On 24/08/2014 18:58, Joe wrote:
On Sun, 24 Aug 2014 17:01:09 +0100 Ron Leach<ronleach@tesco.net> wrote:
(iii) Dual booting with Windows (this has W8.1) does seem, generally, to be problematic; [...]I searched quite a lot for more details about Debian, even Linux generally, dual-booting with W8.1, but the only returns I found were describing the difficulties.The BIOS in my G1 has a 'legacy boot enable' switch, and I was expecting to need to flip this between each boot of Linux or Windows, but in fact it isn't necessary, it can be left enabled. From a cold boot (and Windows now has various tricks to speed up boot that mean you need to say 'shutdown to power off' very firmly) [...]
The Debian installer manual section for installing on Windows machines was updated yesterday - I'm not sure what the change was - but the Installation manual here:
http://d-i.debian.org/manual/en.amd64/ch03s06.html#boot-dev-selectexplains how to select the boot device, what to do with UEFI (its advice is use it, don't use 'legacy mode'), and switching off Windows Fast Boot, as you have mentioned. (The previous section,
http://d-i.debian.org/manual/en.amd64/ch03s05.htmlon partitioning requirements (and co-existing with Windows partitions) only talks about Windows versions up to W7, though.)
Those BIOS arrangements seem to be the necessary pre-conditions for installing Debian (so that Debian can boot, at all, but dual booting at choice? I'm not sure), but I've not yet read through all the manual, nor seen any success reports for dual booting Wheezy and W8.1 without resorting to separate boot devices. I'm going to continue looking, though.
Apologies for the thread drift but, essentially, installing Debian on UEFI systems is fine. Dual booting with W 8.x does not seem to have been a complete success yet for folks on this list. (But it is possible that it does (now) Just Work, but no-one's mentioned it here.)
regards, Ron