First off, I'm not necessarily a newbie, this kinda fits between mobile and laptop linux, being USB....Maybe hardware? Anywho, I use linux at work everyday so I'm pretty familiar with it but struggling hardcore here.

So I've been testing out some distros in VBox to see what I want to use. I've been looking into some small ones for my USB. But it almost always can't find some file or directory. For instance, puppy arcade can't find the sfs file(but normal puppy works for some reason), DSL can't find KNOPPIX files, stuff like that.

For puppy arcade, I looked everywhere, tried like everything! Nothing worked. For Peppermint, I got it to boot up by adding "nomodeset" to the grub file, but doesn't seem to work on others.

I've tried a good bunch of them, creating the USB through like 3 different creators (Unetbootin, Win32, and Universal USB) and Peppermint and like one other I've actually gotten to work. And since it works just fine in VBox, I'm kinda thinking my hardware just...isn't going to work :/ also, I've made sure to check the md5's haha

Here are my specs (I got this new for Black Friday last year, this is just where I could find the RIGHT Omen)

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...-942-_-Product

I dunno, I've checked my bios and set everything to what I can find needs to be, but HP doesn't give me access to too much. HP also sucks at hardware haha I've gotten a hardware related BSOD quite often and have changed the thermal paste, re-seated everything, HP just sucks xD But I'm really hoping that my hardware is at least going to let me do this.

Thanks in advance! Let me know what else y'all need

Seems like it may be UEFI by default, so I'd try to get into the set up & change it to MBR if possible, & set it to boot from USB first, before hard disk.

DamnSmall is an ancient distro, & likely doesn't support your hardware, try the new/replacement version TinyCore, suggest the CorePlus version.

(Another one to try is AntiX, & maybe SliTaz.)

Boot to bios and see that the USB drive shows up as a hard drive. Then set the "hard drive" boot order to the usb. Don't boot to a usb flash drive usually on modern distro's.

The nomodeset is a graphic driver issue. KMS tried to keep the video going from boot to user but you may need to blacklist a driver or add in or configure a display driver.

While it may be easier to test a number of distro's under legacy or CSM mode (and that will have to also convert video to legacy) you should be able to boot to and run a large number of distro's using uefi and secure boot.

UEFI may present hardware to the host system. Be sure your devices are not being blocked in legacy using online searchs.

Oh crap, I forgot to mention I'm installing onto a USB haha from a live USB to another USB.....if that changes anything.

You can usually wait to insert the target USB. I recommend that you at least boot to bios once to see that both usb drives show up. Also suggest that you remove power/data to internal hard drive.

ok so I'm giving Slitaz a shot and it won't install xD Like...it's being really weird about mounting/unmounting the live USB. But anywho, I go through the whole setting up installation, it starts, and them like 3 seconds it finishes, says completed....but there's literally nothing on the target usb.

Also, made sure both USBs are being recognized by the bios and moved the usb boot option to the top of queue. Though when I go to boot to the usb, it's not even an option unless I have legacy enabled. I also have usb boot enabled so like...what's that for then? haha

I have installed Mageia on a USB. This can be used virtually on any computer (non-uefi) that can boot a USB. I set it up with a self containing GRUB. The advantage of Mageia on a USB is great hardware support. It was also easy to install.

Megaia also has UEFI installer if that is needed.

Mageia just tends to work, which is also nice.

Ooooooh I'm gonna give that a shot
Oh wow! It's a 2 gig ISO? And it runs on USB ok??

Ok so I installed Mageia and I'm diggin' it. Tried logging in today and it's stuck in a loop. I put in my username and password, it thinks for a minute, then goes back to the boot menu. I can't even do 'c' or 'e' O.o either of those takes me to the login again. I've also tried as root but it does the same thing, not even permission issue error. And I'm positive these are the right passwords. Linux just hates me I swear xD

Hey kegabyte,

If you still want to try Puppy from USB, be aware that there are several Puppy-specific (and even different versions of Puppy specific ...) kernel parameters (ex. pdir= ... etc.) you need to specify in your bootloader. The Puppy forums usually have appropriate threads on how to set it up.

Cheers.

You mention virtualbox. Is that somehow involved in this? HP hardware can be fairly proprietary, so it might take Linux a bit to catch up. Did you google for compatibility?

that's weird, perhaps you are dropped to the rescue console? is there any graphical at all? perhaps you can try runlevel 1 by appending 1 in the boot parameter. There you can change any password and do root stuff, and then you can retry your boot with normal runlevel. perhaps?

There is also the Mageia forum, you can ask people there, including me. People are nice and friendly there too, but for everyones convenience, bring some details.

https://forums.mageia.org/en/

Ps. You should install Mageia ONTO a USB disk, alike to a HD, not just drop the liveCD(on the USB) there. Although, you could ofcourse also try the livecd(on USB) version, to see how it feels. Ooh yea, and make sure you install GRUB on the correct disk, not the HD on the PC.

That machine seems overpriced compared to a similar AMD laptop that you can get OTS at office depot.

https://www.officedepot.com/a/produc...op-156-Screen/

The model and specs are always different, but the "SALE" is almost always there. And always $400 or less (pre-tax). Although the two that I bought required alerting the sales rep of the sale (ON THEIR WEBSITE), sometimes even with big sign orientated towards the registers. Although the last one I got was a "bundle", so they forced me to take a McAfee box and wireless mouse to get the sales price.


You should be able to turn off UEFI, and legacy boot USB. On my HP laptops (ba053nr / bs053od) I had to delete known keys before it would take / save / function for that from the bios/uefi. Before doing that it would show the options, let you change them but when you rebooted to "use" those changes, it would revert to the pre-changed state. With the HP standard of spamming ESC at boot and pressing F9 to select which drive to boot.

Or setup a UEFI distro. Ubuntu and Fedora are signed with the microsoft keys and "SHOULD" work out of the box-ish. I tend NOT to use UEFI booting. But I don't boot from drives > 2TB in size and other quirks. I tend TO use chroot installed distros or distro methods (arch-chroot or debootstrap). Which allows me to setup everything before I ever boot it for the first time. To include non-free firmware and github wifi drivers and the likes.

Don't confuse UEFI with secureboot (Microsoft keys). You can still run a GNU/Linux distro on a UEFI machine, provided the installer supports that kind of installation, and it requires no keys or anything else special, aside from using GPT.

Alot of distroes support UEFI, and there is good reason to shy away from those that support Secure Boot and thus cooperate with Microsoft.

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Hey, thanks guys! Ya, I ended up finding some distros with UEFI support and those ones boot just fine. One quick question though. I'm using 'toram' instead of 'quiet splash' to...well run it in ram haha to make it faster, since I've noticed the live usb runs fast but when I install it onto another usb, it slows down. I also created a partition on the rest of the usb (still leaving a bit for Linux) and am gonna move the /home directory over there. My question is....how to we verify we're running from ram. I mean it's the only arg in the grub and it seems to be going pretty fast, I just want to make sure.