You’ve met my babe already. Now I’m looking in her eyes… day and night.

Usability of both OS looks on par, but for Linux installation issues (see below). The 4K display support is still better under Windows, but it is not flawless either. Although there have only been two programs so far that did not use properly sized fonts - ironically, those from the PowerDVD suite accompanying an external DVD burner from Lenovo - that individual programs have to be updated to handle yet another display resolution is a sure sign of a bad system or application design.

This is not so much the case under Linux, but… Installing Ubuntu did turn out to be a bit tricky. I burned a 14.04.4 LTS LiveDVD. It ran well, but it insisted on installing Ubuntu to the HDD. I’d rather have split the SSD already used for the Windows installation, or occupied the other SSD, but none of that was offered by default. Hedging my bets, I split the HDD in two parts as suggested: nobody wants to brick a new system, right? Hence, my bet was to solve the Linux installation problem in principle, and then go after details.

However, Ubuntu 14.04.4 LTS would not boot off the HDD, nor would Ubuntu 15.10 (the latter would also fail to connect via WiFi during the installation, which is a known issue). Having checked, set and reset all potentially relevant UEFI parameters, I reverted back to the 14.04.4 LTS, reinstalled it, and - oh my! - it went live on a late evening, just when I was about to call it a day.

Once booted, both GRUB2 and login screens displayed extremely tiny fonts - another known issue. Upon login, however, one can scale up the fonts and icons using the build-in GUI controls, which fixes the display of the user session right away. The mouse pointer pulls up as well (upon a cold reboot). However, the GRUB2 and login screens stay hardly usable.

This will be fixed soon I hope. We’ll also see how 16.04 LTS (slated for April 21, 2016) fares. Its Beta is already out. Until then, when installing Ubuntu:

• Go for 14.04.4 LTS
• Keep UEFI Secure Boot set to “on”
• Scale up the display elements as necessary

There is still a certain mystery around the UEFI settings. None was really changed in the end, but for the Intel® SGX (now set to “enabled”, earlier set to “software controlled”). This will have to be investigated.

And what about booting Linux off an NVMe SSD? Well, stay tuned…

(to be continued)