User:Sakaki/Sakaki's EFI Install Guide/Installation Prerequisites

The installation process described in this manual has a small number of prerequisites, which are listed below.

Make sure that you have everything before starting out!

What You'll Need
To work through this install, you will need:
 * A target, UEFI PC with Windows-8 (or 8.1) pre-installed (for example, an Ultrabook). I'm going to assume you have already set up Windows 8, that you have an admin account (the first user on the machine automatically has admin rights), and that you haven't used up all the disk space on C: yet.
 * Two USB keys, one of at least 300MB, and the other of at least 128MB:
 * the larger one is for the initial Gentoo minimal-install disk image, which we'll use to get the ball rolling; and
 * the smaller one is where we'll place our compiled, UEFI bootable Gentoo Linux kernel and keyfile (we'll refer to this as the boot USB key throughout the rest of the tutorial).


 * A working subnet to which the install target machine can be connected. To be concrete, I'm going to assume a 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, but yours may of course be different, in which case modify the instructions accordingly. There must be a gateway on the network providing Internet access, and a DHCP server. Furthermore, your target PC must have either:
 * a wired Ethernet adapter with driver support in the Gentoo minimal-install image (most do). This is the simplest option from an installation perspective, even if you intend going wireless once the system is up and running. WiFi routers usually have ports on the back into which you can plug Ethernet cables directly; or
 * a WiFi modem with driver support in the Gentoo minimal-install image (many do). The tutorial covers setting up such a connection over WPA/WPA2, since this is the most common modern use case.


 * A second, 'helper' PC, running Linux, on the same subnet. Of course, this is not strictly required - you can do everything on the target machine itself. However, having a second machine really helps, because:
 * once the initial, minimal-install image has booted, you can ssh in to it from this second box, and run screen; this gives you the ability to copy and paste commands and scripts from this tutorial, and to disconnect when lengthy processes are running, reconnecting later; and
 * creation of the initial USB images etc. is easier from Linux than from Windows 8; although you can create the setup disks using Windows 8, I won't be covering the necessary steps here.

Commencing the Install
Got everything? Then click here to go to the next chapter, "Preparing Windows 8 for Dual-Booting".