I was wandering if someone would be kind enough to set me strait about something. It's an idea I had when I was/am devising a way to get Linux on my laptop (Toshiba Protégé 3490CT). It is not possible with windows I know but could anyone tell me if it is possible in any way to use my standard 3.5" hdd to 2.5" laptop hdd connector to use my desktop machine to install Linux on the hard drive and swap the drive back to the laptop. I only ask this because I know how flexible Linux can be and I have no other means to install onto the laptop as it has no network card, no floppy drive or optical disk drive. Any help on the matter would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance.
-Tom

Yes, this shouldn't be much of a problem. Grub would be the best bootloader, but you need to make sure to refer to the drive in the same way it will be installed on the new machine (most likely hd0).

i dont see any reason why that wont work, just be sure and install it and the boot loader on the correct drive.

Thanks for the helpful replies, I'm sorry I can't report any progress as I have not received my 'stuff' from ebay sellers yet. but thanks all the same. I may be making a video tutorial for others if any are interested.

No problem. Do let us know how it turns out. A video tutorial would be a great thing to do.

I have finally installed xubuntu on my 3490CT but there is a problem with xserver it will not start because xorg is configured to used the gfx card from the laptop I installed from. an intell thingy.
I can find the modules I need but I need a little help to reconfigure xorg.
the error is no screen found. It can't find the gfx card

Edit your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file and replace the video driver with the generic "vesa" driver (change it from "i810" or whatever video driver it's currently using).

It could still fail because the mouse is configured wrong. You can add an option for "allow-mouse-fail" to test if this is the case, but of course X isn't very usable without a mouse.

I'm personally not familiar with how mouse configuration works on laptop computers.

I have solved the problem by using "sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg" to do all the work for me it was a "savage" driver in the end.