Can netbooks see bootable DVDs?
 

I am thinking about getting a netbook and installing Mageia 1 on it
from DVD. The first step would be to buy a USB DVD drive.

I have the 32bit and 64bit ISOs on bootable DVDs. Once the boot order
is specified in the BIOS could any netbook see a USB external drive as
bootable?

Len

Yes, of course.

That should work fine.

You can also use a USB thumb drive to install most distros (not sure about that one specifically, never tried it personally).

Most distro should work. There might be some that don't work, but the common ones work out pretty well.
I usually use this method if I don't have any external optical drive for my netbook.
Use unetbootin for this

Almost all new systems can boot to a usb cd/dvd drive. The disk has to be burned at the slowest speed to insure quality and generally you should purchase the better quality dvd disks and not use the cheapest ones. Data is more of an issue than say movies with a few bits off.

You also have to be warned that netbooks need to be a type that can be updated. Some very cheap ones are not really x86 type systems.

Some netbooks may not recognize certain types of drives. My HP dm1z will not recognize flash drives larger than 4GBs at boot and it also won't detect my usb cdrom drive. HP sells their own so I know some will work. Whatever your case, it doesn't hurt to research it.