[NTLUG:Discuss] Dual Boot

[Steve Litt]

On Wed, 27 Nov 2013 11:19:00 -0600
Tom Tumelty <tomtumelty at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Everyone,
> Can a laptop be made to dual boot  Win 8 and Linux (Ubuntu 13.10) ?
> 
> I have done this many times in past with Linux and win. however I
> think i remember reading win8 makes this impossible..or at least more
> difficult. I am hopng someone knows answer. I am looking to purchase
> a laptop on black friday.

I've done it.

You need a Linux distro that can boot from a GPT formatted disk. I did
it with OpenSuSE, and I'm pretty sure Ubuntu can do it too. I just told
OpenSuSE to install itself, and it did the right thing.

You need to go into the BIOS and turn off Secure Boot (but not GPT)
before installing Linux.

I've had one out of maybe 8 laptops that wouldn't allow me to turn off
secure boot, and therefore I couldn't use Linux on it. The rest enabled
me to bios turnoff secure boot.

Naturally, you need to shrink your Windows partition before doing this,
but that's no different from any other dualboot.

My main laptop is a dualboot Win8/OpenSuSE, and I can't get it to
default to Linux, so I need to press Esc on every boot to let it ask me
which OS.

You're smart to dual boot a laptop. Laptop customer service depends on
the support line drone being able to walk you through his stupid
Windows diagnostics, even when the problem is a battery that won't
charge.

SteveT

Steve Litt                *  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance