In the 'free - just works' world of computing, FreeDOS is likely to allow you to create a program that can be stored on a CD, USB or a Floopy, and then... just be popped into a computer and automatically run.
Or you can dig up an old Visical and Wordstart to use with it. Any WWW networking would likely skip the browser and just pick up email or upload/download files to a remote server.
But the OP has his criteria that stretches the concept.
A free "Just Works" OS, is an illusion perpetrated by a segment of advocates, I will be nice. I did a little more research and test drives, and have concluded that xubuntu is about the closest that I can get too what I think will work.
I tried some of the other suggestions, puppy Linux is dead, taken over quirky Linux, a novel effort. DSL is also a novel effort which has gone dormant. Since I will probably be using SimpleIDE, fedora and openSUSE are out of reach. I am not going to try too rework a .deb distribution.
So, xubuntu at this point will give me some hassle, but I have a thick skull. I guess I can get used to toggling back and forth when I need to see other computers and then have access to the internet, I will just keep telling myself it is a security feature. As for the printer, xubuntu did not have any problems finding a network attached unit. Also it sort of gets you in the ballpark, so you can finish the installation all by yourself. Some of the other stuff, just have to learn how to live with it, after all it is a free OS. You never know, maybe in about ten years or so, some reasonable OS will pop up.
MS has been working a "Just Works" solution for you for four decades. The Linus effort has been going since the 1990s with much of it's infrastructure built long before that.
I see no sign of a "reasonable" OS showing up any time soon.
The problem with programable is that nobody will leave a good thing alone.
We sure get pulled down a rabbit hole whenever someone offers something 'free'. Steve Jobs' offer of WYSIWYG was actually a more candid explaination of OSes with a bit of irony about the GUI tossed in for good measure.
I'm not sure why anyone would have any expectation that there would be a Free OS +a string of caveats available, unless there was someone else in the world with your exact same requirements and motivation to actually build such a thing.
As a toe-dipper since the late 90's, most of the distro's I've messed with in the past couple of years are plug and play. Only set-back recently was Mint on a bog-standard Lenovo T430 and sound.
But wireless, mouse, etc all seemed to work fine.
Since SimpleIDE is a pre-requisite, it would seem like Debian would be the no-brainer to start from.
Any minor annoyances like mouse or printer are probably solved issues considering Debs popularity/size.
I expect that with Jessie 8.2, it should be possible to get from install to tweaking completed within a day if one wanted, just follow Heaters suggestion.
And the nice thing about doing it in layers like that is being able to fairly quickly qualify a Linux. When the core needs are met, there are generally enough options for people to get to a working state they feel good about.
Keep your notes and or software packages too. For stuff like Parallax, a good Linux setup always works. Put a live one in a USB drive, and or just archive all the stuff and you can recreate and use for as long as you want.
It is a lot like my old XP / Ubuntu machine. It's solid. Just works and it is in a drawer. If I want or need it, boot, go. I could virtualize it all too, and just deal with specifics at the host os layer.
Compartmentalization like this can pay you back huge. It all depends on what you want or need to do.
In my experimentation period, I decided to try Fedora 23 live disc on my small Gigabyte Brix. Surprise, surprise, the title of the .iso file should of been a clue, "workstation", when I tried to install to hard drive, at some point it produced an error message, you need 7.67GB of RAM. So, the race is on for the free OSes, maybe they are not going to be desktop versions anymore, they are now going to be workstations. That should get the struggling masses on board.
As far as I could tell, workstation is about the smallest size that you can install, of the Fedora derivative that is, I did not do any further investigation. I guess I should give openSUSE a try, they are probably not to far behind, to become a work station, that is.
I was even considering giving freeDOS a try, but who wants to be limited to 640KB when you have, at a minimum 4GB of RAM to work with on most machines. Also, as far as I could tell the FD32 project has been dead for many years now.
It seems like there is a big gap that is starting to appear, on one end you have OSes that are of the 90's versions and at the other end you have "workstations". As one poster put it, if you don't like it, take up woodworking as a hobby.
So let see, if the P2 could have 650KB, where could we go with that? Retrofit old DOS programs, and...
Fedora has 2 images: workstation which is intended for a person to sit and use as a workstation(desktop) environment with a GUI and more user oriented tools in the base; server, meant for a headless, generally non-GUI installation with a base set of features more targeted to someone building a server.
I've instLled Fedora and many others in VM's as small as 1GB and physical machines of 4GB without it complaining about memory. The install will complain about disk space but I've never seen it complain about memory.
Workstation and desktop are now just different names for the same things.
In my experimentation period, I decided to try Fedora 23 live disc on my small Gigabyte Brix. Surprise, surprise, the title of the .iso file should of been a clue, "workstation", when I tried to install to hard drive, at some point it produced an error message, you need 7.67GB of RAM.
I start to doubt your technical abilities when you say things like this unless you somehow managed to tick every box in the installation include server installs. This though is straight from the Fedora 23 release notes for minimum requirements (for a standard desktop):
1GHz or faster processor
1GB System Memory
10GB unallocated drive space
Are you sure it didn't say 7.67GB of "DISK" rather than RAM?
Just for some more detail, I started this out by putting the Fedora 23 live on a USB flash. After some silent thrashing, it ended up in a command line scene, asking that you run some kind of program, and email them the results, not a good staring impression.
The second try was, putting the Fedora 23 on a disc, this way it finally got to the GUI desktop, by the way it is starting to resemble Unity, and at this point when I tried to do the install to disk, that is when I received not enough RAM memory message. On my Gigabyte Brix, I do have 4GB of RAM, and 250GB SSD. Now, just to clear, I downloaded this from the Fedora site, and not some other spot.
Now I am almost tempted to look for Linux derivative that is bare(command line), and they have there own repositories for adding stuff on. I think those derivatives are disappearing faster than they are appearing. But then again this is not getting me any closer to a SimpleIDE install and run.
Ray
<edit>"Are you sure it didn't say 7.67GB of "DISK" rather than RAM?"
Thank you Peter, sometimes I even doubt myself, but I am glad that you are here to remind me. When I was trying to the install then the next question should been, would you like to use the entire disk, just like all the other installs handle it. Now I will just retreat to the struggling masses horde.
<edit>
I'm guessing it was trying to run it in RAMDISK mode then, if there is such a thing with Fedora. You can use USB Creator from Windows to transfer a Fedora ISO to USB flash. Anyway I'm "amused" by all the troubles you're having, I keep wondering what is so different about what you are trying to do that you can't seem to get it to just work. Admittedly I have had the odd hardware configuration usually on older hardware that has thrown an install but that is pretty rare, most of the time everything goes smoothly and "just" works". But in this department I have settled on Linux Mint based on Ubuntu etc as I find that "just works" for my rather intensive requirements and gives me the least grief. Even BST works well though PNut for the P2 I really need to run in WINXP in VirtualBox.
The core problem with transfering ISO LiveCD/DVD to USBsticks is that NOT all of the ISO images provide a complete Linux installation. The LiveCD/DVD mode is often just a demonstration sketch of what the distribution will look like.
There is a sub-set of distributions that have intentionally been created to never install to hard disk and those ISO disks are the ones that really work best from a USBstick. I even suspect that installing Simple IDE for one of those would be possible and much easier to do.
The core problem with transfering ISO LiveCD/DVD to USBsticks is that NOT all of the ISO images provide a complete Linux installation. The LiveCD/DVD mode is often just a demonstration sketch of what the distribution will look like.
There is a sub-set of distributions that have intentionally been created to never install to hard disk and those ISO disks are the ones that really work best from a USBstick. I even suspect that installing Simple IDE for one of those would be possible and much easier to do.
I don't agree, this is not the case but perhaps you would like to provide details of which ones are "crippleware" although that would be hard to understand since it's "free".
Well, for years I have used Puppy Linux for anything that needs to be done with the hard disk unmounted. And it even provides its own means to install to a bootable USBstick for the same purpose. But it uses PET to install packages, so SimpleIDE would require some effort.
There a group of tiny core Linux distributions that run with simpler graphics, require less up-to-date hardware, and so on.
SilTaz has gotten the best ratings from the authors. I have never tried it, but I guess I have to now that I have mentioned a bunch of times. Not sure if it will install SimpleIDE easily. Uses TazPkg to install packages. There may be a way to convert Debian packages to TazPkgs, or maybe not.
www.distrowatch.com provides a listing of eaching distributions packages and package installer. That will save a lot of time selecting which distributions will install SimpleIDE.
I have used Puppy Linux variants but not for any serious work although I am impressed with how well it operates. Why the leaning towards the lean Linux versions? Even the standard ones take very little in resources.
