Windows 8 why you such a pain!

[Marrea]

Thanks, nelz. That’s useful. It sounds as if I start investigating Asus models I may be in luck then.

I too am no lover of touch screens. I recently bought a budget smartphone because I felt there was a gap in my knowledge in this particular area - apps, Android, etc - which needed to be addressed, but I hate the way the screen is permanently covered in fingermarks. Being so unused to it, I also find the touch technique a little difficult at the moment. I am always touching things I don’t mean to, and trying to navigate web pages on it is an absolute nightmare compared with a computer!

[towy71]

Ebuyer are selling a laptop with Ubuntu pre-installed

[RichAustin]

I've been running Windows 8 / 8.1 for about 2 years now alongside various Linux distro's including Arch and Ubuntu. It works perfectly. I can only assume that your issue is to do with UEFI which you should be able to disable in the BIOS.

One of the best places to look for any sort of technical solutions, regardless of which distro you use, is the Arch Wiki. There is an article on Linux and UEFI here:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Wi ... _Dual_Boot

I don't have a UEFI system myself so can't say exactly how to dual boot. It most definitely is possible though, and I seem to recall LXFormat ran an article on it about a year ago or so?

[GregS]

It's an Asus Vivobook S202, about a year old. It's a Windows 8 release because it has a touch screen, not that I use it like that - my phone screen has more than enough finger marks already.

My wife is running an Asus (Tai Chi) touchscreen. it took a lot of stuffing around, including disabling fastboot and all the other 'secure' functions in UEFI, but we eventually installed Fedora 18 (UEFI mode of course) alongside 8-ball. Now updated to F20, it is running as the primary OS, the other one only being used for those functions absolutely requiring it (anyone had any luck with iPods on Linux?)

Mr Google was invoked often!

ALL(!) that is required of her is to get into what I can only equate to the BIOS at boot to select which OS is to boot as primary, because I'm damned if I can get any other way to work. There is NO WAY to interactively select OS on boot-up.

[nelz]

On mine, you press Esc at boot time to select the device or EFI object to boot from.

[GregS]

On mine, you press Esc at boot time to select the device or EFI object to boot from.

Not so on hers, for some reason(?).

Brute force is the only option...

[nelz]

Brute force is the only option...

It's comforting that there are still some things in life you can rely on

[MadTux]

I'd just like to say, on my wonderful new ThinkPad T440 Ubuntu 14.04 installed perfectly over Windows 8, with uefi.

The challenge will be to
1. take the laptop apart to install an SSD, and
2. install Arch on it

[nelz]

1 and 2 are relatively straightforward, but you missed out the difficult step in between - putting the laptop back together again with no bits left over :-O

[linux_dan]

Hello one and all,

I am please say I am replying to my original thread from UBUNTU 14.4 . I am back!!

Thanks to this rather simply guide

http://www.everydaylinuxuser.com/2014/0 ... ndows.html

Dan

[MadTux]

Congratulations! That looks rather complicated. It's interesting how Win8's rather impressive boot time changes when you disable that fast boot stuff.

That reminds me, when I wanted to sell the Windoze 8 license from my laptop to a friend, I learnt that the laptop stores it in the BIOS, encrypted, with no way to get to the number.

[penguinclaw]

I haven't got a laptop (well unless you count my lovely Eeepc 4G surf!) and my motherboard is pre-uefi, but I have never had any issues dual booting with Windows 8. I believe that most of the big Distros have UEFI keys that make dual booting in secure mode possible. However I obviously have no experience with this. I would be interested to know whether this is the case as I will need to do a system upgrade later this year.

[Alex01UK]

Hey,

>> So it looks like my love affair with Linux has come to end!

>> I brought a shiny new Dell with Windows 8.1 Update 1 boy >> >> what a mistake!

I will give you ten UK pounds for it.... Take it off your hands, do you a favour, for recycling..... Windows 8 is by definition a pita... It's because it's owned by some not very nice people called Microsoft. They are tyrants. Our way is the only way; you will conform. I say; ''NO!''

Dan

[Alex01UK]

Why not buy a usb harddrive and install 64bit Windows 7 on it? That would work?

[Marrea]

Thanks, nelz. That’s useful. It sounds as if I start investigating Asus models I may be in luck then.

I finally got round to buying a new laptop the week before last. I didn't in the end buy an Asus but instead decided on an HP 15-n299sa from PC World. It was the right sort of price I wanted to pay and adequately specified for my purposes.

I am pleased to report that I have now managed to successfully set up a dual-boot Windows 8.1 and Ubuntu 14.04, which surprised me because I didn't have much of a clue what I was doing! I realise I have an enormous amount to learn about this new-fangled UEFI along with all its ramifications. It doesn't help that every article I read seems to suggest tackling dual-booting in a different way from the previous one.

Having fiddled about for some time disabling Secure Boot and enabling Legacy Mode and various other things and getting absolutely nowhere I eventually discovered that in fact all I had to do was simply turn off Fast start-up in Windows to get the Ubuntu DVD to run and install. No need to do anything at all with Secure Boot and/or Legacy Mode. Grub gives me an option to boot the Windows boot manager on /dev/sda2, which is the EFI partition, so everything appears to be running as I wanted - at the moment at least.