Im having trouble installing Linux on my Laptop

[lostwarden]

Here is the deal, I bought a laptop for cheap from someone who did not want to pay a PC tech to fix his laptop. It had no OS on it and the optical drive is broken. Not a bad buy for 25 bucks.

That is where I got the Idea to install Linux, because I will primarily use it to surf the web, type up some things, and view flash presentations for my web biz.

I did try to install Ubuntu using a flash drive, but the computers BIOS files don't recognize USB as a bootable device. I also have the option to boot from LAN but I haven't been able to figure out exactly how that works.

Im thinking that I could use an enclosure kit, taking my HD out of my laptop to install Linux from my desktop PC. I was wondering if this was a possible solution, and If it is, can the drive be partitioned to accommodate Linux booting from HD.

[rokytnji]

Is there a floppy drive on your PC by chance. I used a software program called smart boot manager which can be wrote onto a floppy and usually all bioses have the option to boot from floppy. smart boot manager gives all kinds of boot startup options from the floppy disk including usb boot first.

I downloaded sbminst.exe (DOS executable)
cwsdpmi.exe (support file) and formatted a 1.4mb floppy and installed those 2 downloads to floppy.

1. Restart the PC, boot from the floppy and run:
A:\>sbminst

2. Read the displayed screen for guidance and run the following command:
A:\>sbminst -t us -d 0 [make sure to put a space before -t, us, -d, 0][- is a dash, 0 is a zero]
Enter Y when asked to confirm.
The above command converts the floppy into a standalone boot manager.

Next shut down the laptop and reboot after about 30 sec. Leave the floppy in.

When next boot comes up you'll get a screen with all the drives that Smart Boot Manager has Detected. Use your down arrow to scroll through the drives

sbminst.exe (DOS executable)
cwsdpmi.exe (support file)
Smart Boot Manager Download



Smart BootManager is an os independent BootManager which has easy to use interface and many other features. The main goals of SBM are to be absolutely OS independent, flexible and full-featured. It has all of the features needed to boot a variety of OS.



Im thinking that I could use an enclosure kit, taking my HD out of my laptop to install Linux from my desktop PC. I was wondering if this was a possible solution, and If it is, can the drive be partitioned to accommodate Linux booting from HD.


I think you can follow that route also but the modules I think will be loaded for your desktop. I am not knowledgeable enough to say if it will work for sure or not.

[rokytnji]

Forgot to mention that I grabbed those 2 downloads from the 3.7 release column.