install guide note 1.4 for reference)

also that looks like the default Acer/Lenovo BIOS menu but I could be wrong, if it is the case unfortunately unless you can create BIOS firmware I don't think there's an wasy way to customize that menu screen

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Thanks for your answer. I will look into secure boot.

I don't want to customize the boot menu. Its just that in the boot order list grub shows up as a bunch of gibberish (see right above the entry for the windows bootloader). Im worried that this might mean something is wrong. If it can get the name of the windows bootloader properly it should with grub too.

(And you guessed right, its acer)

[–] recursive_recursion 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I didn't realize at first but in the screenshot it does look like grub is showing up and as null characters(I think), unfortunately not sure why that is

hopefully someone else will have a better answer for you, so I'd recommend to try asking in your distro's community
best of luck!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I'm pretty sure Ubuntu works with secure boot. Debian 12 does and since Ubuntu is based off of that, you should be fine.

As for the blank name, it could be a grub bug or bios failing to detect names.

To test if the name works, boot (but don't install) a debian iso and see what name appears. It should show the device name.

If you choose to switch to Debian, a grub name "debian" should appear.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

not all, ubuntu and fedora work with secure boot

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Why are you using Arch as a reference for ubuntu? Also... I have secure boot on and I run arch and have for the last 5 + years it runs just fine lol

[–] recursive_recursion 0 points 1 year ago

Why are you using Arch as a reference for ubuntu?

Good call, I used arch as it's the one I'm most experienced with especially when it comes to grub and bios/uefi system configuration although on reflection it seems that I need to study a bit more before trying to provide help

Also... I have secure boot on and I run arch and have for the last 5 + years it runs just fine lol

I recommended disabling secure boot as all of the machines I tried to install linux had issues when it was enabled and at the time most if not all sources online recommended disabling it, if secure boot works fine now it just means that I need to study more and revise my data