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Installing a linux distro on a Portege 2010.
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20. October 2008 @ 12:00 |
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Hi everyone, good to be back hehe, havnt been on AD for a while now, and to think i used to post everyday! hehe anyway, back to the problem.
Sorry for the long story, but i guess its the only way to explain the whoel problem fully!
I have a Toshiba Portege 2010 (no optical drives - grrr) and id like to install linux on it, i think for my distro im going for mandriva, as i like the style and it seems pretty user friendly, im not completely new to linux, as i used to play around with ubuntu, but im nowhere near to an expert! so here my problem, installation!
With a lack of an optical drive its VERY hard to install anything, i believe i installed xp a while back by copying over the entire i386 folder to a partition and installing all from there (i have a usb floppy drive that i borrowed off of someone and that seemed to work from boot, so i did everything from there - the dos prompt).
I did actualyl manage to get into the installer last night by booting from grub into the installer, so as i thought it was all working, i click format the drive and hoped for the best! stupidly enough, i forgot to copy over the media folder, and it wouldnt let me continue, so im left with an empty harddrive and i cant even run grub as the files have all been wiped from windows. (i followed the instructions on the mandriva site for local harddisk installations)
i have a USB dvd drive that works on other laptops, but apparently the portege doesnt boot from many cd drives, and i dont think i can get hold of the ones that it does boot from. i also have a pcmcia dvd drive that also is not detected at startup, however i think i can load the driver from the cmd prompt, when inserting a floppy.
So after that long story (sorry again), im stuck, and have no idea how im going to get linux onto this laptop, with the XP installation, i vaguely remember copying over the folder and then running winnt.exe, but i dont think there is anything like this with linux, please prove me wrong and help :)
Thanks alot.
Ben
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OzMick
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20. October 2008 @ 15:00 |
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If you can boot from a USB stick, http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/
Also search google for stuff relating to the Eee - it too doesn't have an optical drive, and it has a fairly huge installed base. I got one the other week, and have used that Unetbootin successfully, but being 5 years old, if you can't boot from USB stick you might have a hard time.
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20. October 2008 @ 15:04 |
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yeh, thanks alot for the reply, i dont think it is bootable from USB, and funnily enough my brother has an eeepc and he has installed his which is why i actually want linux, as i liked it on his eee, running out of ideas, ive stumbled upn the idea of a network install via pxe, but i have absolutely no idea how to do it, im searching up tutorials but getting stuck as most expect you to know alot about the network etc. hmmm...
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varnull
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20. October 2008 @ 17:16 |
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That comes down to your network... what happens is.. you set up the install image on a network server somewhere and then boot from floppy to access it (if the bios doesn't do pxe boot)
I know how solaris does it, but linux.. it's something I have never tried.
The best guide I know of (written by humans from experience.. not geeks from a textbook) http://polishlinux.org/installation/inst...rk-no-cd-drive/
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 20. October 2008 @ 17:23
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20. October 2008 @ 17:18 |
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thanks alot for the information, right now ive started an install with ubuntu via the PXE method, and its going ok, ill write back to say how it goes.
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varnull
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22. October 2008 @ 22:25 |
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Howzit? any joy??
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23. October 2008 @ 12:24 |
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right, very sorry! had some problems with my net!
I was and am able to use the network installs, so far ive only used ubuntu as its the easiest to install over the network and its installed fine after a few tweaks of the setup, however the poor portege cant handle it, so now ive got to find one more suited to it.
i was wondering if any of you guys n gals know any good distros to install on it, preferable ones that look nice :)
Thanks alot,
Ben
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varnull
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23. October 2008 @ 17:32 |
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Why don't you give straight debian a go.. and fluxbox and rox for the desktop instead of the very heavyweight gnome.
Install just the core system then apt-get the bits you need. Simple lean and mean. I have one built on a p2 266 which runs happily in 32mb's of ram.. usually eating up about 14MB's.. Now what did I do with my screnshot.
Heres a howto.. with many good hints.. just install the core system instead of the desktop then add only what you want http://www.wikihow.com/Configure-Fluxbox
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