Dual Boot Elementary OS Freya andWindows 8.1

I have been wanting to install Linux for quite a whilenow mostly because I dislike using Cygwin or remotedesktoping a Linux machine whenever I want to usethe shell. Late last night I was super bored and finallypulled the trigger and decided I wanted to dual bootmy Windows 8.1 with a flavour of Linux. Thefollowing article show the steps I took for it to work onmy system. I have an ASUS TP550L, i7-4500U, 8gbRAM, with Intel HD Graphics 4400/ NVDIA GeForce820M.

Elementary OS

I picked Elementary OS out of tons of distros for noreason other than how it looks. As you probably

guessed from the title, I ended up installing Freyaover Luna even thought Freya is in beta. I actuallyloaded Luna first from a CD I burned before actuallyinstalling Freya. However, when I ran Luna I

unfortunately had terrible WiFi issues known to

occur with Ubuntu 12.04. Since I was too lazy to

Taylor Chen

Written by Taylor Chen -March 25th, 2015 -

Tagged Linux -

find an Ethernet cable, I hopped back on Windows andtried again with Freya. Lo and behold, 5 bars of WiFi.Luna is based on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and has had astable version since August 2013. Freya is based onUbuntu 14.04 and is in it’s second beta at the time ofwriting. Since Elementary OS (eOS) is based onUbuntu, it may be a good idea to look for Ubunturesources if you can’t find any eOS resources.

Checklist

Step 0: Backup your data

Call me a hypocrite but I did not perform this step. Myreason for NOT backing up is because I only had thislaptop for <2 months and don’t have anythingimportant to lose. I also trust in my ability to fixWindows if I were to destroy it. SO PLEASECONSIDER BACKING UP WINDOWS IF YOUHAVE ANYTHING TO LOSE EVEN IF YOUDECIDE YOU DON’T WANT LINUX ANYMORE

Step 1: Download and create a liveUSB/CD

Download Luna or Freya. Follow the instructions on

creating an install disk. Luna is only 694MB so it’s

perfect to burn on your spare 700MB CDs.

Step 2: Shrink Windows Partition

You need to make space for eOS on your machine.Start by searching for “Partitions” from the searchbutton in the Start screen. The Disk Managementscreen will appear.

Right click a drive and click “Shrink Volume..” andenter a value in “Enter the amount of space to shrink inMB.” I shrunk one of my partitions by 300GB but howmuch space you want for eOS is personal preference.If you choose to shrink your OS (Usually C:) drive,beware to not shrink for more than offered becauseyou can break your Windows 8.1 operating system.

Step 3: Turn off fast startup

Open “Power Options” from your Control Panel (orfrom the Taskbar if you’re on a laptop). On the left,click “Choose what the power buttons do."

Click “Change settings that are currently unavailable,”scroll to the bottom and uncheck “Turn on faststartup."

Step 4: Turn off secure boot

This turned out to be a pain in the behind for mebecause... ASUS. It should be a lot easier.

To do this you need to click on the power button theStart screen and press shift while clicking on restart.Find the option to modify your UEFI boot settings, itshould prompt you to restart. In the UEFI, you shouldbe able to find and turn off the secure boot option.Save and exit the UEFI settings.

If your secure boot was grayed out like mine was, youneed to delete all secure boot keys then save and exit.After opening it again you should be able to turn it off,or you may find that it is already off. If that doesn’t

work then Google is your friend. ;)

Step 5: Boot from your USB/CD

You can do one of two things to boot from yourUSB/CD. Before your computer boots up press F2,F10 or F12 (could also be something else) to go toyour boot menu. From there change the boot option toUSB or Removable Media, or CD. Alternatively ifyou’re already in windows with the CD or USBconnected, shift click the restart button like earlier andthere should be an option to boot from your mediadevice/CD.

Step 6: Install!

By now you should have eOS running from yourchosen media! The following images are from

itsfoss.com. Note that I’ll be omitting steps that are

straight forward. They also chose to make partitionspace in eOS rather than in Windows 8.1 so you canskip those steps, and I chose to partition more spacethan the images provided so keep that in mind.

Keep clicking Continue until the reach the followingpage, choose “Something else"

Step 7: New Partitions

You should be able to see the free space we createdearlier, select the free space and click “Add..."

Create a root / partition, I put in 50000.

Create a swap partition Make sure you did in factselect swap area, generally this is supposed to be

double your RAM so I put in 16000. I found a

source that says rule of thumb is the size of your

RAM plus .5 GB. I might have put too much, oops.

Create a home /home partition, I put in the rest of myfree space.

At this point it should look something like this:

Step 8: Finish and Restart:

Once that is done you should click through sometrivial settings and reach...

Congrats! You’ve installed eOS Freya (or Luna). When

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you’re restarting you should go into your boot menuand select to boot Linux first instead of Windows bootmanager. If you still load into Windows, try rebootingagain. On future reboots you should see 4 options:1. elementary OS2. Advanced options for elementary OS3. Windows Boot Manager4. System setup

Choose option 1 for eOS and option 3 for Windows!

Remember to update your system after installationbecause eOS Freya is still in beta and has a lot ofcontinuous updates and bug fixes. I might write areview on the OS once I play around and get morecomfortable. In the meantime, If you have anyquestions shoot me an email at t84chen@uwaterloo.ca,I really hope this has helped someone. Thanks forreading!