[arch-general] Installing Archlinux alongside Ubuntu on a Windows 8 UEFI laptop

[Alan E. Davis]

This is insanity...   The first time I have encountered the much maligned
Micro$oft UEFI / Secure Boot adventure.  On my new Thinkpad Yoga, with a
Wacom active digitizer and pen.

Ubuntu was a walk in the park.  I installed Ubuntu naively, alongside the
new Windows 8.1 laptop.  It took maybe an hour to break my resolve to take
my time.  It was a disconcerting experience.  I now have a system that
boots Ubuntu 2014.04, through a convoluted process of signing into Windoze,
then  backing out through advanced settings to boot from a Menu.   If I
were trying to lock in my customer base, I couldn't have designed it any
better, or made it any more uncomfortable, myself.  Ubuntu picks up the
Wacom pen, and almost everything else.  But it's not Archlinux.

I am a bit fearful, but decided that Archlinux, which I am using on two
other machines, would potentially be the better choice.

I have two more partitions, one of a /home and another for an Arch /boot,
so I went ahead and walked through the most of the install, except for
installing the boot manager.

I am stuck now.  I don't want to compromise what I have already gained.
Now I need to learn how to set up the system to boot any of the three OSs.

I am puzzled by the variety of approaches I have seen; hence, I am reaching
out here on the mailing list.

I saw advice to use GRUB but install it in the boot PARTITION.  Not sure
how to do this, and not sure whether it will work.


Does this make sense to anyone?

Alan