Installing xubuntu on a new WIndows-8 system

[Tom H]

On Mon, Aug 12, 2013 at 1:09 PM, Joep L. Blom <jlblom at neuroweave.nl> wrote:
>
> I just bought a new system (Acer) which of course I couldn't buy without an
> OS so Windows8 is pre-installed. It uses several partitiona and First I
> thought of removing it completely. However, I've paid for it so first let it
> be (by the way it is completely unusable for somebody who has used
> UNIX/Linux over the past 25 years).
> Now I have shrunk one Windows partition to 250 GB to install Ubuntu on.
> However, when I start installing the first thing that's asked is a device
> for the boot loader installation. I give /dev/sda6 (which is the partition I
> would use for Ubuntu) but it complains that it is used for mount point /
> (natural) and it want a separate partition for the bootloader code which
> should be marked as a "Reserved BIOS boot area".
> I assume it will need an area for the grub loader in the boot-area but there
> is of course already the WIndows boot code.
> As extra information: I install in legacy mode as UEFI is too new for me.

Late reply but trying to catch up with personal email today...

(OT: Win 8 is confusing for Windows users too. I hope for MS's sake
that they switch to an all-Metro interface because the mix of old and
new interfaces is schizophrenic)

I'll reverse-answer your post!

Were you able to switch to legacy mode without re-installing Windows?

With UEFI, there's no boot-area area for boot loader code. UEFI
includes a boot manager (manager not loader) that'll point to an
OS-specific boot manager or boot loader in the EFI system partition.

For Windows, it'll be "<drive>:\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi"
(although I've seen at least one manufacturer use its own at
"<drive>:\EFI\<manufaturer>\Boot\<boot_manager>.efi").

For Linux, it's mounted at "/boot/efi" and the path is
"/boot/efi/EFI/<distribution>/<something>.efi".

<EFI SYSTEM PARTITION>/EFI/boot/bootx64.efi