Well, having a lite distribution of Linux on a bootable USB is pretty much like owning a screwdriver. There just comes a day when you desire to do something without the hard disk mounted - like check and fix the file system on the hard disk, or 'dd' a complete image of the hard disk to another computer's hard disk on your LAN.
Or just check out somebody's mucked up Windows computer and verify it is the software, not the hardware that is failing.
Well that's why I have those lite Linux versions, normally 32-bit, just for that old or odd bit of hardware. Then I also have LM17.2 x64 on my keyring as well as OpenSuse+media packs.
It's handy dandy. Don't know about you guys, but about once a year somebody, somewhere who happens to know me, has botched a password change and are locked out. Or their kids did it. lol Angry teens can be fun.
That was one of those, "If you want the wifi password of the day, get your stuff done", and the kid went ahead and pulled, "well, if you want to use the computer, gimme the wifi"
Ahh, the power struggle with the kids. Love it.
Use that image to clear passwords on most windows installations. I do just one thing with it. I boot, clear administrator, boot windows, get it sorted, leave.
Also good for those freebie, "here, take this" computers you may find yourself looking at.
Last few days I have had some time to test out some OSes on my Gigabyte Brix box. If the Brix is an example of which way the rest of the computers are going, some OSes will have to do some catching up. Again, my Brix has 4GB of RAM and 250GB SSD.
There has been mention about puppy Linux, well, since wary-5.5 is the last version that will be available, it does not want to cooperate with the Brix. Working with a USB flash drive, it starts up, but when it gets to the point of loading files, it can not find the drive. Not sure if this is a problem with the new Brix BIOS, or something else. Similar problems occurred with a Fedora install from a flash drive.
Now the folks that are taking over puppy Linux, they have a version, werewolf64-7.3 which works from a flash drive, but it is meant to be installed to a hard drive, so it may not work correctly from a configured flash drive. At this point there is only one distribution that I tried that works from the flash drive, DSL. I also believe that DSL is going dormant, a working OS on a flash drive, the size of DSL, is becoming extinct at this point, at least a working one that could be used with a Brix.
Just as a novelty I also decided to try freeDOS 1.1, a flash drive install did not work, a disc(cd/dvd) install worked, but it has problems with the boot sector, because when you try to reboot, it does not start up, the Brix asks for something bootable. I thought it might be a problem with install of 1.1, so, since I have a freeDOS bootable cd, I tried doing a 'format c: /S' on the Brix, which went through the motions, but a reboot did not work.
So far the Ubuntu variations had a decent installation experience when you do it from a flash drive, also they seem to be on top of things at the moment. Since Fedora is going towards a real workstation, probably a cd/dvd install would be highly recommended. And of course you better be aware of how you will deal with hard drive once it gets to the actual install part.
This has been an interesting experience, not only did I find out how close the Free OSes came to providing, what I thought would be no brainer requirements, it also showed me which ones are having problems with flash drive installs. If the trend is toward having smaller computers without cd/dvd players, I guess you have to make sure that you get one with an OS already installed, and worry about how you would do a re-install later. At this point I am not sure what my next step is going to be.
Flash drives are just not the same as mechanical hard drive, erasure blocks are much larger. I really haven't used one for anything larger than a router since my first EEEpc died.
I find the inability to locate the SSD is facinating. It could be a combination of several things, but may be mostly due to new security features for hard disks. Microsoft has been working hard in this area and may have proprietary code on the solid-state harddisk that doesn't tolerate a legacy MBR boot, or Linux's transistion to new alternatives.
Traditionally, the OS just looked for the MBR (Master Boot Record) to get started with the hard disk, but now it may need to seek out the GPT (GUID Partition Table).
It that is the case, one might be able to tweak the Linux to locate the hard disk.
Microsoft has been working hard in this area and may have proprietary code on the solid-state harddisk that doesn't tolerate a legacy MBR boot, or Linux's transistion to new alternatives.
Are you saying that Microsoft now has some sort of control over the SSD market and the units that are being produced? You must be pretty well connected to have some insider information like that.
These type of computers make little sense in a high performance role, but they really shine as low spec machines. Not that they are slugs, Windows 7 runs super smooth. Their problems are mostly lack of ports and high power video options. The more expensive versions are not so port limited, but it's hard to fit a full size video card in a box this small.
The only repetitive problem I've seen with Linux is the "on again off again" ability to connect to Windows networks. I've installed multiple versions from both DVD and multiple flash drives from multiple manufacturers and the hardware has always worked as expected.
