I'm trying to install Ubuntu 12.04 LTS alongside my Windows 8 Pro 64-bit installation. Problem is that I cannot lose my Windows 8 partition at all costs, have many drivers installed and need that partition till I know that I can completely do everything I do on Windows 8, with Ubuntu as well (might take a month or two).
But I need Linux to start compiling from source (CM) to get more into development of custom ROMs and kernels. Help out please. Can't find any decent or working guide on the internet.
Great to see you joining the development scene too. Remember me from xda (rugglez)
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First off, here's what I suggest: Avoid installing it on a virtual machine at all costs!
This coming from a ROM/kernel developer with months of experience, knowing how resource hungry building a ROM/kernel can be. It takes more than an hour to build on a sandy bridge quad core desktop on a full Ubuntu installation, so just imagine the pain on a virtual machine with more limited resources (cannot use the full cpu power, RAM of your PC).
If it keeps failing, keep trying other ways, but never use a virtual machine. Just trust me on this.
Secondly, I know you already have listed "64-bit ubuntu", but just saying, stick to 64 bit only for building. 32-bit wont work.
Thirdly, for installation, I used the simple procedure of downloading the image from the site
here, and installing using
this tool.
Keep a empty partition or unallocated space ready for this, which will make it safe (avoiding confusing which partition to format, where to install etc.)
If that doesnt work, use wubi (which can install ubuntu from within windows for versions 11.10 and older) to install 11.10 and then boot into ubuntu and upgrade to 12.10 inside it. Note that the installation may break if you happen to remove windows 8 some time later.
Finally, make the Ubuntu partition at least 100GB large. Thats a minimum, since a full blown CM build takes 25-30GB for the source code along with built files and output files. Building other roms may require separate directories to store sources, requiring more space. I had kept the partition 100GB large at first and after building some 2-3 out of 6 ROMs, found acute shortage of space, and extended it to ~200GB. It is not possible to extend when installing from inside windows (the 11.10 or older wubi method), so take care.
And if you need any other help, dont hesitate to ask
Regards