Before you tell me to go to a Linux forum, I tried that. I have moved to a new country and the IP I have been assigned has been flagged as SPAM. Consequently I cannot register as a new user on these forums. I have emailed the relevant people to sort it out.
In the meantime I have been pulling my hair out trying to figure this out.
I have an old dell laptop that I want to use to learn about Linux.
The processor is a Core 2 Duo T5750 (64 bit I think). The current OS is Vista 32 bit (good riddance) and the laptop is a Dell inspiron 1525.
I have downloaded 2 Debian boot ISOs: AMD64 (apparently this works fine with intel 64bit processors); i386 (tried this when the AMD64 didn’t work).
I have burned both to individual CDs.
I have changed the boot order to start with CDs.
Put the CDs in, restarted the laptop, windows boots up perfectly fine in spite of my efforts.:mad:
What am I doing wrong? Is there some special method I need to employ to get the ISOs on the CDs appropriately? I have simply been copying them from my downloads folder to the CD folder and letting windows take care of it.
My experience isn’t with Debian, but most boot-time installers for Linux distros fall through the CD and into booting the hard drive if you don’t poke the keyboard within a few seconds, rather than starting an installer. I’m sure it’s a convenience feature for the inevitable user who forgets to take the DVD out of the drive and leaves the optical device at the top of the boot sequence… if I just finished installing Linux, I’d like to boot into it on the hard drive, not look at the beginning of the installataion sequence again.
But if you’re not paying attention, and you’re expecting the installer to visibly start, it may look like the installer DVD isn’t loading at all.
I just tried rebooting and hitting random keys while it was doing it’s thing. After a couple of seconds, every time I hit a key it beeped. And then windows started.
Usually the CD puts a message on the screen, like “press Space to boot from CD” with a 10 or 15-second countdown. If you don’t see a message, then your computer might not be attempting to boot the CD in the first place.
First thing to check: does your CD drive actually work? It sounds dumb but you did say it was an older laptop and CD drives fail pretty regularly from my experience, especially mobile ones.
So you just put the iso in the disc using windows? The iso is a disc image, not a normal file you just put on the disc. You have to burn the iso directly to the CD. I don’t know how to do that in windows, as I never use it.
Your guess that my screen does not display a message is correct.
Also, I found that website earlier which was how I learned to change the boot order.
I let windows load and then checked to see if I can see the .iso on the cd, i could and so the cd drive must be working. But as I write this I am wondering if I should see a .iso file at all. I don’t see a .iso file when I buy a CD so maybe I should be “upacking” this .iso file or something, if that makes sense.
Yeah, don’t copy the ISO file to the CD, just double click the ISO file in Windows. There should be a default program for burning disk images, but maybe not.
If there isn’t, you’ll have to go find a free one for Windows, and I don’t know how to help you there. I used Brasero on Linux, which might have a Windows version. I remember using Nero back in the day, but I think you have to pay for that one.
But yeah, you have to burn the image onto the CD, not just copy it.
on your computer with the *.iso file on your hard drive then you run your cd burning program, tell it to burn a cd using an image file and point it to the *.iso file as the source.
Update: managed to install Debian.
I have encountered loads of other minor issues, most of which I have resolved.
There is a bit of a learning curve with Linux, hopefully it will be rewarding once I have figured out a bit more.
The learning curve is not too bad. I don’t have Debian but a derivative - Ubuntu.
While a bit late to the party and having had a similar issue with Ubuntu Quantal Quetzl on a Win7 Asus laptop, UNetbootin might be an option where there is no windows option to burn a bootable CD.
Win7 is still installed but never used.
I’ve been a Ubuntu user for a long time - just upgraded my netbook from 10.04 to 12.10, but didn’t like the new Unity desktop, so I installed Ubuntu Studio (an officially recognised derivative) instead - it comes with the familiar Gnome desktop as standard, a bunch of audio/video/graphics/media applications that I would have installed anyway, plus I understand it has optimisations in the kernel to make all these sorts of functions work better.
So far, it seems really good. I’m still running it dual-boot with XP on this machine, but only using Windows about 25% of the time now.
Easiest way to install (I found) was to download the ISO, write it to a USB memory stick with the Universal USB Installer from PenDriveLinux.com, then just boot from USB (although not all older machines will boot from USB easily).
it is good to do some reading and browsing and decide what brand and flavor of Linux you would like. there are desktops that are modern and tablet like and there are desktops which are more like a classical Windows desktop like WinXP or Win7 (in the classical style).
setting a machine to dual boot is not too hard though you need to read the procedure to follow. the Linux product will have a good description for dual boot setup.
I wasn’t altogether happy with Unity but stuck with it (on three computers) and have adapted to it.
There is an interesting option in the Cinnamon desktop - a standard option, if that isn’t too contradictory - on Linux Mint but can be installed on Ubuntu too.
Inertia precludes me from adopting Cinnamon though.
Oops - turns out it’s XFCE in Ubuntu Studio, not Gnome. Of course, it’s possible to install additional/alternative desktop environments in any distribution of Linux (although in practice, it’s often easier to find a variant that comes with the one you want, as some of the work to integrate/optimise will already have been done.
I’m trying out Mint at the moment, and it seems nice, except that the Cinnamon menu is slow to respond on my little netbook. I’ll probably revert to a lighter weight desktop.
The thing that continually annoys me about desktop Linux is that the desktop environment is always a hodgepodge of different components and any attempt to impose a new theme needs to be done piecemeal (and there is often one piece missing)
I’ve tried a few different distributions now and I keep coming back to Ubuntu Studio. XFCE is a bit spartan, but on a lower-powered machine, it helps not to devote too much resource to eyecandy.
I’ve been working on creating my own theme, as most of the existing ones seem to either look like Windows 2000 or generally have too much flat grey in them.
Also, it seems to me that a distribution that already includes the applications you want is typically better and more stable than adding them yourself to a basic distro - in theory, Ubuntu Studio is just Xubuntu with some graphics/audio/video applications installed, but in practice, adding them in afterwards by hand just never seems quite as solid.
One of the reasons I like KDE. To me it is the most “complete” desktop. Just about everything is part of a whole and follows consistent look & feel rules.
