dual boot windows 8 and ubuntu
 

Hi, My daughter wants me to install Ubuntu 13.04 onto her Fujitsu Laptop to dual boot with windows8

Although I have set up dual boots on my own PC's. I am really concerned about doing this.

I have Lubuntu & Vista dual booting on my old laptop, and Ubuntu and Windows 7 on my desktop. no problems setting up either, but I understand the more modern laptops and windows 8 in particular can cause problems. Something to do with the "efei" boot.*sorry about the incorrect spelling)

Is it a great deal more difficult than installing a dual boot system with windows 7 please.

Thanks

It's not uefi but rather Secure Boot. When you boot the computer and enter the BIOS you will need to check the various options, probably under a 'boot' heading which you should have. Disable 'Secure Boot', check to see if you have an option for 'Legacy Boot'. You should be able to find some info with the Search function here at LQ, if that fails just google it as there are a lot of tutorials. I've only used windows 8 on VirtualBox and don't have Secure boot on any computer. Someone will be along with more knowledge.

Take a look at the link below:

http://apcmag.com/how-to-dual-boot-w...-and-linux.htm

Thanks Yancek. I will have a look in the bios. Also found a tutorial about installing with wubi. No partitioning required but still makes a dual boot. Heard some not so nice things about wubi so still very uncertain.
Thanks for the link. I will research some more before i try.

This win 8 is awful. My daughter wont know shes living when she get Ububtu. lol

A wubi install is pretty similar to using VirtualBox or some other virtual software. It will run much slower. Any time you are running virtual software, if the host OS get corrupted, problems although my understanding is that Ubuntu wubi puts an entry in the windows boot menu so theoretically you should still be able to boot it?

I have used wubi with Ubuntu on a Windows 7 box for maybe a year or so. Works for me. And yes, as yancek said it will put a new entry in the boot menu so you can choose to boot either the Windows or Linux.

arranskye,
if the original mechine comes with win8 then it probably has uefi (win secure boot) some computers allow you, from the hardrive, to recourse to "legacy bios". If that is so do that and then dual set up. If not you will have a difficult job to access your drives. Efi has been used for years, uefi is new.

Fred.

I dual boot Win 8 and Ubuntu 13.04. Take a look here : https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UEFI

Also, some options when changing BIOS settings is very machine specific. I had a time configuring the bios settings on my samsung machine, so best thing is to look at your machine specific forums if you are stuck with bios.

Also, wubi does not work on UEFI enabled machines.

I haven't looked in to fixing my sisters Lenovo laptop, (Grub I hope?) put Ubuntu along side 8 and it (and Grub) stays hidden until I chance the bios boot order to legacy first. (Grub\Lenovo won't boot 8 unless set to uefi first (then no Grub)) Once I get around to it will be back to read this thread more closely...(just found randomly) :)

Hi Guys. Thank you all for your contributions; This laptop has : fast Boot : CSM ; secure boot. (circa 2012)

I have read several tutorials including your links (thanks) some some of which have been very conflicting and confusing. You Tube even worse.

Anyway I d/l and burned "Linux/ubuntu secure remix" to disk. Ran it live on the win 8 laptop and opened the boot repair which probed the bios and detected EFI.

I have also opened Win 8 with: fast boot disabled ; CSM enabled : Secure boot disabled and it worked ok

I have backed up the personal data in win 8. All the programes and setting are just default.

It would appear that its possible to dual boot Ubuntu on this machine by using either legacy or efi. and I would like to stick with EFi if possible please.

The HDD set up in this laptop is strange perhaps you could explain.

This laptop was purchased with Win 8 pre-installed and these are the specs:

CPU: Intel i3-2328 at 2.2GHz
Memory: 6GB DDR3 1333MHz
Storage: 500GB*SATA II*5900RPM
Display: 15.6” at 1366x768 (16:9 aspect ratio)
Graphics: Intel GMA

Note HDD 500GB HDD set up on laptop: Only 2 drives/partitions C:/ 25.8GB free of 74.9GB
(D) 373 GB free 0f 373GB

So Win8 was allocated 100GB and the rest was allocated to a logical D drive and no recovery partition.

Is this standard practice please. On my previous computers all of the HDD was allocated to the OS apart from the amount required for the recovery partition, and boot loader.

As it all the same drive I assume that this (D) partition will have to be deleted, then re-size win 8 partition to 173GB leaving 200GB free space.

Moonshadow Thanks for your input but I have been strongly advised against using wubi at the moment.

Technology to monopolise the bios to make it as difficult as possible, not just to prevent dual booting, but also to discourage any OS system other than MS windows being installed continues to advance at an alarming rate.

From what I have read even formatting the HDD to do a clean install can pose problems. At this rate they will end up preventing all OS installations except Win 8, and in the process they may well stand on their own toes.

Could you please confirm that I have understood everything correctly and then I will be set to go following DeeGee's link.

Thanks Fred. now I understand UEFI is different from EFI. (laptop is EFI)

jamison The new boot repair disk may help with your boot problems.

many thanks to all of you. Your time and efforts are very much appreciated. margaret

More recent OEM installs of windows had a system partition and a recovery partition. On some windows 7 OEM installs, there was also a separate boot partition. I don't know about windows 8 as I only used the trial version on virtual software. I expect you are on the right track if you want to increase the size of the windows 8 partition, delete what you refer to as the D partition, increase the C partition and then create additional partitions.

You might boot your Ubuntu CD and open a terminal and run this command: sudo fdisk -l(Lower case Letter L in the command) and post it here as it will give the information in terminology used by Linux.

Thanks all. Will check: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair http://sourceforge.net/projects/boot-repair-cd/ as well and post back although it could be awhile. Maybe next virus she gets? Last time (few weeks ago) just used Ubuntu for search and destroy, had hoped all the updating on both OSs would fix... :(

thanks Yancek. Out of fdisk -l as requested:

WARNING: GPT (GUID Partition Table) detected on '/dev/sda'! The util fdisk doesn't support GPT. Use GNU Parted.


Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
256 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60563 cylinders, total 976773168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 4294967295 2147483647+ ee GPT
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$

Secure boot is a seperate mechanism that looks for a signature/key before booting media. In my Acer/Gateway BIOS setup I could only disable it by enabling legacy boot until I set an administrator password, then the option to keep using EFI without secure boot magically appeared. :mad: It's probably just idiot proofing to prevent support calls but made me waste several hours.

hi, Yes it took me a while to find this. Mine required a supervisors password to be input then I could enable or disable Fast Boot CSM and Secure boot.

I have found some of the info to install Ubuntu very confusing and still dont know if its best to try using EFI or enabling the CSM to use Legacy.

Apparent even doing one or the other can still result in win 8 booting up in EFI while ubuntu tries to boot in legacy. I ran Linux secure remix and it detected EFI

Some of the links start by appearing quite easy but as I read on everything is a bit more complicated and beyond my experience and knowledge.

Thanks for your input. have you done a dual boot with linux and win 8?

Cheers margaret

arranskye,
no I have not dual booted with win8 for reason of the problems you are having but I would go down the road of reverting to the legacy option because I see no substantial advantages of a efi event, what happens if your hdd fails, you probably cannot replace it and put a new os on it!
If you choose legacy what do you see on booting, grub or a win8 page?

Fred.