as it's a laptop I'm using I can't really have a VM running all the time as it adds 5 degrees C to my CPU, which already has cooling problems due to a shared heat sink between CPU/GPU...

I received another tip from a person on DeviantArt chats, to adjust my partitions from within windows before beginning. Then installing ubuntu should go rather smoothly for me. Sorry to ask so many questions! I just want to double check my facts

If you are not planning on dual booting Windows 8 + Linux, you don't need to mess around with the partitions. Just install a LIVE Linux version to a USB thumb drive (persistent mode), temporarily disable UEFI in BIOS, then boot and run Linux from the USB drive. Windows 8 will remain untouched.

See my post here..
viewtopic.php?f=15&t=7717&start=10#p99890

I intend to dual boot sorry I did not make this clear from the start. and thank you for your patience tux

I believe if I were you, to begin with, I'd just install a LIVE version of Linux on a USB thumb drive (persistent mode).

That way, you can use Linux without installing anything to your Windows 8 drive. Whenever you need to boot into Win8, just enable UEFI in BIOS and when you want to use Linux, disable UEFI in your BIOS and boot from the thumb drive.

It will be a little slower running Linux from the USB thumb drive, but you don't risk messing up your Windows 8 install.

You could at least try it this way for awhile, just to be able to test out the various Linux distributions to see which one you like best.

Okay I can try that out tomorrow...and how slow is slower? I'm not to keen on things that have really any delay when I'm trying to rip through things...Once I get it started up and the browser open is it gonna hang up on me?

Well, it will mainly be a little slower the first time you load something, after that, it gets cached to RAM and will run as fast as it normally does. You have plenty of RAM so you should have a pretty large cache.

If speed is what you're after, then Puppy Linux runs completely in RAM, although it's not as robust as some of the full blown distros. You can certainly run GIMP on there.

http://puppylinux.org/main/Overview%20a ... tarted.htm

thank you very much tux and tomorrow I'll start booting off my flash drive assuming I get time, working on the boat tomorrow. Should be able to get to it by sunday or monday though and I'll give an update if I have any issues

What kind of flash drive do you have? It is a little portable USB thumb drive? What size?

an 8GB portable

Oh, OK. That should work fine.

Good luck Willy!

thanks rod.

And thank you all very much! you were all of great help in confirming and denying my suspicions and provided great input and I'm sure you can help if anything goes horribly awry