The dark history of dating Linux with Windows 8
Greetings to the community. I want to tell you about one gloomy story of mine, because it is difficult to keep it in yourself, and crying in the vest of two like-minded friends did not help much.
I decided to transfer from a stationary computer to a laptop, as my profession is most directly related to IT (the main job is an information technology engineer, plus web programming “here and there”) and it is sometimes useful to have a portable workstation. I had a netbook, but the diagonal of its screen made me sad at the time of working on sites, and it didn’t really shine due to its mental and computing characteristics.
The last, probably about 7 years old, the main and only operating system I have is Arch Linux, it is everywhere: on a working computer, on a home, on a netbook, on VPS. I will not paint all the advantages of web development in Linux now, I can only say that I am just happy to work on this system. So, when buying a laptop, there was no question of choosing a distribution kit.
Windows 8 was preinstalled with the laptop, this time I decided not to tear down everything on the disk, but to try to make friends of both systems. All the same, the price of the device was accordingly charged for the system, and it would not be superfluous to have a Microsoft product on hand just in case (to run something or run at leisure in some game, the laptop is still not weak ) The task, in principle, is quite trivial, with the caveat that the laptop had on board UEFI with GPT-based disk layout, which, frankly speaking, I did not particularly closely work with.
I read manuals on this topic, began to act. Reduced the partition with Windows content to 100 GB, created another 100 GB partition after it under the Linux root, after it the partition under Swap, used the remaining space as an NTFS partition for data for both systems. After it left the recovery partition untouched. Installed Arch Linux, everything started without problems, both systems booted by pressing F12.
I decided to look at Windows 8. I downloaded it. Well, I’ll make a reservation that the last time Windows XP was installed on some of my PC devices, I didn’t work as a regular user with either Windows Vista or Windows 7. I am familiar with them solely on duty. I think it’s not even worth describing which zoo from the preinstalled software on the laptop I found. Every five minutes, one of the programs reports something, Avira screams that there is a security flaw, someone violently demands some kind of registration, etc. etc. Avira did not find a way to properly unload from memory, I thought to put out the service, and there were a dozen of them there. In general, I began to remove software products that were not at all interesting to me. I understand that this moment does not directly characterize the operating system at all, I’m just trying to roughly describe the atmosphere that I’ve got into and from which I’m already weaned.
As for directly Windows 8. Well, of course, tile. Here, I didn’t understand much, only that nobody is going to save my internet traffic here: some news, weather, etc. flickers by itself. Anyway. When I turned on, I noticed that the “Admin” account was opened and is used for logging in to the laptop. I don’t know whether this is the work of the store’s employees, or now it’s called the built-in administrator account (and there has always been an Administrator), but it won’t do that. It’s better to work under a user with less sophisticated rights, using the “admin” when necessary. Useful to create a new user. And it asks me to enter the email and password, they say, I will synchronize everything with you, the clouds and so on. Do I need it? The system knows better than me. With the creation of a new user had to wait. And, I did not immediately find how to turn off the laptop. By the power of telepathy I discovered the Win + I hotkey, which calls up the panel on the right, on which, among other things, there is a shutdown button. Although, there may be a more intuitive way (apart from pressing the hardware button on a laptop).
