12.04 Live CD 1st screen is Unreadable

[LarryMcMains]

I found posts from last year that recommend three partitions with a 10-20 GB ext partition and "/" mount point. So, I'm going to try marking my 25 GB partition as such. Hoping for the best...

[fantab]

Yes, you have to use "/" as mountpoint. Also, you have created a 13GB SWAP, do you really need that big a SWAP?

[LarryMcMains]

I found other postings from last year that recommend a 10-20 GB partition mounted at "/", so I tried marking my 25 GB partition as such and proceeding. The 13.04 installation claims to have completed successfully, but when I reboot, it goes straight to Windows 8. Since the Ubuntu LiveDVD never detected my Win 8 OS, and thus (I guess) I never got an option to "install alongside another OS", I wonder if the dual boot functions have even been installed?

Ideas, anyone?

[LarryMcMains]

Regarding the size of the swap space I created: Posts in these forums recommended a couple GB plus the computer's memory size, 2+12=14 (came out 139999 for some reason). Perhaps this is ridiculously high? Given something has to be fixed to get dual boot to work, it wouldn't be hard to delete the partitions I created and start over with a smaller swap partition. My bigger problem at the moment is that, despite an install of 13.04 that claimed to be successful, the system only boots straight to Windows 8. I just reconfirmed that the boot speed is normal (vs fast) and the secure boot is disabled.

[fantab]

Don't worry if you don't get an option to install 'alongside Windows' option during install. Just install it with "Something Else" option and do it manually.

You will have now fix your boot with "Boot Repair". After installing Ubuntu restart computer and boot with Ubuntu Live DVD/USB, "Try Ubuntu" and follow the instructions provided in the given link and also HERE.

The Size of your SWAP is 'ridiculously high' if you DON'T intend to use 'Hibernate'. If you 'Hibernate' your computer then, I guess its OK. However the recommendation of 2 + RAM is very old. With 12GB of RAM is very unlikely you will ever use SWAP at all, unless you Hibernate. 2GB if you don't use hibernate is plenty. I have 4GB SWAP with 4GB RAM and my machine never uses it.

Read the instructions carefully on both the given links and proceed. You are almost there.

Good Luck.

[LarryMcMains]

Bad news first (good news coming): I created ubuntu-secure-remix (aka linux-secure-remix) DVD, but when I booted from it, it immediately responsed with "Start PXE over ipv4, press esc to exit". The 2nd choice was to create a boot-repair cd, but the web page has a warning up front that says that it does not work with newer systems with UEFI, so I didn't even try this.

The good news: the last alternative was to boot the 13.04 install LiveDVD and install boot-repair on that - this worked! I ran boot-repair, selected the "recommended repair" action, rebooted, and got the boot OS selection menu!!! Both Ubuntu 13.04 and Windows 8 can be started successfully! So, I have still have much work to install all the programs I had on my old system, but I believe I'm on my way. I have to quit for today, but tomorrow, I will try to post with a summary of the needed steps that I had to perform on the way to a successful install of 13.04 along side Windows 8.

Thanks very much for all of the help and sticking with me despite all of my (probably naive) questions.

[fantab]

I am glad that you are successfully dual-booting Win8 and Ubuntu.

[LarryMcMains]

Finally, here are the steps that i believe were necessary in order to install Ubuntu on a new Toshiba notebook in a dual boot arrangement with Windows 8.

1. Switch from 12.04 LTS to 13.04. My initial attempts as indicated by the title were to install Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (desiring to stay with a well tested release that would not have to be upgraded for awhile). However, the LiveCD I created had an unreadable first screen, and, getting by that by trial and error, when I did boot into 12.04 from the LiveDVD, I was unable to make any networking functions work. Switching at the suggestion of user Fantab to release 13.04 solved both of these problems.
2. Create some free space on the 1 TB hardddrive for ubuntu. I did this as described in http://askubuntu.com/questions/22183...ndows-8-system using the windows 8 compmgmt.msc program to shrink the largest partition (of 5 on the harddrive) as much as the program allowed (gained about 42% of the available space).
3. Based warnings in the link above and from Fantab, I set the boot speed on my notebook from "fast" to "Normal" and turned off "Secure Boot". These were both in the BIOS settings, accessible on the Toshiba by hitting the F2 key rapidly and continuously while restarting the notebook.
4. In order to boot from the LiveDVD (DVD required, 13.04 was too large to fit on a CD), I had to select the DVD drive as the boot device. On the Toshiba, the boot menu can be accessed by rapidly and continuously hitting F12 while restarting.
5. On the first menu after booting from the DVD, I always in all cases chose the 1st (Try Ubuntu) option. This may not have been the most efficient way to do things, but... it's what I did.
6. From the Ubuntu desktop, I confirmed that networking was active and then started the Ubuntu installation with the icon on the desktop.
7. The install process did not recognize my Windows 8 installation at all and gave me choices of "Erase disk" and "Something else". I chose the latter!
8. The following screen was a listing of all the existing partitions and the 419 GB free space I created earlier. I selected the free space and hit "+" to carve out a 4GB partition with a usage of "swap". (Initially, I had a much larger space, based on recommendations in these forums, but Fantab noted above that, with the amount of memory that my system had, and unless I wanted to use the hibernate function, then I had far to much swap space allocated.) 4 GB may still be too large - I dunno.
9. I then allocated a 25 GB partition of type EXT4 and a mount point of "/" for Ubuntu to install into.
10. Finally, I allocated a partition with all of the remaining space of type EXT4 and a mount point "/home"
11. At this point I hit the "Install now" button and in about 15 minutes, the process indicated it had completed successfully. However, when I restarted the system, it went directly to Windows 8 without any mention of Ubuntu - not totally unexpected, based on many other postings in these forums
12. To fix this, I ran "Boot-repair" as described in https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair. The first option for getting the Boot-repair program did not work at all for me. The Ubuntu_secure_remix LiveDVD would only display a message to "install PXE over ipv4" before quitting. The Boot-repair CD alternative has a warning on it's page that it does not work for recent computers with EFI and recommends ubuntu-secure-remix. The 2nd option of booting again from the 13.04 LiveDVD and installing Boot-repair there, however, worked without a hitch. I selected the "Recommended Repair" option and noted the resulting information as directed just in case, but upon restarting the system, the boot menu appeared with Ubuntu as the default and windows 8 as an option. Both work as expected.