installing ubuntu 14.04 on pre-installed windows 8 machine -- uefi or not?

[ubfan1]

I generally use the "something else", creating a root and a swap at the minimum, which looks just like the "alongside" picture you posted. When you do it yourself, you can choose to make a separate /home or data partition, so you files may be separated from the rest of the operating system, but that's not required, and you risk leaving the root too small.

[ubfan1]

I generally use the "something else", creating a root and a swap at the minimum, which looks just like the "alongside" picture you posted. When you do it yourself, you can choose to make a separate /home or data partition, so you files may be separated from the rest of the operating system, but that's not required, and you risk leaving the root too small.

[kimberly2]

I generally use the "something else", creating a root and a swap at the minimum, which looks just like the "alongside" picture you posted. When you do it yourself, you can choose to make a separate /home or data partition, so you files may be separated from the rest of the operating system, but that's not required, and you risk leaving the root too small.

hi thanks for the response. yeah i don't really care about having /home be a separate partition from / anymore. i'd be fine with just / and swap.

ok so i guess here's where i'm confused/worried. if you look at the 2nd pic (of what "something else" shows), sda1 is the windows bootloader (~1gb), sda2 is the windows C partition (~492gb), then there's the free space which i made for ubuntu (~491gb), and then there's sda3 (~15gb) which is the windows recovery partition. i don't really know how that partition works (like if it will still work once i install ubuntu and mess with the mbr and such), but i guess i'd like to keep it if i can. here's the thing though. before i did the fixparts thing, when i booted the liveusb in legacy mode, i'd *also* get the "alongside w8" option, but it wasn't seeing the free space like it is now (it saw C and free space as the one big block it started as for some reason...), it was seeing the 15gb windows recovery partition, sda3.

so i guess i'm worried now that if i do the "alongside w8" one now it might still do that, because before it brought me to a interface where i could divide up that 15gb into ubuntu/windows space, but now i don't get that window (in this pic http://i.imgur.com/KRhKkl2.jpg it says "if you continue the changes below will be written to the disks"). so i'm not really sure if it's talking about the free space or maybe the windows recovery partition.

i'm also not really clear on what it says in the "alongside w8" dialog, it says:

the following partitions are going to be formatted:
partition #5 of SCSI3 (0,0,0) (sda) as ex4
partition #6 of SCSI3 (0,0,0) (sda) as swap

but why is it #5 and #6? it seems like so far there are only 3, and the free space, but i thought it would be turning the free space into them...

any help for a confused person? thanks!

[ubfan1]

Remember this is an msdos partitioned disk, so only four primary partitions -- not enough. So one primary get made into an extended over all the free space (sda4). Then you are allowed to make logical partitions inside the extended, which would be sda5 and sda6. That's what is expected and necessary in this case. Your sda5 and sda6 should together fill the free space.

[kimberly2]

Remember this is an msdos partitioned disk, so only four primary partitions -- not enough. So one primary get made into an extended over all the free space (sda4). Then you are allowed to make logical partitions inside the extended, which would be sda5 and sda6. That's what is expected and necessary in this case. Your sda5 and sda6 should together fill the free space.

awesome. so you think that, if i just want the simple / and swap partitions, the thing it's gonna do for "alongside windows 8" should be good?

thanks!

[kimberly2]

hi everyone, it appears to have worked. so no one has to go through this awfulness again, i'll try and quickly summarize what i learned here:

1. if you buy a "debranded" computer (like from newegg), apparently they somehow install w8 using mbr/legacy/bios as opposed to what's currently used, gpt/uefi (correct me if i'm wrong about that). so that creates problems. most notably, when i shrunk my c drive in w8 (to create free/unallocated space for ubuntu), that free space didn't appear in almost any of the disk analyzers (gparted, fdisk, etc), so this naturally created a problem for dual booting (it just appeared as the original huge block).
2. to make it see this space as a separate block of memory, i used fixparts. i hit 'y' the first time, and then basically just 'w', and i'm pretty sure that fixed it.
3. even after doing this, i still had the option (at choose boot source menu) to boot my liveusb as uefi or legacy. if i did it as uefi, when i got to the window where you choose how to install ubuntu (with regarts to memory and partitions), it did *not* give me the "alongside windows 8" choice, but it *did* see the free space in the gparted type display.
4. however, if i booted in legacy mode, it gave me the "alongside w8" option and that seemed correct, and simpler, so i chose that.

and here i am! they both boot nicely. wheeeeeee.

thanks for the help, oldfred.