[Cialug] Linux on Locked Machines

[Nathan C. Smith]

Funny-  15 years ago I would have been right behind you working on a way to get Linux on there.   In fact, I did it myself and my newbie self discovered how exciting rm -rf can be (true story!)  Now I fight with people literally every day wanting to load crap "just because".  (The instant gratification factor of "APPS" is killing any respect I.T. ever had.)

Depending on how locked down the machine is, (BIOS and all?) I wonder about running Linux off a USB key.  I put a Debian variant on an 8GB usb key and had good performance.

The better choice is probably to keep your job and use some funds to buy a machine you can do whatever you want to with.  Both IBM/Lenovo and Apple offer good deals on refurbs and Lenovo/IBM has good deals on off-lease machines.  Others like Dell probably do something similar.

-Nate


-----Original Message-----
From: cialug-bounces at cialug.org [mailto:cialug-bounces at cialug.org] On Behalf Of Sean Flattery
Sent: Friday, May 11, 2012 1:36 PM
To: cialug at cialug.org
Subject: Re: [Cialug] Linux on Locked Machines

Actually BitLocker does not encrypt the entire drive, it leaves a partition that's unencrypted to boot the encrypted stuff.  But I agree with everyone who says that your employer must approve of you trying to put on Linux as a dual boot.  If they don't, just run it in a VM on top of Windows.  If they do approve, maybe you could shrink the encrypted partition using the built in Windows Disk Management program and turn the newly free space into your favorite linux distro.  Not sure if you'd run into issues with bootloaders, so I'd recommend doing a bit level backup to another drive before messing with things.  Or just use a VM within Windows and save yourself some time.



On Thu, May 10, 2012 at 02:48:20PM -0500, jrnosee wrote:
Problem is it's running windows 7 and the hard drive has been encrypted with M$'s bitlocker.

Any suggestions for running linux on locked down equipment?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitLocker_Drive_Encryption

Unless I misunderstand, Microsoft Bitlocker is full drive encryption, no more, no less.  If that is the case, and your employer will let you install whatever you want, just install Linux as per usual.

If your employer will not let you install whatever you want, then Bitlocker is not relevant to your issue.

I'm confused by your post.  Omitting pertinent information often breeds distrust...

Nicolai
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