I bought a new Sony Vaio S series laptop. It uses Insyde H2O BIOS EFI, and trying to install Linux on it is driving me crazy.

root@kubuntu:~# parted /dev/sda print
Model: ATA Hitachi HTS72756 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 640GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
Partition Table: gpt

Number  Start  End    Size    File system  Name                          Flags
 1      1049kB  274MB  273MB  fat32        EFI system partition          hidden
 2      274MB  20.8GB  20.6GB  ntfs        Basic data partition          hidden, diag
 3      20.8GB  21.1GB  273MB  fat32        EFI system partition          boot
 4      21.1GB  21.3GB  134MB                Microsoft reserved partition  msftres
 5      21.3GB  342GB  320GB  ntfs        Basic data partition
 6      342GB  358GB  16.1GB  ext4        Basic data partition
 7      358GB  374GB  16.1GB  ntfs        Basic data partition
 8      374GB  640GB  266GB  ntfs        Basic data partition

What is surprising is that there are 2 EFI system partitions on the disk. The sda2 partition is a 20gb recovery partition which loads windows with a basic recovery interface. This is accessible by pressing the "ASSIST" button as opposed to the normal power button. I presume that the sda1 EFI System Partition (ESP) loads into this recovery.

The sda3 ESP has more fleshed out entries for Microsoft Windows, which actually goes into Windows 7 (as confirmed by bcdedit.exe on Windows). Ubuntu is installed on sda6, and while installation I chose sda3 as my boot partition. The installer correctly created a sda3/EFI/ubuntu/grubx64.efi application.

The real problem: for the life of me, I can't set it to be the default! I tried creating a sda3/startup.nsh which called grubx64.efi, but it didn't help -- on rebooting, the system still boots into windows. I tried using efibootmgr, and that shows as it it worked:

root@kubuntu:~# efibootmgr 
BootCurrent: 0000
BootOrder: 0000,0001
Boot0000* EFI USB Device
Boot0001* Windows Boot Manager
root@kubuntu:~# efibootmgr --create --gpt --disk /dev/sda --part 3 --write-signature --label "GRUB2" --loader "\\EFI\\ubuntu\\grubx64.efi" 
BootCurrent: 0000
BootOrder: 0002,0000,0001
Boot0000* EFI USB Device
Boot0001* Windows Boot Manager
Boot0002* GRUB2
root@kubuntu:~# efibootmgr
BootCurrent: 0000
BootOrder: 0002,0000,0001
Boot0000* EFI USB Device
Boot0001* Windows Boot Manager
Boot0002* GRUB2

However, on rebooting, as you guessed, the machine rebooted directly back into Windows.

The only things I can think of are:

1. The sda1 partition is somehow being used
2. Overwrite /EFI/Boot/bootx64.efi and /EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi with grubx64.efi [but this seems really radical].

Can anyone please help me out? Thanks -- any help is greatly appreciated, as this issue is driving me crazy!