Regular readers will know that I am a loyal Mac user. I used windows once, a very long time ago. Never again. It was a painful experience that I have no wish to go into.
So, with a deeply ingrained hatred of all things Microsoft, imagine my dilemma when recently I was presented with a shiny new free Sony Vaio laptop as a result of a recent mobile phone provider switch.
It’s a nice enough laptop, an ultra portable, but it’s preloaded with the windows. And that’s a situation I’m attempting to rectify with a nice, clean, open source Linux installation.
With no optical drives installing Linux isn’t a straightforward process. In fact, it’s anything but. After almost a whole day of fiddling around with something I know nothing about I am left with a nice laptop with no operating system and no obvious way around it.
I removed the hard drive, plugged it into a USB caddy, connected it to a borrowed PC, ran a Fedora 8 installation DVD on the PC and installed the operating system on the Sony SATA drive in the USB caddy. Everything went smoothly until I put the hard drive back in the laptop. Upon booting Fedora failed to load.
It successfully brought up an initial blue Fedora screen, I selected the boot Fedora option and the screen filled with white text on a black background. It then just stopped and failed to load. Pushing escape brought up a command line, but not knowing any Linux this was of little use to me
I tried installing Ubuntu but the installation crashed. Four times. Then I tried installing OpenSuse but that crashed as well. At least Fedora did appear to install correctly, it just wouldn’t work once the drive was swapped back into the laptop.
If there are any Linux guru’s out there, I’d really appreciate some suggestions. If there is anything I can do in return I’ll be happy to oblige.
I would go with a USB thumbdrive installation or spring for a USB CD drive.
Firstly, have you tried searching for ‘Ubuntu’ plus your model of Vaio? Secondly, I have found that there is a page explaining how to install from a flash drive. Google Installation/FromUSBStick’. It looks pretty complex though, and requires you a have a working Ubuntu installation on a different computer. Lastly, it might be easiest to buy a USB CD drive, and boot from that. Of course there is no guarantee that your hardware will work totally with Ubuntu. Especially since you’re using an Ultraportable. Once again, Google is your friend, people may have resolved issues you find with your hardware. Also, OS X commands are effectively identical to Linux shell commands, if that helps.
Thanks. I have an external USB CD drive but the Sony won’t boot from it. The option to boot from USB devices has been locked out in the BIOS. Typical Sony / Microsoft trying to block people from doing what they want with the hardware.
I’m stuck with only being able to access the Sony hard drive once it’s been removed from the laptop. There were some options in the Fedora install wizard so I’m going to try changing those and see what happens.
I’m only really familiar with Ubuntu, can I ask you what errors you had installing Ubuntu onto the Vaio’s harddrive? Also, which model Vaio do you have?
Matt - The Ubuntu CD I’m using is an image of the latest version straight from their website. The hard drive isn’t in the Sony when I’m trying to install on it - it’s in a USB caddy attached to a Compaq Pressario (an awful pile of junk that I’ve borrowed from a friend who keeps old hardware). Ubuntu live boots and runs on the Compaq, I clicked install and the options begin to appear. After I select the time zone the installation hangs. I have a feeling it might be due to low memory on the Compaq.
Don’t get me wrong - I’m not blaming any particular distro here - It’s the Sony’s fault for disabling USB booting. If I could somehow force the Sony to boot from an external drive things would be a lot easier.
Try running the dedicated Ubuntu install disc, instead of the Live CD. It’s not as friendly as the Live CD, but it’s reasonably straight forward. If you successfully install Ubuntu, you’ll probably need to reconfigure the X Server once you’ve put the disk back in the Vaio, using the command ‘dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg’.
Thanks Matt, I”m downloading the alternate, non-live, CD now, I’ll let you know how it goes.
Matt - Thanks very much! It works. Ubuntu installed without a hitch and ran after using the command you gave. Now I need to take a crash course in getting started with Linux, and, I owe you a favor!