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I installed Ubuntu22.04 on an 3 year old Acer Aspire E5-523 laptop. Unfortunately I forgot whatever password I set for the BIOS. I find 22.04 is a bit too slow for this machine so I want to try a lighter version of Ubuntu (suggestions please!) on it. Can I swap these two distros without having to use a startup disk...as I cannot get into the BIOS anymore? ....or how can I swap out GNOME for something lighter?

dunbrokin
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    LXLE is off topic here. – Organic Marble May 24 '22 at 22:49
  • Please refer https://askubuntu.com/help/on-topic, Ubuntu and official flavors of Ubuntu (https://ubuntu.com/download/flavours) are on-topic on this site. The on-topic link provides alternate SE sites for non-Ubuntu OSes. – guiverc May 24 '22 at 22:57
  • Ubuntu Desktop 20.04 LTS uses the GNOME desktop, which is rather heavy, so why not try a lighter flavor of Ubuntu instead? Those are on-topic here, or use SE Unix & Linux if you want to ask about a non-Ubuntu system. – guiverc May 24 '22 at 22:58
  • Does this answer your question? No admin access to BIOS to change boot priority – karel May 25 '22 at 04:33
  • FYI: Yes you can swap out the default desktop with another... For years I'd download Ubuntu Desktop which was a quota free from my home ISP, then switch to the ISP mirror (they provided a free Ubuntu mirror service) and switch out the default desktop with my chosen flavor quota free (the ISP didn't mirror flavors). I no longer get quota free downloads, but have a much larger monthly quota so no longer do it, For swapping installs you'd need to be specific though; you can install without needing thumb-drive but it's more involved. – guiverc May 25 '22 at 05:14
  • guiverc: tell me more – dunbrokin May 25 '22 at 10:19
  • Karei: in theory yes....as in remove the battery...but ArrayBolt3 is much more detailed and to the point! So, sorry! – dunbrokin May 25 '22 at 10:21

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WARNING: I thought these instructions were certain to work, but they didn't actually do the trick for this user for reasons I don't understand, so proceed with caution. I personally would not recommend using these instructions again.

I don't know of a way to install one distro over the top of another without booting into the installed for the distro you want to install. However, what you could do it erase your existing OS so that you can boot from the installer.

First, make sure this is a viable solution for you. Get a screwdriver and open up the computer. Then disconnect the HDD from the motherboard, and then flip the system over without screwing anything back in just yet (unless that would result in parts falling out). Then plug in your live USB drive and try booting the system.

If the system is able to boot from the USB drive when the HDD is disconnected, you should be able to nuke the existing Ubuntu installation and then be able to boot from the USB drive to install a new distro. The easiest way to do that is to zero out the start of the main drive.

A word of warning before you proceed:

This process will destroy all data on your drive. You will lose all your operating systems, files, programs, and even your partitions and the bootloader if you do this. If you have any data you care about on any operating system on your computer, back it up before doing this, or you will lose it. ABSOLUTELY DO NOT DO THIS IF YOU ARE UNABLE TO BOOT FROM THE USB WITH THE HDD DISCONNECTED!!!

Alright, now that we're done with the scary warning, and assuming that you are able to boot from a USB drive when the HDD is disconnected, here's how to nuke the existing install.

First, make good and sure that you have a functional live USB, and that your system is able to boot from it when the HDD is disconnected.

Next, you did back up your files before thinking of doing this, right? If not, stop and back up. (Make sure to back up stuff like your Firefox saved logins and stuff, or you might lose access to your accounts if you can't remember the passwords or you used Firefox's password generator.)

Next, once the backups are made, ensure that you do not have any external drives of any sort plugged into your system. Otherwise, you could nuke the wrong drive.

Now it's time to nuke the drive. Open a terminal with Ctrl+Alt+T. Type lsblk to see the drives and partitions in your system. Each drive will have a code of some sort associated with it, with names like "sda" and the like. One of those drives will be mounted at /. This drive is your main drive (unless you partitioned your system weird at install time, but in that instance you'll probably know what drive to wipe).

Now for the scary step. Here's the nuke command:

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/<drive ID code here>

Replace <drive ID code here> with the ID code you got from lsblk that matches your drive. You want to use the ID code that ends with a letter (e.g., "sda", not "sda1", note that your system may use a drive code other than "sda"). You will be asked for a password. Make good and sure that you really did back up everything you care about, then type your password and press Enter. Wait five or ten seconds, then press Ctrl+C. This will terminate the command before it finishes wiping the whole drive. That's fine - you only need just the start of the drive wiped.

Once that's done, reboot the system and ensure it really is wiped. The system should be unable to boot from the HDD.

Once all that chaos is finished, plug your live USB in, power the system on, and install!

(Oh, and, of course, don't forget to put the bottom cover back on your laptop.)

ArrayBolt3
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  • WOW! Thank you for such detailed instructions, I really appreciate the trouble you have gone to! I will give a try next week as I have a lot on for the rest of the week. I will report back here how it goes. All my files etc are already backed up on the cloud...so no worries on that score! – dunbrokin May 25 '22 at 00:20
  • Tried it all as suggested....all worked.....until the final boot from the HDD where it comes up with "no bootable media" or some such phrase! Hmmm! Where to from here? – dunbrokin May 31 '22 at 00:46
  • Hmm, maybe your system has problems with UEFI boot, like one of my systems has. During the early boot process, do you see any indicator like "Press Esc for menu" or something like that? If so, press that key as soon as the system is powering on, and then select "Boot Menu" if that option is available. Then select "ubuntu". – ArrayBolt3 May 31 '22 at 00:55
  • Nope I see nothing like that. I have now booted in using the USB and done lsblk in the terminal....there are two disks shown....sda for the USB and sdb for the HDD. It is noticable that none of the partitions (sdbi or sdb2) shows a /...so I presume none of them is bootable.The USB (sda) shows sda1.........0 part /cdrom – dunbrokin May 31 '22 at 01:01
  • I can't get at the boot menu as I have forgotten the password. – dunbrokin May 31 '22 at 01:02
  • Looking at the disk with Disks, shows the first partiition as Filesystem Patition 1 537 MB FAT, the next - parition 2 is 500 GB and is Ext4. can I not format the disk from here? – dunbrokin May 31 '22 at 01:07
  • Partition 1 has a partition type of EFI System an Partition 2 has a type of Linux Filesystem. – dunbrokin May 31 '22 at 01:08
  • I am trying to fix it with gparted but not having much luck! – dunbrokin May 31 '22 at 01:19
  • I guess the only thing left to try is to find and remove the cmos battery and see if that resets to factory conditions as suggested by karel above. Not sure how to find it on this machine! – dunbrokin May 31 '22 at 01:42
  • The CMOS battery won't do the trick according to Lenovo. Whatever distro you installed must have done something wrong. Try using Lubuntu instead and see if that works. – ArrayBolt3 May 31 '22 at 02:19
  • I used Ubuntu mate. Not sure about Lenovo's comment as this is an Acer. I don't think that Lenovo has the same draconian system password that Acer has! – dunbrokin May 31 '22 at 03:13
  • My apologies, I had you confused with someone who had a similar problem with a Thinkpad. Very odd that Ubuntu Mate isn't working, especially since the USB drive is working to boot the system. Are you using manual partitioning? If so, did you remember to create the EFI partition or bios-grub partition, and set the needed flag? – ArrayBolt3 May 31 '22 at 04:07
  • I was not using manual partitioning I let Ubuntu Mate do all the hard work in the set up. – dunbrokin May 31 '22 at 04:11
  • Let us continue this discussion in chat. – ArrayBolt3 May 31 '22 at 04:37