Ridiculously easy question, on installation

[havfunonline]

Right, I am fairly computer savvy, but most linux people tend to start using jargon terms which mean nothing to me. All I need is a simple list but I can't find one anywhere! please help!

I have the following : A formatted blank laptop hard drive
A desktop which I'm going to use to install linux on that
HDD by removing all of its hardrives and plugging the
laptop one in (I have the connector)
Ubuntoo linux ISO on a CD

To Clarify, what I'm actually asking is "Is there anything else I need to do before I Stick the CD in the CD drive and try to install linux?"

What do I actually need to install linux on a blank hard drive? people start talking about boot loaders and things, but what I need someone to say is "go to this website and download this thing onto a CD. put that in first, then the ISO" or whatever." because I'm 'special' and for some reason find linux installation hard to grasp.

Thanks in advance

[etancross]

Hi im a rookie to unix but ive been a PC guy for years, and i think i can explane this to you easy. You can download the ISO (An iso is like an image file ready to be burned to a disk, when you see iso just think image) files from a site and use a program like Nero and select "Burn image to disk" and select the iso file. It will then be burned to the disk so when you put it in the drive it will reconize and and start burning. !Easy Peasy!

[oz]

Welcome to the forums!

You can find lots of info about various distributions (and download links) at DistroWatch.com:

DistroWatch.com: Put the fun back into computing. Use Linux, BSD.

Here's a link that explains how to properly download and burn your ISO file(s) to CD:

http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/ins...nstall-cd.html

[havfunonline]

I said in the post, I have the ISO already installed on a disk. Is there anything else I need to do before I Stick the CD in the CD drive and try to install linux?

[oz]

Put the CD in the drive, set your computer to boot from the CD drive, and reboot.

The installation routine will start and you'll be on your way.

Have fun with the Linux experience...

oz

[havfunonline]

thank you very much guys, see you later when it breaks completely (the laptop is extremely dodgy.)

[MikeTbob]

Please do let us know how it goes, Im thinking it isn't going to work like that and if it does, you'll spend a bit of time sorting out the problems. What if the Laptop is AMD64 and you install an i686 kernel?

[minoru_whitehat]

I don't think you should have any problems. I did the same thing with my laptop. *I'm typing this message from it*

What kind of adapter are you using? Is a usb or SCSI? I'm not sure if it would really make much of a differance, but concidering several people would like to hear about it, wouldn't hurt to say. XD

I used an internal SCSI adapter for my laptop. Here is the info on my laptop.

Laptop Model: Toshiba Satillite 2805-s401
Hard Drive: Fujitsu 20gb
SDRAM: 128mb
Graphics: S3 Savage X
The cdrom drive and floppy drive no longer function.
I have Ubuntu Feisty on it, PHLAK 0.3 and Puppy Linux installed. I tried to get windows XP on it, but it didn't take the transfer from computers well. ^^;; Thus, it is now a swap partition. Here is my partition table:

/dev/hda1 Linux Swap(3gb)
/dev/hda2 Ubuntu Linux(4gb) - ext3
/dev/hda3 PHLAK(3gb) - ext3
/dev/hda4 Puppy Linux(3gb) - ext3
/dev/hda5 Storage(7gb) - Fat32

I figured I'd keep my storage in a Fat32 FS type just in case something happends and I have to recover important files. Also, Changing windows into a swap partition really worked good considering I do a lot of Graphics and Video editing.

OH! And, what OS are you installing?

[MikeTbob]

I don't think you should have any problems. I did the same thing with my laptop. *I'm typing this message from it*

What kind of adapter are you using? Is a usb or SCSI? I'm not sure if it would really make much of a differance, but concidering several people would like to hear about it, wouldn't hurt to say. XD

I used an internal SCSI adapter for my laptop. Here is the info on my laptop.

Laptop Model: Toshiba Satillite 2805-s401
Hard Drive: Fujitsu 20gb
SDRAM: 128mb
Graphics: S3 Savage X
The cdrom drive and floppy drive no longer function.
I have Ubuntu Feisty on it, PHLAK 0.3 and Puppy Linux installed. I tried to get windows XP on it, but it didn't take the transfer from computers well. ^^;; Thus, it is now a swap partition. Here is my partition table:

/dev/hda1 Linux Swap(3gb)
/dev/hda2 Ubuntu Linux(4gb) - ext3
/dev/hda3 PHLAK(3gb) - ext3
/dev/hda4 Puppy Linux(3gb) - ext3
/dev/hda5 Storage(7gb) - Fat32

I figured I'd keep my storage in a Fat32 FS type just in case something happends and I have to recover important files. Also, Changing windows into a swap partition really worked good considering I do a lot of Graphics and Video editing.

OH! And, what OS are you installing?

So, did your kernel thrash about and spew out a bunch of error msgs, or did it just silently keep booting? I haven't ever tried this with Linux, but I did it once with Windows 95, which worked fine after about 20 re-boots and removing multiple instances of hardware, Safe mode and so forth.

[minoru_whitehat]

Oh, sorry, I forgot to mention. Ubuntu wouldn't work at first. I ended up using my Storage partition to store the iso for a poor mans install of ubuntu once I put the HD back in the laptop. I then put the HD back in the desktop and re-installed puppy and PHLAK, along with the boot loader. Other than that, PHLAK and Puppy linux work like a charm from the beginning. (No errors) Actually, I probably use Puppy linux the most because it is so resource friendly.

Really dude, if you're going to be putting a distro on an old laptop, would hurt to think of putting puppy linux on there too. There are a lot of different versions of puppy from really basic versions without the compiling tools to versions loaded with hundreds of apps and full dev environments. All of them run really smoothly on old Hardware. Also, there is DamnSmallLinux. Unlike puppy linux, DSL has apt-get and is Knoppix based. The default windows managers on DSL are fluxbox and jwm, but there are several others including icewm. It isn't as full featured as puppy linux, but it is WAY MORE resource friendly and small. (the whole distro is under 50mb)