I am not sure where the problem is, the SSD, BIOS, or both. Since I do not have a hard drive available to swap out the SSD, I can not narrow it down any further. Also most of my other boxes are not equipped to do a boot from a USB, so I can not even dispute what you are saying, you must have better equipment than I do.
So the new saying of "If it just works for me", you should consider yourself lucky?
Microsoft has been working hard in this area and may have proprietary code on the solid-state harddisk that doesn't tolerate a legacy MBR boot, or Linux's transition to new alternatives.
Do you have a links to evidence to support that claim? It's the first we have heard of it.
As far as I understand and SSD just serves up blocks just like a old hard drive. MBR and whatever partitioning scheme you use are not it's concern. Your OS, it's formatting software, BIOS and boot loader are the ones know about that.
I have SSD on all my machines never seen any problem with it.
IMHO, this is all about the BIOS. If it's got "legacy" support enabled, installing a Linux is a no brainer. All the stuff we've learned since the DOS days works fine.
If it's not in legacy mode, and using the new UFEI mode, all bets are off. Additionally, UFEI can be signed and the boot image must have that signature to load and boot, just like a cell phone.
Most computers have a setup mode, though some (I'm looking at you HP) are very poorly documented. In that mode, you turn on legacy, and that's it!
Some other computers, like say the Surface machines from Microsoft, don't have legacy, and do require a signed booter. There is one for Linux, and I can't remember who paid for it, but one of the organizations did. They paid Microsoft to include that signature so that an OS other than Windows would boot.
(I don't know if Linux can be loaded on a Surface, but I do know the ARM version of the Surface is locked just like a cell phone)
Cool! Good on Microsoft for that. They didn't *have* to do that. And they didn't on the ARM version.
I was a bit worried over an HP a company bought a while back. The thing ended up on my desk, along with an OS install CD, hard disk, and a big, "WTF?" sticky note. HP did not document the entry to the setup. So, I booted it 10 or so times and found it. Was there, but they very clearly didn't care beyond that. Could have been a Windows 8 only machine...
Comments
In the 'free - just works' world of computing, FreeDOS is likely to allow you to create a program that can be stored on a CD, USB or a Floopy, and then... just be popped into a computer and automatically run.
Or you can dig up an old Visical and Wordstart to use with it. Any WWW networking would likely skip the browser and just pick up email or upload/download files to a remote server.
But the OP has his criteria that stretches the concept.
I tried some of the other suggestions, puppy Linux is dead, taken over quirky Linux, a novel effort. DSL is also a novel effort which has gone dormant. Since I will probably be using SimpleIDE, fedora and openSUSE are out of reach. I am not going to try too rework a .deb distribution.
So, xubuntu at this point will give me some hassle, but I have a thick skull. I guess I can get used to toggling back and forth when I need to see other computers and then have access to the internet, I will just keep telling myself it is a security feature. As for the printer, xubuntu did not have any problems finding a network attached unit. Also it sort of gets you in the ballpark, so you can finish the installation all by yourself. Some of the other stuff, just have to learn how to live with it, after all it is a free OS. You never know, maybe in about ten years or so, some reasonable OS will pop up.
Ray
MS has been working a "Just Works" solution for you for four decades. The Linus effort has been going since the 1990s with much of it's infrastructure built long before that.
I see no sign of a "reasonable" OS showing up any time soon.
We sure get pulled down a rabbit hole whenever someone offers something 'free'. Steve Jobs' offer of WYSIWYG was actually a more candid explaination of OSes with a bit of irony about the GUI tossed in for good measure.
I'm not sure why anyone would have any expectation that there would be a Free OS +a string of caveats available, unless there was someone else in the world with your exact same requirements and motivation to actually build such a thing.
As a toe-dipper since the late 90's, most of the distro's I've messed with in the past couple of years are plug and play. Only set-back recently was Mint on a bog-standard Lenovo T430 and sound.
But wireless, mouse, etc all seemed to work fine.
Since SimpleIDE is a pre-requisite, it would seem like Debian would be the no-brainer to start from.
Any minor annoyances like mouse or printer are probably solved issues considering Debs popularity/size.
I expect that with Jessie 8.2, it should be possible to get from install to tweaking completed within a day if one wanted, just follow Heaters suggestion.
All depends on what a person can roll with. I will typically make all the hard stuff work, 3d gpu support, fdti, net, etc...
Then get comfy, tweak the window manager, shares, environment, and so forth.
