Load Ubuntu onto a blank laptop
 

This has probably been asked before, but although I have worked in IT for many years, I am new to Linux.

I have a Dell Inspiron 9300 that has a corrupt hard dosk. I have a new hard disk that I would like to load Ubuntu Linux on, which I have on an external hard disk. I do not want to go through the nonsense of putting Windows on it if possible. How do I go about formatting the new disk and loading Ubuntu onto it?

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks.

I assume that you have an .iso image on your external drive?
Just burn the image to a cd and boot the laptop from that.

If I made the wrong assumption, please give more details.

Yeah if you have media for Ubuntu, just boot with it. It should usually be a LiveCD. You should be into a live environment and use Ubuntu directly from media.
There should be icon Install on the desktop and double clicking it will get you through self explanatory windows that will need some human interaction and in around 15-20 min, depending on your system resources, you should have usable Ubuntu installed.

That is, you don't have a bootable ISO image CD of Ubuntu and assuming that some OS boots...

Your problem is that you want to boot the ISO image on the external HDD to that HDD without burning it to another medium? Why of course, all is possible with linux, but you need a system somewhere that boots.

I might use Ubuntu, once it is installed on the HDD, to make a bootable USB pendrive, allowing you to use the system and its CD burner to download , burn, and install Ubuntu as you like.

Of course, if you do not have, or can not use, a system that boots, you will need a bootable linux image, a CD or USB, from elsewhere.

http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/

You might search the forum for how others have used unetbootin. Good Luck

By the way, a nice question.

basically it all depends on the laptop itself, if you can boot from USB you could write the iso image to the usb disk,
otherwise a cdrom is by far the easiest,

as for a brand new disk this will make it even easier to install than a disk that allready has somthing on it as you dont have to worry about checking you dont wipe what you want to keep

Thanks
 

Thanks to you all - I'll try that this weekend, I have no opportunity before then.

A liveCD install should take you less than 1/2 hour. Go to http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu:Intrepid replacing Intrepid with whatever you are installing for an excellent guide to getting the restricted repositories and setting everything up.

This is a great forum for all sorts of help from nice folks with lots of diverse experience.

For Ubuntu specific help there is ubuntuforums.org and they are pretty nice folks also.

Any box will run better without windows.