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I've read a lot of similar topics, but nothing helped. Check out my little sad story:

  1. I made a bootable USB with UNetbootin. I tried Ubuntu 12.04 and 14.04, Linux Mint 17.1, Fedora KDE, Zorin.

  2. Before upgrading the BIOS, which is actually UEFI (absolutely no settings except boot sequence), I got a quick message:

    Boot in secure mode

    After upgrading BIOS I see this quick message:

    \EFI\BOOT\fallback.efi": 14

    and GRUB starts after that.

  3. GRUB didn't see my Windows 7, but I thought it's OK.

  4. Installation goes fine and at the end it asks to reboot. I press 'ok do it', but after rebooting I see that message (point 2) again. GRUB starts and doesn't see my fresh Ubuntu.

  5. I tried to make an EFI first partition manually while installing and before it with Gparted (I DID IT A LOT OF TIMES), but nothing helped.

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  • did you run sudo update-grub? Before start, read the documentation on dual-booting if you're doing this for the first time.
    – JoKeR
    May 24, 2015 at 10:20
  • i did while 'try ubuntu before install', i dont want to dual boot, i want single ubuntu
    – Alexandr Zhilinsky
    May 24, 2015 at 10:24
  • ok then if you want only Ubuntu your partition table should look like this for example help.ubuntu.com/community/DiskSpace
    – JoKeR
    May 24, 2015 at 10:26
  • just tried to make BIOS-boot partition instead of EFI, same issue, "\EFI\BOOT\fallback.efi": 14" and grub doesnt see my fresh ubuntu
    – Alexandr Zhilinsky
    May 24, 2015 at 11:23
  • it clearly says how/when to set up EFI or BIOS boot as it stated it depends on your BIOS set up and disk table if it's GPT.
    – JoKeR
    May 24, 2015 at 14:52

2 Answers 2

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  1. Create a live USB for Ubuntu 64-bit (e.g. with UNetBootin).

  2. While on the live USB installation, select Do Something Else and make /dev/sda1 an "EFI" partition with size 150MB. It must be a minimum of 100MB, recommended 200MB.

  3. Partition the rest of the drive however you want (/ and swap, / and /home and swap, whatever). Use primary partitions only (you might be able to get away with an extended partition for /home, but I haven't tried it). This is my setup:

    • /dev/sda1 150MB EFI
    • /dev/sda2 20GB ext4 /
    • /dev/sda3 5GB swap
    • /dev/sda4 50GB ext4 /home
    • Set the boot installer to install to /dev/sda1 (or your EFI partition #). Do not use /dev/sda.

  4. Install.

  5. Pray.

  6. Awesome, now Ubuntu is installed.

  7. Restart your laptop, and boot back into the live USB.

  8. Now, mount your EFI partition somewhere, like this:

    mount /dev/sda1 /mnt

  9. Change directories into the EFI directory in the mounted folder:

    cd /mnt/EFI

  10. Copy over the super secret important EFI files:

    cp -rfv ubuntu boot

  11. cd into the boot directory:

    cd boot

  12. Finally, move grubx64.efi to bootx64.efi:

    mv grubx64.efi bootx64.efi

  13. Restart, and you should finally have a working Ubuntu/Xubuntu 14.04 on your dumbass Lenovo S205 computer! Yay!

To get Wi-Fi working, change the boot order in BIOS to boot from network first.

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  • IT WORKED oh thank you good man, live long life, do a lot of good things
    – Alexandr Zhilinsky
    Jun 19, 2015 at 20:09
1

After two weeks of heavy googling and checking many procedures, I came up with another solution. The Ideapad S205s issue is due to a not fully standard BIOS that supports UEFI installation, which is not compatible with the Ubuntu EFI installation process. GRUB does not get properly installed in no way. Fixing this problem was impossible for me. My solution is creating a little bit modified installation medium. In my case a USB flash.

  1. Create a standard install USB with Rufus. In used Ubuntu Desktop 20.04 LTS.

  2. Open the USB and rename the EFI folder to another name. In used EFInova, but the new name is not critical.

  3. Making a copy of grubx64.efi from /EFInova to the /boot/grub folder and another copy to the /boot/grub/x86_64-efi folder.

  4. These two changes force booting the Ubuntu 20.04 USB in legacy BIOS mode and also installing in legacy BIOS mode which works fine for Ideapad S205 (approved with Ubuntu 16.04).

  5. After booting Ubuntu 20.04 from the USB, in Try mode prepare your HDD with Gparted in this way:

    • First partition as ext4, with mount point /.

    • Second partition as swap.

This worked fine for me.

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  • This worked for me when I tried installing Lubuntu 22.04 on a Lenovo Ideapad S205. (Except step #5, I didn't mess with the partitioning, I chose the "erase everything" option during the installation process and it worked out fine - it finally didn't create an EFI partition)
    – Yarin
    Apr 30, 2022 at 11:08

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