After searching the internet and getting conflicting reports I would like to ask here. Has anyone had personal experience with booting Linux from a m.2 nvme drive in an adapter card on an (ASUS) X79 motherboard (say P9X79 LE or P9X79E-WS)? It seems that some have managed to boot from it in non efi/legacy mode. Others have patched their bios, adding a nvme module. I don't want to buy one of the newer samsung drives and find I can only use it as a non boot drive.
It's doable, but a bit fiddly... Some boards have to be put in Legacy [not UEFI] mode to work, and in some cases you have to format it in the command line before the installer will recognise it as a drive it can install to. This shows someone doing exactly that, albeit on a Z87 board.
Phew I finally got this to work with a SM961, adding the nvme efi module to my gigabyte X79-UD3 F20 bios before I flashed it. It seems that my main problem was with the Xubuntu 16.04.1 installer, which imo is a bit rubbish (note to self: the quit button escapes to the desktop where I can do things manually in a terminal)
