@psusi,
You seem to not be listening to people.
All of the things that you say are the case are in fact not the case at
all. And all of the things that you say are not the case are precisely
the case.
I installed Ubuntu Gnome 14.10 by deleting all of my old Linux
partitions and installing fresh.
Note that this problem also exists in Ubuntu 14.10.
Before I get in to all of this, I should explain my setup, so that
people who are interested in my solution can figure out if they are in a
similar boat. I have a Dell Inspiron laptop with UEFI and a Windows 8
partition. (Earlier I had already tu