What linux will run on my laptop?

wexfordpress

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Feb 10, 2019, 4:01:27 PM2/10/19

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Just bought a refurbished HP laptop. It lacks a CDROM drive. Slackware won't boot from any of the 4 usb drives. Is there a distro that can be downloaded and then installed from the existing Windoze OS? The current win 10 is not useable
in my opinion.

John Culleton

root

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Feb 10, 2019, 4:13:52 PM2/10/19

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Can any other laptop boot from the USB stick?

Henrik Carlqvist

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Feb 11, 2019, 2:02:28 AM2/11/19

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On Sun, 10 Feb 2019 13:01:26 -0800, wexfordpress wrote:

> Just bought a refurbished HP laptop. It lacks a CDROM drive. Slackware
> won't boot from any of the 4 usb drives.

What boot options do you have in the CMOS setup? If you lack a cdrom and
really are unable to boot from USB the only option left (assuming that
the laptop also lacks a floppy) is PXE boot from the network interface.

There are also exteranal USB CD/DVD-drives, but then again they require
that your laptop support booting by USB.

If all boot options fails on the laptop you will have to take the HD out
and connect it to some IDE/SATA-USB converter. With such a thing you will
be able to connect the HD to some other PC and you can use something like
qemu to install Slackware on the HD.

regards Henrik

Marc Haber

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Feb 11, 2019, 1:45:35 PM2/11/19

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wexfordpress <culle...@gmail.com> wrote:
>Just bought a refurbished HP laptop. It lacks a CDROM drive. Slackware won't boot from any of the 4 usb drives. Is there a distro that can be downloaded and then installed from the existing Windoze OS? The current win 10 is not useable
>in my opinion.

Not giving any information about the hardware bought other than the
vendor. Trying to use Slackware in 2019. Not having tried any other
distribution. Windows 10 rant.

Well trolled, citizen.

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Marc Haber | " Questions are the | Mailadresse im Header
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Jerry Peters

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Feb 11, 2019, 4:18:03 PM2/11/19

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Marc Haber <mh+usene...@zugschl.us> wrote:
> wexfordpress <culle...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>Just bought a refurbished HP laptop. It lacks a CDROM drive. Slackware won't boot from any of the 4 usb drives. Is there a distro that can be downloaded and then installed from the existing Windoze OS? The current win 10 is not useable
>>in my opinion.
>
>
> Not giving any information about the hardware bought other than the
> vendor. Trying to use Slackware in 2019. Not having tried any other
> distribution. Windows 10 rant.
>
> Well trolled, citizen.
>

He's not a troll -- he's been posting on the slackare newsgroup for at
least several years.

Michael Black

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Feb 14, 2019, 2:31:36 PM2/14/19

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I suspect you're missing some detail.

The USB flash drive has to be set to be bootable, I forget how, but it's
outlined somewhere in the Slackware literature. And the laptop needs to
be set to boot from the USB flash drive. I remember playing with a
netbook and findig that unless I had the USB drive attached, the option
from booting from USB didn't appear on the BIOS menu. I don't know if
that's the case for every computer, or not.

If SLackware doesn't boot, I'm not sure why a different distribution will
boot.

Michael

Johnny

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Feb 14, 2019, 2:54:49 PM2/14/19

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I have a refurbished HP Desktop. To get to the boot menu hold down the
F9 key or Esc for Setup.

Download Linux Mint Cinnamon 19.1 from here:

https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3669

Put it on a USB stick. Use the boot menu to find it, it will install.

You will have the choice of erasing the drive, or installing alongside
Windows.

Adrian Caspersz

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Feb 15, 2019, 5:40:43 AM2/15/19

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On 10/02/2019 21:01, wexfordpress wrote:
> Just bought a refurbished HP laptop.

A model number would help. I don't know if this is business series, or a
consumer supermarket locked down thing that won't do anything else but
windows.

It lacks a CDROM drive. Slackware won't boot from any of the 4 usb
drives. Is there a distro that can be downloaded and then installed from
the existing Windoze OS? The current win 10 is not useable
> in my opinion.

UEFI / secure boot?

If you can't disable it in BIOS by selecting "legacy boot", then you
will be launching down another rabbit hole doing the install the UEFI
way. There is help on google, including for slackware.

https://www.linux.com/learn/how-install-linux-windows-machine-uefi-secure-boot

--
Adrian C