HP G62 series laptop - I want to remove Windows and put linux on it
 

Hello everyone, I'm a new user here and just joined yesterday.

So, lately I have been thinking about putting linux on my laptop. It is an HP G62 series laptop (I don't know the exact model, but it's from sometime in 2010) and I also want to purge Windows from it. My question is, how do I do this? Are there any special steps required or do I just follow the on screen instructions in the installer? The distribution I want to put on it is Linux Mint 17.1.

I did some searches earlier and all I found was people wanting to dual boot or swapping out hard drives etc.

But I don't want to dual boot, I want to run linux only and remove Windows (7) from it. I have no need for Windows, I used to play games on it but I don't do that anymore, and I also don't need to run any special applications.

And for those who are familiar with these laptops know that there are several partitions on it. Primary partitions. I'm talking about stuff like "system", "HP_TOOLS", "RECOVERY" and so on.

I'm wondering do any of these contain anything essential, such as the ability to boot? Or are they all safe to remove? I know with the recovery partition you can restore/reset your PC with. But what about the others?

If you want to save the recovery partition you can delete the others with the disk utility & select "install to Largest Contiguous Free Space", which won't touch your recovery partition. If you don't want the recovery partition you can select "Use The Whole Drive", which will erase the whole drive.

Jon. N,

Welcome to LQ.

You do not need HP Tools or Recovery.

First, backup all your existing documents, photos, bookmarks, emails etc.

Access the BIOS (F2 or similar) and set the Boot Priority to DVD or USB HDD. Press F10 to save.

Burn a Linux .iso, such as Linux Mint 17.1 MATE, to DVD or USB and boot your computer from it.

Double click on the Install icon.

When you reach the various options, select Something Else.

Wipe the existing hard drive by clicking on New Partition Table and press Continue.

You are now presented with a single free space.

Highlight it and click on Change.

You are going to create 3 new Primary (not Logical) partitions. Make sure to select Beginning for the location of each partition.

First create sda1:
sda1....formatted (X in the box) as ext4 as the root partition (/)......Size: 12000MB to 20000MB (depending on the size of your hard drive).
Click on OK.

Highlight the free space and click on Change.

sda2.....not formatted (no X in the box) as the swap partition.............Size: 2000MB.
Click on OK.

Highlight the free space and click on Change.

sda3......formatted (X in the box) as ext4 as the Home partition (/home)......Size: Remainder of hard drive.
Click on OK.

You should end up with something looking like the last photo on the first post here:

Linux Mint partitioning:
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=122276

Click on Install now.

Hello again, and thanks for the welcome. Thank you for the detailed information @beachboy2. So I can just safely wipe the drive on my laptop and put LM on it, good to know. Of course, the safest option being to keep the recovery partition if I ever need to return to Windows again (I doubt it). Btw, do I need to create a system repair type of disk to be able to restore Windows should I need it?

I've already burnt an ISO, and backed up files to an external drive.

And.. does LM also have a live mode before install?

Jon. N,

Whilst you still have W7, create a System Repair Disk:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/w...m-repair-disc?

Also create a backup image to an external hard drive:

https://www.raymond.cc/blog/create-w...d-restoration/

Armed with these two items, you can reinstall your W7 system to its current state.

Linux Mint 17.1 is a live disk, so you can use it for test purposes prior to installation.

I would recommend just installing it.

I'll be creating a system repair and a disk image once I have time to do so.

Thanks for your help!

I have been running AntiX, MX, SliTaz, & TinyCore Linux on mine since the day of purchasing it. :)
(One at a time. :))

I've also run BSD on it, FreeBSD, GhostBSD, PC-BSD, & OpenBSD.

(You won't need that other O/S. :))

The live disk can also be used as a means to repair your system as well.

Oh, cool. You also have a G62? How is the compatibility, were there any problems when you were setting it up (such as wireless)? If it runs BSD then it should have no problems at all with Linux, lol.

I'm getting bored with Windows, haha. :P

When I first got it I had to compile the alsa sound driver for it but after about 6 months all the distros had a ready made driver that just worked.
Other than that, no problems. Wifi is atheros if I remember, always been seen OK.
I have never used the quick keys on the left of the keyboard, so don't know if they get set up or not, not something I bother with.
(Presently it has AntiX MX 14.3 on it.)

Prior to making this thread I did run a couple of distributions (live) on it and it seemed ok, wireless and sound was working. But you never know, you might run into problems later on.

I find the quick keys are rather useless too, many times I accidentally press one of the keys, so annoying. But one of them is helpful, the browser key! It brings you to the browser home page. And the most annoying one is the one just beside tab key, it brings up a huge powerdvd (uuh...) splash screen. It's slow, and always just as annoying everytime. (Why did they need make those keys at all, they could have made a num pad instead..)

Btw, I did have a problem with one of the distributions (ubuntu 14.04 lts based) I tried. The trackpad was way too sensitive, I felt like I did not even touch it and it moved! Do you have that problem? Hopefully Mint won't do that.

Had a similar problem with Haiku. Turn down the pointer acceleration.