I like to use the latest hardware and the latest software; thus I have a Laptop (Lenovo X220) with

• UEFI instead of BIOS
• an SSD instead of an HDD
• GPT partitioning scheme instead of MBR
• USB to boot from instead of optical disks.

I need to use both Windows and Linux. I tried to make them work alongside, but I didn't succeed.

Most Linux distribution isos don't even really work on UEFI systems booted from USB. (Not even the self-claimed cutting-edge Fedora. I also tried Linux Mint Debian Edition and Sabayon Linux (according to this guide) which did not work. Only Ubuntu worked for me.

I first installed Windows 8 which created sda1: Recovery, sda2: EFI system, sda3: msftres, sda4: NTFS Windows. Windows worked without a problem. I then created sda5: linux-swap and installed Ubuntu into sda6: btrfs. After rebooting, I was not presented GRUB2 as expected, but instead my system just booted into Ubuntu. I could no longer access Windows.

After fixing dpkg in btrfs Ubuntu, I followed the Ubuntu documentation on UEFI booting. The result left me with a broken GRUB2, but interestingly, when I wanted to select the device to boot from, I was not only presented the internal SSD, an attached USB device, or LAN, but also Grub2 (broken), Ubuntu and Windows.

The result is not very satisfying to me.

What would I have to do to fix everything? Or differently asked, what operating system should I install at what point given my possibilities and requirements, so that I have a working bootloader in my UEFI GPT system which presents me a working Linux and Windows.