Linux On a Desktop Computer

Yes, well the web page referenced above isn't very encouraging. Couldn't find Mint's documentation, but it appeared to be a LiveCD variant of Ubuntu; so I went there. Hardware does seems to be a problem. I can imagine less on a laptop. Here's how to make an Ubuntu Live CD:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCD#Preparing%20your%20LiveCD

Apparently one doesn't use keystrokes to print installation messages on the screen, but one requests verbose messages when booting, then later requests certain hardware be ignored. My granddaughter went to bed; she just said 'Use Debian'. I don't believe they have a live CD distribution, however.

This page may mean something to Mint users. The bottom has the 'blacklist' request.

https://help.ubuntu.com/9.10/installation-guide/i386/boot-parms.html

If this doesn't work, she also said something about 'Download, burn, & boot a net image. Check the messages'. If that means something here, good luck. (I believe the somewhat larger 'Small Image' allows you to probe the hardware from disc.)

http://www.debian.org/CD/netinst/

Debian cautions only that hardware requiring Windows (software modems) won't work. I know that Aslan (her Compaq Armada E500) has a win-modem; but she had no trouble with a Debian install.

http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/ch03s03.html.en#id2758407

 

actually debian live does exist. here you go:
http://debian-live.alioth.debian.org/
i hope it helps.

 

from my memory (I think I was the first person to ever mention it here) Mint was optimised for the first wave of sata hdd laptops and desktops.. primarily as a lappy distro I would guess looking at the dock and the large icons and the fact it has bluetooth and wireless support out of the box. Therein I think lies the clue to this behaviour on desktop hardware.. I think Mint was built for sata drive lappys, though I have just tried it on a p4 junker and a pair of p3's and even a cyrix266 .. and it booted on defaults every single time.

Often when you have 3 people with different hardware duplicating each others faults... which those of us who know what we are doing, try as we might, can't duplicate then it suggests something else is going on.. like where did they get these images and how did they burn them? .. Remember a couple of years back the debate I had with Dan and others on the problems of booting a linux live cd in a dvd drive.. especially a disk which has been burned by a dvd burner.....

That was interesting and observation based... so to all these posters..

IF you are trying to boot these live installer disks in a dvd burner don't.. put a real cd rom drive in.. unless it's a dvd disk.

I always preferred dream anyway.. and myah is nice for the kids.

 

From the Mint Site: 'Linux Mint's purpose is to produce an elegant, up to date and comfortable GNU/Linux desktop distribution.' Ironically, ease of use appears its objective. It was made for those of us who don't know what we're doing.

...right. Well, I think Live CDs are distributed as disc images; and the original post did say CD. However, as an engineer remarked, it's a miracle that DVDs even work: my DVD lasers usually die before the CD ones, by bumping out of alignment.

Indeed, Ubuntu's first diagnostic test says 'Try it again.'

Unix was, to my knowledge, the first portable operating system. 'Minimal assembly required.' Because commercial PCs are designed, tested, and adjusted to run Windows, it's a miracle to me that Linux works.

Well, when we who don't know what we're doing all have the same problem with CDs that are easily read on a laptop, we press F4 and do whatever is necessary to have the white boot messages stream up the screen.

If that doesn't give us our answer, but halts while probing hardware, we remember that portable operating systems aren't natural. We remove all the peripheral devices, including sound cards. If it boots, we (a) replace half of what we removed, and if it boots we go to (a), or if not we remove what we replaced and go to (a).

 

Just wanted to say that my advice is generic, whereas Creaky's is right from the book, all in the right order. Scum's shows why it's good to ask about Live CD distributions on an optical disc site.

If all else fails, check out loood's link. (Thank you!) The Debian Live distribution there seems unlike Mint's or Ubuntu's, but it requires experience. However, it tests everything in route (even using 'qemu' to sure no code is processor dependent). There is, consequently, no troubleshooting section in the manual.

Debian lets you 'roll your own', so you can add what applications you want. However, Mint should work nicely. Don't forget to tell people what the problem was!

 

Like I mentioned earlier in the thread my problem with the PCL09 getting only as far the welcome screen ,only to lock up after a very few seconds after the live cd tried to install,I thought I'd try the safe boot option which i get further down the road with only to a ERROR:no suitable media for the live cd context found
workaround:copy the content of the live cd from your boot device to an IDE/SATA disk." message". Does this mean anything to anybody,I'd like also mention that the hard disk I'm dealing with is a SATA drive,I also tried my copy of UBUNTU only for that disk to go undetected as well as my copy of PCL07, so I burnt a copy of the ISO from SLAX,put that in the ROM booted to it and no problems,I'm hoping this makes sence to somebody

 

Migraine today, so I can only say a word or two. Also, the last time I used a Live CD distribution was 1995.

Well, I quickly searched Ubuntu's hardware forum for 'SATA' and found over 500 messages of 'My "Western Digital" SATA drive unrecognized by Ubuntu CD, but my computer's BIOS recognizes it.' (Actually, substitute any major manufacturer for 'Western Digital'.)

By 'install', did you mean 'boot'? If so, the above might be useful. There are a gadzillion such messages, so there must be many kludges, if not solutions. The troubleshooting page mentions hardware incompatibilities caused by two different kernel modules, &c.

The solution, I should just guess, would be to include an external driver on the boot CD, press F4, give it arguments, & tell the CD boot drive to use it to mount your SATA drive. Another might be to 'blacklist' the unwanted of two 'kernel modules'. If you want to use Ubuntu (or Mint), I'd search the hardware forum for my particular brand of SATA drive and read some solutions.