But all the salt started later, I’m just like that, just a little described what I didn’t like right away. Of course, there were positive points I noted, but I completely forgot them after the incident that happened today. Booted up once again in Windows 8, they report to me that I, a lucky sort of one, can get an update to Windows 8.1 for free. Hmm, why not? Moreover, I heard that in this version they refused some radical innovations of Windows 8, for example, the lack of a Start button. I agree, the installer for 3 with something gigs started to download. It was already in the middle of the night, I decided not to wait for the download to finish, my Internet is not very fast. Dimmed out the backlight, went to bed. In the morning I looked that Linux was running there. Yeah, apparently after the download was completed, an automatic installation began, during which a reboot was required, and since Linux is loaded by default, here is the result. Rebooted the laptop, choose Windows. The installation process continues. By the way, it’s not at all intuitive, they just run the interest and briefly describe the current process, such as “Preparing the equipment”. After all the steps, Windows 8.1 finally booted up, but something like the initial setup wizard surfaced. And here again a familiar song - they ask me to enter my email and password. It is impossible to refuse or even at least skip this step. How so? I did not dare to enter my GMail account, I started a new @ outlook.com account using the standard tools of this wizard and asked me to choke and be behind me. By the way, there still needed confirmation by SMS and the activation code for some reason did not come (came in the end with a rather large delay), I was pleased
After all the steps, a reboot was required again. After that, the password from that freshly opened account @ outlook.com became the password from my laptop account. Wonderful. Well, that’s all. I am a happy owner of Windows 8.1. But early I was happy. I reboot into my coziest Linux and ... Oops. Grub says something about unknown file system. Can not be! At first, I thought this installer re-partitioned the entire disk. With a completely fallen mood, I reboot back into Windows, go into disk management. No, sections, thank God, are in place. But! For some reason, after the Windows partition, the installer created another partition about 300 Mb in size. I don’t know if he was running a Windows partition, or “bit off” a piece from the beginning of the Linux root (if the latter, then generally sadness, but upon a quick inspection, it’s still, like, the first), but anyway, partition numbering floated and Linux while out of the game. Why is he doing this to me?
Even if my assumptions come true and it turns out that the file system is / alive and just configure the bootloader to work again (now there’s just no way to do this, there’s no flash drive or disk to boot from), I’m completely there is no longer a desire to deal with this system. Why did you need another section? It is clear that this is some section of the Windows recovery environment, but, you must admit, it is mean, like this, without warning, to re-partition the disk. As a result, I remained incapacitated in terms of work for the weekend. Tomorrow, when I get to the tools, I copy everything I need to external media, demolish the GPT markup, turn off UEFI, partition the disk with the good old MBR and pump up my favorite Arch exclusively on the entire disk. All acquaintance over. Although, try to convince me.
I decided to transfer from a stationary computer to a laptop, as my profession is most directly related to IT (the main job is an information technology engineer, plus web programming “here and there”) and it is sometimes useful to have a portable workstation. I had a netbook, but the diagonal of its screen made me sad at the time of working on sites, and it didn’t really shine due to its mental and computing characteristics.
The last, probably about 7 years old, the main and only operating system I have is Arch Linux, it is everywhere: on a working computer, on a home, on a netbook, on VPS. I will not paint all the advantages of web development in Linux now, I can only say that I am just happy to work on this system. So, when buying a laptop, there was no question of choosing a distribution kit.
Windows 8 was preinstalled with the laptop, this time I decided not to tear down everything on the disk, but to try to make friends of both systems. All the same, the price of the device was accordingly charged for the system, and it would not be superfluous to have a Microsoft product on hand just in case (to run something or run at leisure in some game, the laptop is still not weak ) The task, in principle, is quite trivial, with the caveat that the laptop had on board UEFI with GPT-based disk layout, which, frankly speaking, I did not particularly closely work with.
I read manuals on this topic, began to act. Reduced the partition with Windows content to 100 GB, created another 100 GB partition after it under the Linux root, after it the partition under Swap, used the remaining space as an NTFS partition for data for both systems. After it left the recovery partition untouched. Installed Arch Linux, everything started without problems, both systems booted by pressing F12.
I decided to look at Windows 8. I downloaded it. Well, I’ll make a reservation that the last time Windows XP was installed on some of my PC devices, I didn’t work as a regular user with either Windows Vista or Windows 7. I am familiar with them solely on duty. I think it’s not even worth describing which zoo from the preinstalled software on the laptop I found. Every five minutes, one of the programs reports something, Avira screams that there is a security flaw, someone violently demands some kind of registration, etc. etc. Avira did not find a way to properly unload from memory, I thought to put out the service, and there were a dozen of them there. In general, I began to remove software products that were not at all interesting to me. I understand that this moment does not directly characterize the operating system at all, I’m just trying to roughly describe the atmosphere that I’ve got into and from which I’m already weaned.
