Install on formatted hard drive (Solved)

[Bryan88]

I think I know the answer, but would like confirmation on this. I am aquiring an old laptop from a company which I hope to install LM17 on. Understandably they want to format the HD before they give it to me, but they are worried that there will be no drivers left if they do. Firstly, I'm assuming that my LM17 live disc ( I will use the same one I used for my desktop installation) will have all the necessary drivers ect on it, and secondly, those will be Windows drivers so they would be of no use anyway. Am I correct? Thanks.

[seawolf167]

Windows drivers and libraries are useless to GNU/Linux. Go ahead and reformat the hard drive and wipe everything. The Linux Mint Live CD (via udev and the Linux kernel) will automatically populate your devices and use the correct drivers to get them working. Unless of course you have some very strange hardware configuration (which isn't normal).

[jimallyn]

Mint will reformat the drive during the install process. You don't need Windows drivers anyway, Linux has its own.

[Bryan88]

Thanks guys. I know I may have to try different graphics settings to get it to work, my main worry is that the system will not boot because the HD is empty but I'm assuming that is what the live disc does? I also have Puppy Linux on a flash drive if Mint doesn't work.

[jimallyn]

The system will boot just fine with nothing on the hard drive. It will even boot just fine with no hard drive in the computer at all. You might have to go into the BIOS and set the DVD drive as the first boot device.

[Bryan88]

Thanks again, I will keep you posted.

[gold_finger]

As others already said: bare drive = no problem.

Only thing you might need to do depending on how they erased the drive is put a new partition table on it. (Can't remember if that's necessary to do ahead of time or not.) If the installer does not recognize the drive, cancel the install and then find and open GParted in the Menu (under Administration or System category). With the drive showing in the GParted window, just go to Device->Create Partition Table->"msdos"->OK. That will put new partition table on it and the installer will now recognize the drive and install to it.

[usbtux]

As others already said: bare drive = no problem.

Only thing you might need to do depending on how they erased the drive is put a new partition table on it. (Can't remember if that's necessary to do ahead of time or not.) If the installer does not recognize the drive, cancel the install and then find and open GParted in the Menu (under Administration or System category). With the drive showing in the GParted window, just go to Device->Create Partition Table->"msdos"->OK. That will put new partition table on it and the installer will now recognize the drive and install to it.

You dont need to do this if you allow the install to take over the disk. (its done by the installer) You can, but make a partition for the drive after making the partition table as some programs still wont see the drive; if there's no partitions on the drive.

[Bryan88]

Worked perfectly. I ended up doing it myself, just popped the live disc in and installed LM17. Even the wireless worked out the box (I'm using it to post this). Turns out the laptop also only has 512mb ram though so another distro may be a better bet. Thanks again for the help.

[gold_finger]

Turns out the laptop also only has 512mb ram though so another distro may be a better bet.

Just go with the 32-bit Xfce version of Mint -- that will work better on low RAM computers. 32-bit Mate version would probably be good too.

If not, then something like AntiX is good on lower spec systems.

[Pierre]

actually acquired a bunch of laptops, a few years ago,
they had their HDDs erased - prior to their disposal.

the Mint installer then erased the HDDs as part of it's O/S installation.
- all went well.

[Bryan88]

Turns out the laptop also only has 512mb ram though so another distro may be a better bet.

Just go with the 32-bit Xfce version of Mint -- that will work better on low RAM computers. 32-bit Mate version would probably be good too.

If not, then something like AntiX is good on lower spec systems.

The 32-bit Xfce is the one I used and it works ok. I disabled Flash so the browser works ok too. I have Puppy on an even older spec laptop which is great, so will probably use that if I decide to change. Right now it looks like I need to reflow the motherboard though, trying to pluck up the courage.

[gold_finger]

Yes, Puppy is another great one for old systems.

Full-fledged browsers and flash content seam to be the biggest culprits slowing down old machines. I've tested several browsers on a few old (early 2000's P4) desktop systems and an old Dell Inspiron 1150 laptop to see which work best. So far, best full-fledged browser appears to be Pale Moon for Linux. (Pale Moon felt faster than Firefox, Chrome, Sea Monkey & Ice Weasel; but I did not test Qupzilla on those machine -- so not sure how that one stacks up in the mix.) Lighter weight browsers are better performance-wise, but have some drawbacks depending on what type of sites you use them on. For quickest performance (aside from the terminal browser, "links") I like the Dillo browser. Doesn't support flash or java script and page rendering is not the best, but it is extremely fast and light on resource usage. Takes a bit of time to figure out how to use properly too. Midori is kind of in-between -- faster than Firefox/Pale Moon/Chrome, renders pages better than Dillo, handles flash, but not as quick as Dillo.

Dillo and Midori are installable from standard Mint repos. For Pale Moon, you need to download the pminstaller-0.1.6.tar.bz2 file from here; then follow instructions to extract and run pminstaller.sh file here.