When I got three new machines over this past year, they all came with Windows 8 (HP Pavilions) and Atheros ethernet controllers.  

I had to disable Secure Boot on the machines where I installed Linux and it was also a royal PITA dealing with the Atheros drivers.   

Ubuntu and Mint did not want to work with Atheros, and the one machine I finally put Linux on ended up working nicely with Fedora 19.  One machine remains Windows 8 (and I had gotten stung pretty badly doing the Beta 8.1 "upgrade" so am keeping it at the 8 level.)  Because of pending job stuff I have to, for now, keep a second machine running Windows Server 2012R2, which works fine with the Atheros (Windows 2008R2 did not).   And my remaining machine runs Fedora 19 with a hardened Virtual Box running a Whonix vm running Tor and an offshore mail client.  

Good luck;  YMMV, obviously, but I think the disabling of Secure Boot may be your first order of business.

Regards from northern Vermont (and 1980s denizen of Woostah)

Dave


On Sun, Nov 10, 2013 at 12:00 PM, <wlug-request@mail.wlug.org> wrote:
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Today's Topics:

   1. Upgrade (Clint Moyer)


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Sun, 10 Nov 2013 10:57:22 -0500
From: Clint Moyer <cdmoyer@charter.net>
Subject: [Wlug] Upgrade
To: Worcester Linux Users Group <wlug@mail.wlug.org>
Message-ID: <C42E30DF-37B2-4081-B5F9-946E50BC2D71@charter.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

My main PC is long overdue for an update. I dual boot Win7 and Linux Mint. Light use, no gaming or heavy graphics. A few questions:

Are there any gotchas using a CPU with integrated GPU? Not talking about mobo chipset graphic, but something like an AMD CPU with embedded ATI graphic.

I haven't yet dealt with any motherboard with UEFI bios. I know there was a big uproar over Secure Boot. Is this going to give me any headache installing Linux? Is there any specific manufacturer that implements it more properly than others? Asus has been my goto brand.

I'll retain my current HDDs for storage but would like to use an SSD for the OSes. I'd assume that's pretty transparent as far as installing Linux goes? Anything I need to worry about here?

Any specific advice or recommendations will be appreciated. Thanks.

Clint
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