how would it be possible to get Gentoo on my laptop....

JasonRivers · n00b Joined: 24 Aug 2005 Posts: 62

Hi all,

I have been running Gentoo now for around 2 years on my desktop, well, actually thats not true as I bought a new one last year, but, you know what I mean. Anyway, of course i've had the off problem or 2, but I Gekk therefore I am.... so countless nights on these forums looking for answers, and most of the time I don't need to post, because the answer can be found....

...but this one, is a little more tricky, for me anyway.

My CD drive has completely had it on my laptop, this isn't an issue in every day use, but unfortunately its stuck with XP on it, and i've tried on many occations to install some form of linux on it (because once I have linux on it, as long as it is not using the entire drive, I can get gentoo onto it)

is there a way I can boot some other way, to get to install Gentoo? I have no idea if my laptop will boot off a USB drive, but the only one I have is a 128MB though this should be big enough for the minimal install, if only i knew how to set the usb stick up with that on it, I also have a USB floppy drive too if that is of any use, but the Laptop doesn't PXE boot (network boot) so thats not an option.

if anyone can help with this, i'd greately appreciate it to finally get rid of windows....

Jay.

dattaway · Posted: Fri Feb 02, 2007 11:02 pm Post subject:

This ought to get you started:

http://marc.herbert.free.fr/linux/win2linstall.html

rokstar83 · Guru Joined: 09 Apr 2005 Posts: 423 Location: MD

alkan · Posted: Fri Feb 02, 2007 11:13 pm Post subject:

if you can resize your partition from within windows (partition magic or similar)(or if you have a second partition already, even better), you can boot into windows and install gentoo from windows environment on that partition using CoLinux. Then setup windows bootloader to dual boot into windows and gentoo.

Once you boot gentoo natively (not from CoLinux), you can get rid of windows partition and move your installation if you wish.

onlinepancakes · Posted: Sat Feb 03, 2007 1:08 am Post subject:

Maybe try picking up a $40 USB CD-Rom drive?
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Onlinepancakes --

neysx · Retired Dev Joined: 27 Jan 2003 Posts: 795

dmartinsca · Posted: Sat Feb 03, 2007 9:44 pm Post subject:

This post might help: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-3792123.html#3792123
As I mention in the post, the PC I booted from the network wouldn't do PXE (the motherboard will but the NIC won't). The floppy disk made from rom-o-matic gets around this problem. If you don't have a floppy drive you may be able to put the same image on a USB stick.
Or, you can buy a cheap IDE to USB adapter. Here's one to allow you to plug in to a desktop's IDE connectors, http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2329310&CatId=470
And another for IDE to USB, http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2201205&CatId=470

JasonRivers · n00b Joined: 24 Aug 2005 Posts: 62

Hi all,

Thanks for all your replies.

I tried CoLinux, it really didn't like my laptop, and i wasn't really in the moo d to dive too far into it to sort. The laptop also didn't want to boot off USB stick or off USB Floppy, so i reverted to taking a hammer to it and smashing it up........jusk kidding, i took a screwdriver to it, chrooted into it from my machine, got it to a bootable linux system, and then put the hard disk back, and hey presto! its now compiling Gnome..... so that will be running till some time tomorrow.

Thanks again everyone.

Jay