I correctly managed to burn the install iso to flash drive, booted to it, installed it, and it told me that I simply needed to restart. However, on boot it gives me no option to boot to ubuntu partition but boots directly to Windows 8 without option. No partition selection, nothing. Loading the Acer/Windows boot menu only allows me to select the hard drive, not the partitions in it.
Any suggestions? Thanks in advance.
EDIT: Could software like Asus instant-on be causing a problem?
Yes, instant on could cause problems.
Since you are boot Windows 8 successfully, I assume you have secure boot enabled. Some people find they can actually boot a preinstalled W8 without secure boot enabled, but they are lucky (until their next firmware upgrade anyway).
Check that the Ubuntu boot files got installed properly:
From the live media, mount the EFI partition (it's the vfat one
about 300M). It should contain a directory EFI, with an ubuntu
subdirectory. If you get errors listing the contents of
<your mount point>/EFI/ubuntu, you will have to manually delete it
and rerun
sudo grub-install --uefi-secure-boot /dev/sda
where /dev/sda should be replaced by your hard disk.
The expected contents
of the ubuntu directory are shim.efi, grubx64.efi, and grub.cfg.
Check that the grubx64.efi is the signed version. Look at its
size, and compare it to the live media's copy of grubx64.efi.signed
(maybe in /lib/grub/x64...?). Copy in the signed version if that's
not the one present.
Check that /EFI/Boot/bootx64.efi is the same size as /EFI/ubuntu/shim.efi
(or shimx64.efi whatever it's called). Also, a copy of the signed
grubx64.efi should be present in /EFI/Boot. The bootx64.efi is really
the bootloader used for removable media like USB, but in some error
cases, it is a (silent) fallback boot mechanism, so might as well
fall back to grub.
Run efibootmgr -v to see what possible bootloaders you have, you
expect to see both the Windows boot loader with path
/EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi and ubuntu with path
/EFI/ubuntu/shimx64.efi. If the ubuntu path is grubx64.efi instead
of shimx64.efi, then that cannot boot with secure boot enabled, so
run
sudo grub-install --uefi-secure-boot /dev/sda
where /dev/sda should be replaced by your hard disk.
and recheck for a bootloader entry with shim in it.
After running boot-repair, many of the bootloader files get copied around,
with many copies of shim and the originals get a "bkp" added somewhere
to their name. You can always what's what by their sizes.
All you're trying to do is have the efi boot menu offer ubuntu with
through shimx64, and Windows through bootmgfw (because, sadly, some
machines cannot boot Windows from the grub menu, so this becomes the
only way). grubx64.efi should be present in the same directory as
shim, and the grub.cfg file in /EFI/ubuntu (All three could be in
/EFI/ubuntu). The /EFI/Boot directory may be ignored, but may also
be used as a secondary boot, set up by making bootx64.efi your choice of
bootloaders.
Every machine is different, good luck.
