Dual Booting Pre-installed Windows 8

I've recently purchased a Lenovo T430, and sadly when configuring it, I forgot all about the Linux UEFI Fiasco, and kept the default option of pre-installing Windows 8.

I'm able to disable secure-boot, but what I would like to know is whether I need to install Ubuntu in UEFI or Legacy Mode. I am aware is possible to find this out by installing Ubuntu along side Windows normally and fixing it if it fails (trial & error in my opinion), but I would rather install Ubuntu normally, or install it in UEFI mode first off.

Give a try with ubuntu 12.10 64 bit. (32 bit won't detect efi).

Basically you need to create a 250mb partition to store efi if you choose manual partition,

and use boot-repair tool to fix the boot if any problem comes.

For more details please see https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UEFI .

Disabling UEFI is best option but you may need to reinstall windows 8.

Try doing an EFI-mode installation. Creating a separate EFI System Partition (ESP), as Web-E suggested, is not necessary; Ubuntu and Windows can share a single ESP.

If you do a BIOS-mode installation by accident, it's possible to convert Linux to boot in EFI mode. The Linux-side conversion is pretty straightforward, but it will take jumping through a few hoops to get the Linux boot loader to launch.

I'm not much of a fan of the "boot repair" tool; it does weird and non-standard things that can make it harder for other utilities to cope with the disk. Avoid it if possible.