Success!

After struggling for days, we a finally one step closer to becoming a Windows-free household! My wife got fed up with Windows 10 taking forever to boot and asked if she needed a new notebook to fix it, when in reality that is just the nature of the beast. So she agreed to let me install Linux on it. Being her first real foray into Linux, I set about installing the same distro I'm currently using, which is Linux Mint. I figure that using the same distro will allow me to provide better assistance if she needs it, as I've become somewhat accustomed to it. So I disable Fastboot in Windows, shrink Windows the partition, set the BIOS to boot from my USB drive, and discover there's no way to disable Secure Boot on her Acer laptop. No big deal, I think, as the installer for Linux will give me an option if it sees Secure Boot is still enabled. Install goes fine, so I remove the USB drive during reboot, and it goes straight into Windows 10. And I try everything I can think of to resolve the issue. And I continue trying everything I can find online for the next couple of days. Until today, I discover the perfect storm of settings to resolve everything. First, you HAVE to set a supervisor password in the BIOS to enable additional UEFI settings. Then, during the Linux install, you have to install grub to the EFI partition. Then, you have to add the new file that grub installs to the EFI partition to the boot options in the BIOS. Finally, you have to change your boot order in the BIOS to make sure your new Linux boot comes before the Windows Bootloader. What a pain! But I am currently copying the documents from my wife's Windows 10 install over to her Linux install. I'm leaving the option to dual boot for now, in case she needs to go into Windows for something, but I suspect that after awhile, we'll be able to remove the Windows partition completely :)