Booting from a USB drive

JustAUsername

I have an Aspire SW5-012 laptop that I want to download Linux onto - my problem is that when I insert the USB drive and the select my boot options from F12, the only option is the Windows Boot Manager. When I got to the BIOS and try to select an UEFI file as trusted for executing, I couldn't select anything. Can anyone help me?

aphanic

We're missing some details I'm afraid... for example, how did you create the Linux USB stick? i guess it varies from device to device but even if its bootloader wasn't signed properly it should appear in the boot menu if it was properly created (it'd fail afterwards).

I'd go back to the USB creation part, use Rufus from Windows and once you choose the distro ISO it should set up the parameters correctly. Depending on whether you're targeting an UEFI system (likely the case from what you describe) partitioning of the USB stick would be under GPT and the partition FAT32 formatted (and you're looking to target an UEFI system, not UEFI-CSM).

Then, depending on the distro you may not even need to add its bootloader to the trusted list in the firmware settings, some are capable of booting with Secure Boot enabled (you could also disable Secure Boot by the way, I believe that possibility was enforced for x86 hardware in the standard).

JustAUsername

I used Rufus to create my USB stick, FAT32 format and I triple-checked my settings before even launching the app. I tried the stick on several computers, laptops, etc. - it works perfectly for every other rig. I'm mainly annoyed by the BIOS, because it is honestly worthless - I can't seem to grasp it and that may be the reason behind my hate for the thing. I don't really know what else to say because I'm pretty sure that's all the information I can give you.