help with installing linux

[bory_gamer]

so i have this very old pc and i wanted to install puppy linux on it so i installed this programm called unetbootin which downloads linux isos and makes bootable usbs but to figure out the pc doesnt boot from usb , so there is another option to boot from hard drive but i dont want to do that bec. i dont understand how thats even possible bec. the hard drive is currently running windows and the application will format the hard drive thus deleting the programm itself i assume????? can i get help here ? should i do this

[vorticalbox]

You can try hitting f12 which sometimes opens a menu that lets you pc the boot drive, else you'll need to go into your bios and change the boot order.

 

If the pc is quite old it my not support booting via usb and you'll need to use a CD.

[Tabs]

Does the machine have a CD drive?

[bory_gamer]

yes it does have a cd drive , i think its my only option now right?

[Tabs]

8 minutes ago, bory_gamer said:

yes it does have a cd drive , i think its my only option now right?

Not your only option, but possibly your best option. If you can burn an iso to disc, you should be able to boot from it and install from CD.

[Perli]

on windows i'd suggest you use rufus. it's possible, that you're missing some config files called syslinux. they aid you, especially when you try to boot from an usb-drive.

luckily rufus downloads them automatically and adds them to your drive.

otherwise burning the image would be the best option.

[jde3]

On 6/23/2018 at 10:28 PM, bory_gamer said:

so i have this very old pc and i wanted to install puppy linux on it so i installed this programm called unetbootin which downloads linux isos and makes bootable usbs but to figure out the pc doesnt boot from usb , so there is another option to boot from hard drive but i dont want to do that bec. i dont understand how thats even possible bec. the hard drive is currently running windows and the application will format the hard drive thus deleting the programm itself i assume????? can i get help here ? should i do this

PXE boot an option? If your using a lot of Linux distros it's sometimes handy to have a PXE setup with some installers and disk utilities.

Check out https://netboot.xyz/

 

You could also probably just pop the disk into another system install it, pop it back in and drive on.. Linux does hardware detection on boot so this will probbly work just make sure to only have one drive in the system you temporarily install it to.

 

Red Core and Pepermint are also "light" distros.. Puppy is extremely light.

[chiller15]

If you can't boot from USB but can from CD, just use a CD.

[Wild Penquin]

Your PC needs to be very, very, very old if it can not boot from USB. I mean very old. Did I remember to day that your PC must be very, very, very OLD if it can not boot from USB?

 

As in: chances are it probably has a single-core CPU and < 1GB of RAM. With that kind of PC, you really need to know what Linux distribution to install on it, to get comfortable user experience. Also, chances are it has a 32bit CPU (I believe, though might be mistaken, that all MBs supporting 64bit CPUs can boot from USB). Some (most?) modern Linux distributions have dropped support for 32bit CPUs. Some still have legacy version which will work on 32bit CPUs.

 

My actual point is, chances are you can boot from USB, it is just not that straight forward.

 

Can you tell us / find out, what motherboard does it have? Do you know how to change the boot medium (trough BIOS or boot menu?).

 

What happens if you push DEL during boot (or F12) ? Try to get into the BIOS menu, see if the MB model is mentioned there and/or post a picture of the BIOS screen.

 

Considering all things, it is worthwhile to boot from USB.

[jeronimov]

The added problem of some older PCs that barely manage to boot from USB is speed. Sometimes the USB is so slow that a CD/DVD is the only feasible way to install an OS. It would help to know the PC specs.

[Wild Penquin]

1 hour ago, jeronimov said:

The added problem of some older PCs that barely manage to boot from USB is speed. Sometimes the USB is so slow that a CD/DVD is the only feasible way to install an OS. It would help to know the PC specs.

Well, I'm my experience this has more to do with the particular USB key than USB protocol speed. Some (USB2) keys are really slow because of slow (cheap) flash memory.

 

But I checked the USB speeds. 1.X is at least 1.5Mbit/s, often 12Mbit/s - which equals to (roughly) 1X+  CD speed and ~12X CD speed, respectively (I'm not sure, but most USB1.X MBs can not boot from USB in the first place?).

 

I'm not saying that your experience is not true, just speculating it might have more to do with the slowness of the Flash memory. Installing from a 1-12X CD speed USB key is feasible, but granted not as fast as from a 32-52X drive. At USB2 protocol, the bottleneck is/was more often caused by flash memory speed.

[jeronimov]

6 hours ago, Wild Penquin said:

Well, I'm my experience this has more to do with the particular USB key than USB protocol speed. Some (USB2) keys are really slow because of slow (cheap) flash memory.

That is also true. Still, some crappy old motherboards such as the one I use to answer this message, the ecs p4m900t-m2, will CRAWL when loading even from an external HDD connected through USB. 

A few years ago, I spent a lot of time testing Linux distros from Live USB, installing the ones I liked to external Hard Drives that would connect through USB to a lapto I was using. When I wanted to do the same in this desktop and another, very old, P4... it was impossible. In theory, it should be a lot faster but in real life testing: you need to burn a DVD.

[bory_gamer]

i didnt think too deep about it in such way , i just digged till i found a old writable cd and burned the iso to it then booted from cd and installed linux which took me 6hrs to install which really reflects how much i dont know stuff about linux 

 

 

about my specs

 

 

single core pentium 4 2.80 ghz

224 mb ddr2

32 mb ddr2 integrated graphics chip sis m650_651_740 

 

baiscly a potato , i installed 32-bit tahrpup 6.0