I'm primarily using Windows for gaming, but I find it pretty annoying that I have to enable Secure Boot every time I want to boot into Linux. I often forget to turn it on, which messes up my gaming setup. Is there a smooth way to run Linux with Secure Boot turned on?
5 Answers
There are indeed several distros that play nice with Secure Boot, but keep in mind you might face some hiccups when updating the kernel, especially with Nvidia GPUs. For more details, check out the official guides for Debian, Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, and Arch Linux regarding Secure Boot.
Definitely! It really depends on the Linux distribution you're using. For instance, Ubuntu 22.04 and 24.04 support Secure Boot right out of the box. You might want to check those out.
I'm running Debian 12 and I've got a dual boot setup with Secure Boot enabled. You just need to enroll the Nvidia drivers key for the kernel following some guides, and it works fine!
I personally run Fedora without ever needing to disable Secure Boot, even during installation. So that's another option if you want to explore!
Most popular distros like Debian, Ubuntu, and Fedora come signed with keys that satisfy Secure Boot by default. If you're interested in using a custom kernel or a less common distro, you might need to generate a key and sign the kernel yourself during builds.
Linux Mint also works well with Secure Boot since it's based on Ubuntu!