From Newsgroup: alt.os.linux

Paul wrote:

[snip]

There's a reference to some documentation, but before I work through that, have I actually downloaded something that will install Mint on this hardware?

Or do I need to find an "Installer"?

This particular live media contains both

Live Session (should show up like my picture does)

Install icon on desktop

The Install icon kicks off the disk drive installation.

You can also trigger the install process, by using the Install
item on the DVD.

*******

So now we have to figure out why the legacy BIOS boot process
didn't work. The disc is a hybrid, it supports MSDOS boot and
GPT boot. On a legacy BIOS, it should do the MSDOS boot thing
via the media.

[snip]


I don't see anything like you describe. It does not get as far as a
"Live Session". It shows the 6-line menu in a table as I described in
my previous post. And yes, I can use Tab to stop it there.

The BIOS is set to boot the CD-ROM first, so it should not matter what
the hard disk is. But in my experience, in general a BIOS does try to
read something from the HDD before it starts to load from the CD-ROM, so
a faulty HDD will prevent a CD-ROM from booting, whereas a completely
absent HDD does not.

The menu option "Hardware detection" allows me to see the SSHD, and
shows it has a windows installation on it. This is because the SSHD
came from a machine where the motherboard died. If I boot the SSHD, it
- very slowly - boots to the login prompt for the Windows 10 system on
it. I expect to erase this SSHD - should I do so before trying to boot
the Mint DVD?

What I - perhaps naively - expect is for the Mint DVD to boot and ask me
where I want to install Mint, and perhaps warn me that it will overwrite anything already present on the SSHD.

Your help is very much appreciated. Sadly I can't do anything more
today, so will look for your reply tomorrow. Thanks.
--
Graham J
--- Synchronet 3.21d-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.os.linux

On 2026-02-08 11:43, Graham J wrote:

Paul wrote:

[snip]

Erasing the Windows materials, is an excellent suggestion. And I use that
a percentage of the time, when test installing materials.

So why does the booted DVD (of the Mint .iso) care about what is on the HDD?-a Surely the job of the installer is to initialise the nominated
media ready for the installation?-a Apologies if this sounds like a
stupid question ...

Because if a Linux install disk erases the existing windows (or
anything) without asking, insults would ensue.
--
Cheers,
Carlos E.R.
--- Synchronet 3.21d-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.os.linux

On 2026-02-09, Graham J <nobody@nowhere.co.uk> wrote:

Carlos E. R. wrote:

[snip]

The installers have a minimum memory requirement to run, to; it should
be somewhere in the documentation. And the messages they give can be
misleading.

Found another 1GB RAM, so the machine now has 2GB. It boots the Mint
DVD, takes several minutes to start, and looks useful.

Well Mint says it needs.


2GB RAM (4GB recommended for a comfortable usage).
20GB of disk space (100GB recommended).
1024|u768 resolution (on lower resolutions, press ALT to drag windows with the mouse if they donrCOt fit in the screen).

I would look for another 2GB of ram. Working with 2 GB RAM is going to wear
you down.

So the next step is to try the installer.

--- Synchronet 3.21d-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.os.linux

On 4 Mar 2026 23:48:34 GMT
Gordon <Gordon@leaf.net.nz> wrote:

On 2026-02-09, Graham J <nobody@nowhere.co.uk> wrote:

Carlos E. R. wrote:

[snip]

The installers have a minimum memory requirement to run, to; it should
be somewhere in the documentation. And the messages they give can be
misleading.

Found another 1GB RAM, so the machine now has 2GB. It boots the Mint
DVD, takes several minutes to start, and looks useful.

Well Mint says it needs.

2GB RAM (4GB recommended for a comfortable usage).
20GB of disk space (100GB recommended).
1024|u768 resolution (on lower resolutions, press ALT to drag windows with the mouse if they donrCOt fit in the screen).

I would look for another 2GB of ram. Working with 2 GB RAM is going to wear you down.

I'd suggest trying an older or less resource intense linux - Puppy or
Tinycore, though these use mounted "backup" images - different to
mainstream linux implementations.
I have a 20year-old laptop, boots Tinycore happily in 1G. disk images are
of the order 10's of megs, not gigs.

So the next step is to try the installer.

--
Bah, and indeed Humbug.
--- Synchronet 3.21d-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.os.linux

On Thu, 3/5/2026 4:07 AM, Kerr-Mudd, John wrote:

On 4 Mar 2026 23:48:34 GMT
Gordon <Gordon@leaf.net.nz> wrote:

On 2026-02-09, Graham J <nobody@nowhere.co.uk> wrote:

Carlos E. R. wrote:

[snip]

The installers have a minimum memory requirement to run, to; it should >>>> be somewhere in the documentation. And the messages they give can be
misleading.

Found another 1GB RAM, so the machine now has 2GB. It boots the Mint
DVD, takes several minutes to start, and looks useful.

Well Mint says it needs.


2GB RAM (4GB recommended for a comfortable usage).
20GB of disk space (100GB recommended).
1024|u768 resolution (on lower resolutions, press ALT to drag windows with the mouse if they donrCOt fit in the screen).

I would look for another 2GB of ram. Working with 2 GB RAM is going to wear >> you down.

I'd suggest trying an older or less resource intense linux - Puppy or Tinycore, though these use mounted "backup" images - different to
mainstream linux implementations.
I have a 20year-old laptop, boots Tinycore happily in 1G. disk images are
of the order 10's of megs, not gigs.

It all depends on what you expect to do with it, too.
Applications can be quite demanding.

And while there are things like this, as an ointment for your swap:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zram # compressed swap

there are limits as to how far a concept like that can be pushed.
The advantage to swap mounted on RAM, is such things can be
buttery smooth. All it needs... is CPU cores you don't have :-)
And the reason we would want to do that, is to avoid wear and
tear if using a swap on top of an SSD. A swap on top of a HDD
certainly works, but the seek time kills the deal.

If we could buy items similar to the Gigabyte iRAM, we could
also mount our swap on that. Such an application does not
need the battery backed storage option on it, as the swap
only has to remain sane for as long as the PC is running.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-RAM

It's because of patents, we cannot have nice things like that.
Such hardware allows a person to "use RAM sitting around the house"
as a means of making a swap. And because the access time is zero,
it's pretty smooth. (That one does not have a lot of bandwidth.)

And the FPGA makers don't necessarily help us, by potting in
I/O options to make it easier to connect DIMMs. The one FPGA
I have in the house here (a kit), it does come with its
very own *single* RAM chip. A big deal :-) Wow. I won't be
doing a lot of swapping on that.

Now that we have AI to fart around with, you can get
an AI to write code for your FPGA kit. Think of the time
that will save. And seeing as we have nothing to do any more,
that's not a bad idea.

*******

There are some people making things like this. It's possible
this was advertised some time ago, at $10,000 per unit. Now,
look at the specs at their selling-point of $2,000.

https://www.ddrdrive.com/x1_product_brief.pdf

Paul
--- Synchronet 3.21d-Linux NewsLink 1.2