Welcome to the LQ forums!
Can you post the model of your HP laptop? What works well with one model may not work at all with a different model. For example, many linux distributions do not come standard with drivers for Broadcom wireless devices. The right driver must be added specially. I had that problem with my 7 year old HP laptop. It works fine now, but it took some research on the web to figure out the problem.
We need to know what your operating system is. It could be LinuxMint, PCLinuxOS, Slackware, Debian or any of dozens of other Linux distributions. MATE is a desktop environment, not the operating system. MATE is available with many Linux distributions. The OS may say what it is during bootup. If not, I am sure that there is a way to do it. But I'm on a public windows computer right now, and I can't remember how to do it. It might be written on the CD that has the Linux iso. That would be the simplest way.
I am guessing that your laptop is not set to boot directly from a DVD drive. When first booting up, the screen should have a message that identifies the key needed to access the boot menu. It might be the F2 key, F12, ESCAPE, DELETE, or some other key. The message may be center bottom of the screen or top left or top right or some other place on the screen. And generally that screen changes after a couple of seconds, so you have to be watching for it. It took me something like 10 boots before I could read the message. Once you press the right key, the boot menu should let you choose between the hard drive, an external drive, and the CD drive.
I have no idea what the touchpad's problem is. I'm not very good with hardware.
The only way I know to put a Linux OS and a windows OS on the same computer is to wipe the drive clean and install the windows OS. Then the Linux OS can be added. Putting windows on second is practically imposible. So it's just as well your laptop did not boot from the DVD drive.
So, let's get the computer model and the identity of the Linux distribution on that HP. But backup your data before doing anything else.
|