Like everybody else, I have my favourite distro. Currently where I live there is an activity to connect many places to the National Broadband Service - NBN.

Which Linux distro does not need MS Windows to install linux in a virgin empty disk of a desktop? Then, to operate home network with NBN?
My favourite distro struggles or fails to do that..

Al

all of them.

please elaborate. we know neither your favorites, nor "NBN".

2 members found this post helpful.

All distros will install to a virgin/blank disk - no Windows necessary!

Depending on how you are to connect to your NBN, will decide if any extra hardware/software will be required.

Many home computers are sold with MS Win pre-installed. A common procedure is to "shrink" the space dedicated to MS Windows and install Linux along the existing OS. The popular distros have several installation options for linux:

1. Install in all of disk - not elong side esisting OS, but take all space and create a bootloader a.k. "efi" partitions.
2. Install alongside the existing OS
3. "Something other".

Customarily I and many of my "mates" (colleagues) prefer to use option 3 for installation.

Option 2 essentially does the same as option 3, but it auto partitions the available space. GPT partitions are often used.

Option 1, deletes all existing "other os's", loads the bootloader, creates "efi" and whatever else and gives us a full basic partition setup. I am asking for distros that were successfully used with option 1 recently. I would really love to know the names of those distros. Of course, a personal experience is required to be sure that the information is reliable.

NBN is the "National Broadband Network". It is an optical cable network that is now extended to cover most of Australia. Many companies, including MS Windows, offer their services to connect and service the individual buildings to the NBN. So NBN is the national and Australian state owned network, but individual connection are done by private enterprise.

I appreciate your contributing to the thread and I thank you. I also appreciate the great work that the developers of various distros do. Any failures are not wanted. I am reluctunt to name the distros, just because I did experience some problems with the option 1 of their OS installation. This concerns the grub 2.02 boot loader also.

Thank you in anticipation, OldAl.

There are a few (very few) distributions that install to a hard drive only in a limited or frugal mode. Examples are Tinycore and Puppy.

The vast majority (thousands!) of linux distributions will install to a hard drive replacing everything that was there before. You need to hop over to https://distrowatch.com/ and start examining some of the many distributions listed. Even if you only consider the currently active distributions, it will be more than I could list on this forum. (And if I tried, Jeremy might well be irate with me for the wasted bandwidth!)

Although Distrowatch has more than you are likely to need in the next ten years, there are a few active distributions that have never applied for listing on that site. I would not expect you to need them, I cannot recommend any of them to you, but if you need clues about finding them just ask.

You see, there is a problem. You are correct - they all say that. But to check that you need a "fresh" computer every time a new distro appears. If you have in 2018 tested option 1 installatio (full install, all disk) with success, please just list one that worked (as the publication says that they do). Forget Puppy etc - just one grown up will do'

Jeremy will not mind if you tell me one or two that do setup the bootloader, which at grub 2.02 needs a separate partition, efi etc. I will be very grateful. It is important because I believed what you tell me. And I am 93..

As I am in a different time zone, I will hopefully be asleep soon. Thanks for your reply. It shows how easyly spreads "information" based on belief, and not experiment.
Al.

AntiX - the distro that I personally have been using for many years now, &/or MX Linux its sister which has slightly more in the initial installation.

Both distros have dedicated forums, as well as several people answering questions on here.
https://antixlinux.com/about/
https://mxlinux.org/

EDIT: Both distros are based on Debian, the best base distro, in my opinion, & I've been using it in one form or another since 1999.

We converted to NBN (fibre to the node then a couple of hundred metres of low quality wire) a bit over a year ago. We were already using Slackware 14.1 only (no windows) on broadband and everything just worked. The longest part was selecting the plan options and setting up the new modem which we got as part of the plan (because our old "NBN ready" modem wasn't).

Can also recommend iiNet - they know Linux exists and don't insist on windows before giving phone support (at least the one time we needed it).

As a matter of interest, would you mind telling us your current distro?

I have used, in full HD install, all of Debian, Ubuntu, KBuntu, Lubuntu, Fedora, RedHat, CentOS, Mint, Mint-DE, Sparky, Vsido, Elementary, Q4OS (my current), and perhaps a dozen others. I have also run a couple BSD based, of which only OpenBSD is still around. ALL of them could install to a HD and NONE of them required Windows. I am 66, but age should make no difference, we still live!

@fido_dogstoyevsky: Interesting. Currently I am on linuxmint-mate 18.3. Have been on iiNet for a couple of years - vdsl2 network, very good speeds up and down. All OK.

@fatmac: Many thanks for great information. Will test Antix soon and will report in this thread. Debian derivative will surely be able to install OK on "whole disk".

Greatly appreciate your information!
Regards, Al.

antiX indeed installs itself in the whole disk, without complaint. So yes, the thread is SOLVED.
@fido_dogstoyevsky: If you wish to tell me more about it, or to continue the conversation, I am email accessible [email deleted for privacy. I expect that email address to be changed fairly soon.

Regretfully, antiX mailing list appears to be only for people identified as not-X, it would not register me. Am I "X", part of "X"?

Having installed antiX, I was not able to connect to my wifi. I think that a connection is entirely possible, but is a little more basic than in some recent distros that I am used to.

Thank you all who bothered to contribute.
OldAl.

To set up your wifi, open the Control Centre > Network > Network Interfaces

Don't know about a mailing list, (didn't know we had one), but the forum is here.
https://www.antixforum.com/

Thanks for this post...

Sorry. Don't understand you.

Run this

So I make sure wlan0 is in WICD wireless preferences. Hit reload. Connect to my now seen router.
You are right. AntiX is more basic than what you are used to. It is because our team concentrates on running on older hardware than gigabyte isos offer with their Desktop Environments.

This can be changed however as long as you follow the non systemd parameters we go by.

Video site for you

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFW...KlXW5uE9opXukQ

The above link is included with your install.