Installation of Ubuntu 14.04.1 in dual boot with Windows 8.1 on Lenovo Notepad G50-45

There are many visitors to this post through Google Search when they look for suitable Linux Distribution for Lenovo G50-45 but this is an old post and I recommend that anyone looking to install Ubuntu on this Laptop should go for Ubutu 16.04 LTS and not 14.04, however, if you are looking for instructions for Dual Boot with Windows you should read this post but install Ubuntu 16.04 LTS which has no issues.

Lenovo Notepad G50-45 Specifications:
Model Name 80E3
CPU AMD E1-6010 1.35G
RAM 2G
HDD 500 GB
Display 15.6" HD LED
OS Windows 8.1 WB EM

I downloaded 64 Bit Desktop ISO of Ubuntu 14.04.1from Ubuntu and used it to create USB Start up Disk from Ubuntu 12.04 on another machine.

After shutting down the Windows 8.1, I inserted the USB Start up Disk in USB port on the Lenovo Notepad and pressed the NOVO button as shown in the diagram below:

 The display brought the BIOS screen below:

 I selected Boot Menu and selected to Boot from USB, on Grub menu I selected Try Ubuntu and could boot into Live Ubuntu 14.04.

In Live Ubuntu every thing worked well except I could not mount the Windows NTFS partitions getting errors that Windows was not shutdown properly, although I had selected to shutdown while in Windows. After reading about shutdown of Windows 8.1 I decided to shutdown Windows completely by running following command:

Shutdown /s /t 0

Once again I started Ubuntu Live session as above and I could now mount the NTFS partitions. I could have resized NTFS partitions using gparted but decided to do it in Windows.

In Windows I tried to shrink C:/ partition but was not allowed to shrink more than 50%. Once again after reading on the net I did following settings in Windows as advised on this blog:

1.Disable Hibernation
2:Disable Paging in C Drive temporarily
3:Diable System protection in c Drive temporarily

After doing the above settings I could shrink the partition to the extent I desired (48 GB for Windows 8.1). I created new NTFS partition leaving 80 GB unused for Ubuntu installation.

Once again I started Ubuntu Live session and created one EXT4 and one SWAP partition to be used for Ubuntu. Then I decided to check whether Windows 8.1 is accepting these changes or not by booting into Windows. Everything was Ok in Windows. Windows had a Recovery partition on the hard disk which I could copy to a USB disk.

Finally I decided to install Ubuntu on the EXT4 partition. After the installation I could boot into Ubuntu as well as Windows from grub installed on MBR.

The Laptop had Radeon Display Driver and the default ati driver was not working properly. After installing proprietary fglrx driver it is ok. 

Income Tax efiling utility and DSC working on Ubuntu Linux.

I am using Linux since Sep 2004 and Ubuntu since July 2005. I was forced to use Windows for Bank of Baroda Netbanking and efiling of Income Tax Return.

Bank of Baroda changed in 2012 and I could use Chromium Browser with JRE 7 on Ubuntu.

Income Tax efiling utility worked only on Windows besides the Digital Signature upload and signing.

Since last two years my CA prepares the xml file of the Income Tax Return but last year I had to use Windows for uploading the xml file using Digital Signatures.

On going through Downloads on Income Tax efiling website I find that besides Excel utility there is Java utility which is having following instructions in Readme.txt
To run in LINUX
Change the ITR.sh file's permission, provide execution permission by executing the following command
> chmod 755 ITR.sh                
run using the command "sh ITR.sh" or ./ITR.sh


This year I find that I could use Firefox with latest JRE 7 on Ubuntu for uploading and signing the Digital Signatures (DSC).

Thanks to the demise of Windows XP, the Income Tax Department had to switch to latest JRE 7 which works on Windows 7/8 as well as Ubuntu 12.04.

How to deal with Excel (.xlsx) file not opening in Libreoffice?

Long back I discovered that Excel (.xlsx) file not opening in Libreoffice opens in Gnumeric.

Today I noticed that after I save the file opened in Gnumeric in the same format without making any changes it can be opened in Libreoffice.