impossible to install Mint on Toshiba Satellite C-55a?

[yrrchsebor]

has there been any case where installing Linux was just not possible on a UEFI machine? i got a Toshiba Satellite C-55A, and have had no luck installing anything. with a dvd of Mint 16, when i try to boot off the dvd, i just get a 'Minimal BASH-like line editing' screen. with usb drives, it seems to try to read the media and i guess it finds nothing official there so it just boots into Windows.

i have disabled secure boot, turned off fast booting, but i find no option in BIOS to turn off UEFI in favor of CSM or legaccy boot or anything like that. i've been Googling for hours but i just don't see any other settings i can change! and i've had little luck booting off dvds or usb.

is it possible that it is just impossible? i just got this machine today, so it probably has the very latest security, and strangely when i got it, secure boot was already disabled. if i can't get Linux installed i will probably return it!

thanks in advance for any thoughts..

[austin.texas]

I don't have Windows, so I can't test this - but it seems to me that it should be possible to use Windows to create the partition(s) you need for Mint, and then load the Mint .iso into ram. That would eliminate any need to boot a DVD or usb.
I believe the Windows 8 Hyper-V program can do that.

I have done that many times using Mint to load a different version of Mint into ram, and installing to a different partition or drive.

[yrrchsebor]

Ah ok, interesting idea, thanks. I'll look into it today. Yeah, I can create the partitions using Windows, but I've held off on that until I knew I could install Mint.

When you instal from RAM, do you think grub would instal and be able to deal with the dual boot?

[austin.texas]

When you boot a Mint DVD in UEFI mode, it installs in UEFI mode. I am assuming that if you boot the Mint .iso to ram from a Windows 8 OS, it will be in UEFI mode, and will install that way.

[yrrchsebor]

Thanks for your replies. I actually have gotten the machine to boot off a USB drive... Turns out the trick was using the Fedora Live USB Creator(I had used LiLi before). Perhaps the issue is the cat and mouse game between Microsoft and the Linux community of getting Linux to work on the new uefi systems?

My new problem is that Mint will only display in compatibility graphics mode, and same with Fedora and Ubuntu!

And my other concern is if I do install something in a dual boot setup, I might need to run boot repair, as in my past experience..

[hsneves]

Dont give up. I'm answering you from a PETRA installed on a partition (sda10) in the HD of a Toshiba Satellite 555.

I'm a drop out of Windows (but i still keep Windows XP in sda1).
You'll have to give up your originaly installed OS (XP, Win7, Win8 -- whatever!), then you hard-format the whole HD drive
then you use GPARTED and build 2 initial partitions sda1 (logic) and the next (extended). In the extended partition, i builded
6 other partitions 2 of them as swaps; in the other 4 i installed: BLACK LAB 13, OS4 OpenDesk |Swap| ZORIN8! Swap | MintPETRA; and i left one final (sda11) in fat32 format as STORE for ranging personal files, etc. All the other 4 partitions were formated as journal ext4 -- so they can peer each other fast and easily. I used to have PCLinuxOX in there, but got sick and tired of its demmands for logins each time i scratched my head or paused to drink some beverage. So i bed it farewell and do not repent that decision.
I used Puppy Lucid 5.2 (which loads into ram) and holds a stout version of 'Grub' to detect and make a feasible MBR to enable multiple selection of different OS to load. My present order of unattended loading goes for MINT, but i stil can opt to the 2nd: old Mr. Windows XP, then: interesting Black Lab (so persecuted by Distrowatch and sus muchachos), then; reliable old OS4 OpenDesk, and then lastly: fancy Zorin 8. And that's all. For the momment i'm seduced by MINT (i hated Mint8 and 9) on account of some finnickinesses they purported. Happily enough it seems they abandonned such autistic procedures and demmands. But there i already found some abstrusive problems -- some of which i expose in another post. Keep tracking and accept my regards, HenriQ

[Urban Spirit]

i have disabled secure boot, turned off fast booting, but i find no option in BIOS to turn off UEFI in favor of CSM or legaccy boot or anything like that.

I have the same type of laptop (C-55-A-1N0) and Mint works perfect with it except for bluetooth but I don't care for that much. I've got Mint 16 on it now.

This is how I disable the UEFI on it. Go into the BIOS screen then tab over to Advanced, go down to System Configuration and hit enter, go down to Boot Mode hit enter again and sellect CSM Boot, save you settings and your good to go with Linux.

Hope that works on your laptop.

I got rid of that sorry excuse for an OS that came on it as soon as I found out Mint worked on it so I don't know how/if you want to dual boot.

[usbtux]

I have the same type of laptop (C-50-A-T19) and Mint works perfectly.

Presuming gtp disk and uefi window 8/8.1 preinstalled ( this is how a Toshiba is setup)

Go into bios (F2) and turn off secure boot and change 1st boot to usb so that 2nd = HDD - do not turn uefi off. (F12 can change boot order)
Boot into windows
Make recovery disk onto large 16g usbstick and removed recovery partition.(automatic option - about 10GB)
Restart
Shrink C: partition
Restart
Install Macrum Free - backup all existing partitions to portable hdd.
Turn off fast boot
Restart with your Mint distro.
Start installer
Set up your partitions in the usual way but this time just set them as primary partitions (for me, root home and swap). (see the install mint part of http://youtu.be/1KM0TPFZg2Y ) 3:10 to 6:47
Make sure you point the boot loader to you EFI partition.
Continue with install.

Once installed you'll have the grub screen with
a. boot to your distro
b. Boot to win 8
c. system - Bios

You can then turn fast boot back on, However if you turn secure boot back on grub is bypassed and windows automatically boots.

See these links
http://www.howtogeek.com/131907/how-to- ... windows-8/
http://www.tweakhound.com/2013/01/02/ho ... partition/
http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/63 ... s-8-a.html
http://blog.laptopmag.com/how-to-shutdo ... -one-click