After that, run it for a really long time. Usually, doing that works, until major systems get too old. This can be a few years.
Keep your notes and or software packages too. For stuff like Parallax, a good Linux setup always works. Put a live one in a USB drive, and or just archive all the stuff and you can recreate and use for as long as you want.
It is a lot like my old XP / Ubuntu machine. It's solid. Just works and it is in a drawer. If I want or need it, boot, go. I could virtualize it all too, and just deal with specifics at the host os layer.
Compartmentalization like this can pay you back huge. It all depends on what you want or need to do.
As far as I could tell, workstation is about the smallest size that you can install, of the Fedora derivative that is, I did not do any further investigation. I guess I should give openSUSE a try, they are probably not to far behind, to become a work station, that is.
I was even considering giving freeDOS a try, but who wants to be limited to 640KB when you have, at a minimum 4GB of RAM to work with on most machines. Also, as far as I could tell the FD32 project has been dead for many years now.
It seems like there is a big gap that is starting to appear, on one end you have OSes that are of the 90's versions and at the other end you have "workstations". As one poster put it, if you don't like it, take up woodworking as a hobby.
So let see, if the P2 could have 650KB, where could we go with that? Retrofit old DOS programs, and...
Ray
I've instLled Fedora and many others in VM's as small as 1GB and physical machines of 4GB without it complaining about memory. The install will complain about disk space but I've never seen it complain about memory.
Workstation and desktop are now just different names for the same things.
I start to doubt your technical abilities when you say things like this unless you somehow managed to tick every box in the installation include server installs. This though is straight from the Fedora 23 release notes for minimum requirements (for a standard desktop):
Are you sure it didn't say 7.67GB of "DISK" rather than RAM?
The second try was, putting the Fedora 23 on a disc, this way it finally got to the GUI desktop, by the way it is starting to resemble Unity, and at this point when I tried to do the install to disk, that is when I received not enough RAM memory message. On my Gigabyte Brix, I do have 4GB of RAM, and 250GB SSD. Now, just to clear, I downloaded this from the Fedora site, and not some other spot.
Now I am almost tempted to look for Linux derivative that is bare(command line), and they have there own repositories for adding stuff on. I think those derivatives are disappearing faster than they are appearing. But then again this is not getting me any closer to a SimpleIDE install and run.
Ray
<edit>"Are you sure it didn't say 7.67GB of "DISK" rather than RAM?"
Thank you Peter, sometimes I even doubt myself, but I am glad that you are here to remind me. When I was trying to the install then the next question should been, would you like to use the entire disk, just like all the other installs handle it. Now I will just retreat to the struggling masses horde.
<edit>
There is a sub-set of distributions that have intentionally been created to never install to hard disk and those ISO disks are the ones that really work best from a USBstick. I even suspect that installing Simple IDE for one of those would be possible and much easier to do.
I don't agree, this is not the case but perhaps you would like to provide details of which ones are "crippleware" although that would be hard to understand since it's "free".
There a group of tiny core Linux distributions that run with simpler graphics, require less up-to-date hardware, and so on.
Here is one review...
http://www.techradar.com/us/news/software/operating-systems/8-of-the-best-tiny-linux-distros-683552
Lubuntu is a tiny Ubuntu. Package managment is DEB (I guess that means Debian). So Simple IDE from a compiled Debian packages should be straight forward. http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=lubuntu
And there is another Ubuntu tiny distro, called Crunchbang. I have no idea about it. But it too installed Debian packages. http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=crunchbang
SilTaz has gotten the best ratings from the authors. I have never tried it, but I guess I have to now that I have mentioned a bunch of times. Not sure if it will install SimpleIDE easily. Uses TazPkg to install packages. There may be a way to convert Debian packages to TazPkgs, or maybe not.
www.distrowatch.com provides a listing of eaching distributions packages and package installer. That will save a lot of time selecting which distributions will install SimpleIDE.
Or just check out somebody's mucked up Windows computer and verify it is the software, not the hardware that is failing.
I would add this one to your ring: http://pogostick.net/~pnh/ntpasswd/
It's handy dandy. Don't know about you guys, but about once a year somebody, somewhere who happens to know me, has botched a password change and are locked out. Or their kids did it. lol Angry teens can be fun.
That was one of those, "If you want the wifi password of the day, get your stuff done", and the kid went ahead and pulled, "well, if you want to use the computer, gimme the wifi"
Ahh, the power struggle with the kids. Love it.
