Here's what I did to replace Windows 8 (boo) with Linux Mint (yay) on a 2013 Asus ultrabook with the problematic UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) firmware, using an external DVD drive linked to the machine with a USB cable.
Download Linux Mint and burn a bootable DVD.
Disable Windows Fast Startup (in Windows' Control Panel).
Reboot machine while pressing F2, to get into BIOS setup.
Under the Security menu, disable Secure Boot Control.
Under the Boot menu, disable Fast Boot.
Under the Boot menu, enable Launch CSM – if you can. (I couldn't at first. This menu option was visible but…
bios
aardvarchaeology | October 29, 2013Linux is a common operating system, not least in its Android version, and it is universally assumed that a PC (or whatever "IBM compatible" is called these days) will be able to run it. In fact, machines that can’t run Linux are extremely rare since aficionados keep porting the open-source operating system to even the most obscure and outdated machine families.
One of the PC makers who sell Linux compatible computers is Samsung. That is, almost all of their machines can run Linux, and when it was discovered last January that some recent laptops cannot, it was universally seen as a bug. Nobody…