As for directly Windows 8. Well, of course, tile. Here, I didn’t understand much, only that nobody is going to save my internet traffic here: some news, weather, etc. flickers by itself. Anyway. When I turned on, I noticed that the “Admin” account was opened and is used for logging in to the laptop. I don’t know whether this is the work of the store’s employees, or now it’s called the built-in administrator account (and there has always been an Administrator), but it won’t do that. It’s better to work under a user with less sophisticated rights, using the “admin” when necessary. Useful to create a new user. And it asks me to enter the email and password, they say, I will synchronize everything with you, the clouds and so on. Do I need it? The system knows better than me. With the creation of a new user had to wait. And, I did not immediately find how to turn off the laptop. By the power of telepathy I discovered the Win + I hotkey, which calls up the panel on the right, on which, among other things, there is a shutdown button. Although, there may be a more intuitive way (apart from pressing the hardware button on a laptop).
But all the salt started later, I’m just like that, just a little described what I didn’t like right away. Of course, there were positive points I noted, but I completely forgot them after the incident that happened today. Booted up once again in Windows 8, they report to me that I, a lucky sort of one, can get an update to Windows 8.1 for free. Hmm, why not? Moreover, I heard that in this version they refused some radical innovations of Windows 8, for example, the lack of a Start button. I agree, the installer for 3 with something gigs started to download. It was already in the middle of the night, I decided not to wait for the download to finish, my Internet is not very fast. Dimmed out the backlight, went to bed. In the morning I looked that Linux was running there. Yeah, apparently after the download was completed, an automatic installation began, during which a reboot was required, and since Linux is loaded by default, here is the result. Rebooted the laptop, choose Windows. The installation process continues. By the way, it’s not at all intuitive, they just run the interest and briefly describe the current process, such as “Preparing the equipment”. After all the steps, Windows 8.1 finally booted up, but something like the initial setup wizard surfaced. And here again a familiar song - they ask me to enter my email and password. It is impossible to refuse or even at least skip this step. How so? I did not dare to enter my GMail account, I started a new @ outlook.com account using the standard tools of this wizard and asked me to choke and be behind me. By the way, there still needed confirmation by SMS and the activation code for some reason did not come (came in the end with a rather large delay), I was pleased
After all the steps, a reboot was required again. After that, the password from that freshly opened account @ outlook.com became the password from my laptop account. Wonderful. Well, that’s all. I am a happy owner of Windows 8.1. But early I was happy. I reboot into my coziest Linux and ... Oops. Grub says something about unknown file system. Can not be! At first, I thought this installer re-partitioned the entire disk. With a completely fallen mood, I reboot back into Windows, go into disk management. No, sections, thank God, are in place. But! For some reason, after the Windows partition, the installer created another partition about 300 Mb in size. I don’t know if he was running a Windows partition, or “bit off” a piece from the beginning of the Linux root (if the latter, then generally sadness, but upon a quick inspection, it’s still, like, the first), but anyway, partition numbering floated and Linux while out of the game. Why is he doing this to me?
Even if my assumptions come true and it turns out that the file system is / alive and just configure the bootloader to work again (now there’s just no way to do this, there’s no flash drive or disk to boot from), I’m completely there is no longer a desire to deal with this system. Why did you need another section? It is clear that this is some section of the Windows recovery environment, but, you must admit, it is mean, like this, without warning, to re-partition the disk. As a result, I remained incapacitated in terms of work for the weekend. Tomorrow, when I get to the tools, I copy everything I need to external media, demolish the GPT markup, turn off UEFI, partition the disk with the good old MBR and pump up my favorite Arch exclusively on the entire disk. All acquaintance over. Although, try to convince me.