Use that image to clear passwords on most windows installations. I do just one thing with it. I boot, clear administrator, boot windows, get it sorted, leave.
Also good for those freebie, "here, take this" computers you may find yourself looking at.
There has been mention about puppy Linux, well, since wary-5.5 is the last version that will be available, it does not want to cooperate with the Brix. Working with a USB flash drive, it starts up, but when it gets to the point of loading files, it can not find the drive. Not sure if this is a problem with the new Brix BIOS, or something else. Similar problems occurred with a Fedora install from a flash drive.
Now the folks that are taking over puppy Linux, they have a version, werewolf64-7.3 which works from a flash drive, but it is meant to be installed to a hard drive, so it may not work correctly from a configured flash drive. At this point there is only one distribution that I tried that works from the flash drive, DSL. I also believe that DSL is going dormant, a working OS on a flash drive, the size of DSL, is becoming extinct at this point, at least a working one that could be used with a Brix.
Just as a novelty I also decided to try freeDOS 1.1, a flash drive install did not work, a disc(cd/dvd) install worked, but it has problems with the boot sector, because when you try to reboot, it does not start up, the Brix asks for something bootable. I thought it might be a problem with install of 1.1, so, since I have a freeDOS bootable cd, I tried doing a 'format c: /S' on the Brix, which went through the motions, but a reboot did not work.
So far the Ubuntu variations had a decent installation experience when you do it from a flash drive, also they seem to be on top of things at the moment. Since Fedora is going towards a real workstation, probably a cd/dvd install would be highly recommended. And of course you better be aware of how you will deal with hard drive once it gets to the actual install part.
This has been an interesting experience, not only did I find out how close the Free OSes came to providing, what I thought would be no brainer requirements, it also showed me which ones are having problems with flash drive installs. If the trend is toward having smaller computers without cd/dvd players, I guess you have to make sure that you get one with an OS already installed, and worry about how you would do a re-install later. At this point I am not sure what my next step is going to be.
Ray
I find the inability to locate the SSD is facinating. It could be a combination of several things, but may be mostly due to new security features for hard disks. Microsoft has been working hard in this area and may have proprietary code on the solid-state harddisk that doesn't tolerate a legacy MBR boot, or Linux's transistion to new alternatives.
Traditionally, the OS just looked for the MBR (Master Boot Record) to get started with the hard disk, but now it may need to seek out the GPT (GUID Partition Table).
It that is the case, one might be able to tweak the Linux to locate the hard disk.
https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/html_node/BIOS-installation.html#BIOS-installation
You would have to run a comparision with a mechanical SATA drive installation on the BRIX to see if the SSD is your problem.
Ray
I want to get a Brix now just to see if it works...except I want the I7 version.
The only repetitive problem I've seen with Linux is the "on again off again" ability to connect to Windows networks. I've installed multiple versions from both DVD and multiple flash drives from multiple manufacturers and the hardware has always worked as expected.
So the new saying of "If it just works for me", you should consider yourself lucky?
Ray
As far as I understand and SSD just serves up blocks just like a old hard drive. MBR and whatever partitioning scheme you use are not it's concern. Your OS, it's formatting software, BIOS and boot loader are the ones know about that.
I have SSD on all my machines never seen any problem with it.
If it's not in legacy mode, and using the new UFEI mode, all bets are off. Additionally, UFEI can be signed and the boot image must have that signature to load and boot, just like a cell phone.
Most computers have a setup mode, though some (I'm looking at you HP) are very poorly documented. In that mode, you turn on legacy, and that's it!
Some other computers, like say the Surface machines from Microsoft, don't have legacy, and do require a signed booter. There is one for Linux, and I can't remember who paid for it, but one of the organizations did. They paid Microsoft to include that signature so that an OS other than Windows would boot.
(I don't know if Linux can be loaded on a Surface, but I do know the ARM version of the Surface is locked just like a cell phone)
Even Debian http://winaero.com/blog/how-to-install-linux-on-surface-pro-3/
I was a bit worried over an HP a company bought a while back. The thing ended up on my desk, along with an OS install CD, hard disk, and a big, "WTF?" sticky note. HP did not document the entry to the setup. So, I booted it 10 or so times and found it. Was there, but they very clearly didn't care beyond that. Could have been a Windows 8 only machine...
Travelling around recently I decided my old laptop is getting a bit heavy and cumbersome.
I don't much want to give money to MS but if they have gotten someone to build them a nice machine perhaps it's a possibility.