What is the /boot/efi partition and how does it affect installing a different distro

Question

I have a new laptop, it's made for linux by Tuxedocomputers (tuxedo infinitybook). It came partitioned for me but one of the partitions I have never seen before and it's mountpoint is /boot/efi

I read here about what the partition is for:

What is the efi/esp partition?

The laptop came with ubuntu installed but I would really rather have ubuntugnome. If I just use install UG using the same partitions and mount points, just formatting the / partition and leaving /boot/efi, /home and swap unformatted would that be all that is needed to install ubuntugnome? What would happen to /boot/efi when isntalling another distro?

I'm worried about installing gnome and then, because of this partition that I have never seen before, not being able to boot. I know that this efi partition has something to do with this secure boot thing from Microsoft.

Solution

The /boot/efi system partition is simply the boot partition created when the computers mother board runs UEFI rather than BIOS as is explained here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EFI_system_partition.

I do not think that the partition would be effected by installing another distro; as the installer would need to detect the motherboard firmware during the install. In order to configure the boot process if the firmware was incompatible the software should tell you and then abort the install.

I would however back up the computer first and have an Ubuntu live CD ready just in case something goes wrong. If the distro uses GRUB 2 as its boot loader (which Ubuntu does then you should not have any problems as it supports UEFI.