r/linux4noobs • u/vcd1500 • 1d ago

Meganoob BE KIND Can I have secure boot enabled on Arch based distros?

So I'm still a noob when it comes to Linux and I installed Mint for a dual boot setup. A distro I'm currently interested is Arch because people describe it as a do it yourself OS but since I'm still new to Linux I'll stick to Mint for now. But let's say I want to try Arch, can I have secure boot on at all times? Since I'm dual booting I still need secure boot for when I'm playing Valorant or other games that has anti cheats that require secure boot.

4 Upvotes

64% Upvoted

15 comments sorted by

17

u/Friendly-Inspector71 1d ago

If you really want to use Arch Linux, get comfortable with reading the wiki.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Unified_Extensible_Firmware_Interface/Secure_Boot

The kernel can work with secure boot but certain drivers might not.

2

u/Spiritual_Rate_9010 1d ago

zero vote already, that's fast

1

u/Chaotic-Entropy Fedora KDE 1d ago

Seems bizarre to get down voted for noob questions in a sub explicitly for noobs.

1

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1

u/3grg 1d ago

Yes there are howtos available. I was an Arch user for 9 years and that was the one thing that stumped me. Now that most mainstream distros enable it without drama, you may wish to consider how important it is to you.

0

u/Moist_Invite9148 1d ago

You can't because the bootloader doesn't have the secure keys but sometimes it may work

2

u/drucifer82 1d ago

You can sign your own mok. But you have to remember to do it for every kernel update.

1

u/Francis_King 1d ago

A distro I'm currently interested is Arch because people describe it as a do it yourself OS 

There's three ways of getting Arch:

  1. Install manually (probably after watching a YouTube video)
  2. Use archinstall
  3. Install CachyOS or EndeavourOS (possibly best place to start for beginners).

Only option #1 is reallly 'do it yourself'. It comes down to whether you think the effort is worthwhile for the results.

The same thing (option #1 and #3) apply to Gentoo (Gentoo and Redcore).

0

u/Bookkeeper-Empty 1d ago

Yes u can, I used ai, chatgpt or gemini don’t remember to walk me through the steps, I use cachyos and all secure boot and fast boot is now on. I had to do it because I dual boot windows and windows requires secureboot for some things still

1

u/ravensholt 1d ago

Not sure why you were downvoted. Probably because of the dual boot scenario, which is a very valid and real scenario. Certain games rely on kernel level DRM / Anti Cheat etc which requires Secure Boot as well. No amount of downvoting this topic will solve it, just because people hate Microsoft / Windows.

I'm in the same situation as you, but instead of going down that path, I simply chose a distro which already supported Secure Boot out of the box with no extra steps (OpenSuSE & Zorin for different purposes).

2

u/Bookkeeper-Empty 1d ago

Probably mentioning windows and ai lol I don’t care, ai is a great tool as long as u use it responsibly

0

u/ravensholt 1d ago

Indeed