Installing Linux on older ex Windows laptop

[justsomebloke]

Hi all,

Joined to post this question.

I've acquired a five/six yr old laptop to use as a testbed for betting understanding Linux.

I've got a current install up and working (Arch + Gnome) but not surprisingly encountered the world of MBR vs GPT during installation.

Following the docs, I used fdisk to write a new MBR table, added additional primary disks (to be mounted as /root /home etc) and off I went.

However I'm not sure I at all understand quite where the embedded bios screen and my bootloader (grub in this case) meet. Let me explain:

The laptop obviously has a wifi switch, which works (used to work) in both hardware and software. When I acquired it, the machine had defaulted to always starting in "aeroplane mode". No biggie it's true, but still annoying.

After various attempts to get the entire install done correctly, I note that there seemed no way to cure this little issue of no wifi on boot. It switches on fine using hotkeys. I went into the bios (AMI, version 2.version dated 2010) and finally turned off a boot option to mount a control module for wifi (sorry but the partition has gone now, so can't remember what it was called). I gathered that this was simply a partition containing software to load the wifi card).

I read that GPT and EFI are now the way to go, and software like Arch seems quite bleeding edge, so am wondering if there's any way/benefit to re-flash the existing bios using EFI? Here's the thing though: AMI website doesn't go back that far! They list stuff like Aptio4 or Ambios8. I realise these weren't written for my board.

I'd like a clearer picture of how the bios that is (presumably) loaded onto the chipsets (is that correct?) interacts with the bootloader. Is EFI more efficient? Would 'hacking' the bios to a newer version actually make the  cpu/gpu more efficient (i5-2410M)? Or would it simply risk breaking everything?

Any rescources or other posts on here you'd like to refer me to?

Thanks