Dual booting Win 8 and Ubuntu 13.10 in uefi mode on a Toshiba laptop

[Jim Byrnes]

I finally got this to work.  The problem was in uefi mode the live dvd 
would not boot to a usable desktop when I choose to try Ubuntu.  I would 
either hang at black screen or end up in tty1.  What worked was to 
choose to *install* Ubuntu instead of *trying* Ubuntu. Once I did that I 
got to the install screen and everything just worked after that. I have 
tried so many things over the last couple of days I don't remember if I 
had to use nomodeset or not to get it to work.

When I restarted I got the grub menu. Ubuntu would start but Win 8 would 
not. I went here [1] and got boot repair and followed it's instructions 
and now I can dual boot Win 8 and Ubuntu.

[1] https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair

This was also helpful:

[2] 
http://www.everydaylinuxuser.com/2013/09/install-ubuntu-linux-alongside-windows.html

One thing I noticed about Win 8 is you can install it but not activate 
it and it is still usable.  When I installed it I made sure I did not 
have an internet connection and said no to setting up wireless and no to 
activation. I could change settings and use the control panel.  I was 
able to use windows to shrink it's C: drive to install Ubuntu as 
recommended in [2]. The only I found I could not do without activating 
it was to "personalize it".  I didn't spend a lot of time with it so 
there may be more things that need it to be activated to work but it did 
what I needed.

Hopefully this is helpful someone else in the same situation.

Regards,  Jim