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I have finally given up on this task after 1 week of agony. and now need some help.

I have an old advent Monza T200 laptop. it has a 320gb seagate hdd that I have wiped by removing from laptop, puttingin caddy and using diskpart, gparted and windows partition manager. I've formatted a few times in all formats. the one used most is ext4.

im trying to get xbuntu on it, i'll settlefor any distro atm. but I cant get it to work. ive tried connecting it to my little lubuntu hp laptop, that for some reason will not boot from usb, it does with a little grub menu, but when I click on "test and install xbuntu" theres a black screen with a flashing underscore and nothing happens.

ihave tried using unebootin, but that only allows me to choose my c drive of the pc im using to install on and not the drive I want.

I have tried having a 3gb partition on the hdd I want to be xbuntu, to have the iso on so I can boot and install it on itself, but it doesnt boot. itried formatting the 3gb partition as ext4, fat32 and ntfs.

I tried simply flashing the iso onto the hdd to install onto itself, but as expected that doesnt work.

I have used 6+ different usbs, multiple different isos, softwares and methods of flashing, formatting and installing. variety of different distros.

my advent laptop that im trying to get xbuntu on, doesnt have a bios menu or boot menu, I can not make it boot from usb. I took hdd out, with only the bootable usb in before turning on so it forced to boot from usb and then I plugged in the hdd as it started the xbuntu grub menu, but when I went to install it would not detect the hdd and would only let me try to install on the usb it was on.

my last attempt was most frustraing, I used my main pc (which I avoided in fear of my messing it up) to boot xbuntu from usb, and then install it onto the hdd I want using a caddy (which would not work on my lubuntu machine as mentioned above) and the whole instalation seemed to go through and said it had successfully installed. then putting the now xbuntu hdd back into my advent laptop it just shows a flashing underscore three lines down from top left.

I followed some advice on here reguaarding partitioning,during install, but theres a few different ways people have mentioned and following a couple but it didnt result in much luck, How to use manual partitioning during installation? I find that part confusing. like making root, home, boot partitions. maybe someone could tell mehow to do this specifically, like what size partitions (withmy 320gb) in what formats (exts journeling) and what mountpoints (/, /home, etc)

aside from that I dont know what else to do.

advent specs: CPU Model / Speed: Intel Celeron 847 @ 1.10GHz Graphics: Intel HD Graphics Memory: 8GB DDR3 hdd: seagate 320gb

and ihave no idea how each of my devices boot; efi, legancy etc.

usually installing linux is quite straight forward and fun. so havent needed to get into all the specs. but cant seem to get it to work on this one laptop that has the ram I need to run. @guiverc the single partition for xbuntu is good information thank you. im sure I tried that, but I will try again to be sure

update: so I reinstalled xbuntu to the hdd again, this time using a different old laptop with bootable usb. this time it seem to install, using default installation process and partitioning, no third party software so it didnt do the secure boot thing. I booted it on the old laptop (acer notebook ofsome sort) to test and it was running on that. but when put hdd back into my advent I get "Reboot and Select proper boot device"

@sudodus I can try the compressed image idea, struggling to find a download of it.

@sudodus thank you for the info, I made progress! got that to boot, used the login. i'll be trying theother things you mentioned in your previous comment to try and get it to start up properly. will test that over the weekend. but at least something ison the screen now! thanks again, youve been a great help

@sudodus I cannot install any desktop, apt update/ugrade nothing gets installed, I figured I need wifi to reach sites? but I cant find a tutorial that works for me to connect to wifi. so I have ubuntu server, username and my password, but thats as far as ive gotten, everything ive found online so far hasnt worked. do you have any ideas on how to connect to wifi? if I can figure that out I think I can download and install packages and desktops and all things I need for the rest.

@guiverc I used the latest download xubuntu 22.04.2 I think. I think the issue is format. but thanks to sudodus I now have ubuntu server installed. im just trying to figure that out with not much luck so far.

solved thanks to sudodus!

@sudodus - sorry for the delay. ok, so I have an ethernet port, but I dont have physical access to my router, so wireless only. to get around this I got a wireless repeater I set up on different pc,which has an ethernet connection from the repeater to device to get around this problem.

unfortunately it didnt work. then i realised I wasnt using correct cable, like an idiot I was using one of them smaller telephone wires that clicked into place and made me think it was right one.

now ive got an actual rj45 cable it's working! I have internet, packages updated, and currently installing the xubuntu desktop!!! im not done yet. but I think im out the woods

I offer my most sincerest and deepest gratitude to you! you are a legit hero of mine now! thank you so much. im not sure my laptop could have survived another rage beating

joe.s
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    ...and what are the specs and model of that "old advent laptop"? The question is kind of light on those details. Usually, installing on another PC, then moviing the HDD thing works, but you may need to use grub options to boot. – mikewhatever May 05 '23 at 05:39
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    You've provided no specifics as mikewhatever has mentioned.. No release details etc. I've had great luck in moving a hdd from one box to another & just having it boot (when I didn't expect it too), but also times where it hasn't booted (yet given the same make/model I hoped for success). Xubuntu (& Ubuntu) require only a single partition for / on all supported releases, plus ESP if the hardware firmware requires it (ie. box specific detail). Do your two boxes boot using the same or different methods? (legacy or EFI for example?), same architecture? etc. specifics matter. – guiverc May 05 '23 at 05:48
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    You could extract and clone from a compressed image of Ubuntu Server when connected to a USB bootable computer. The result is a portable Ubuntu Server, that can boot in UEFI mode and BIOS mode and it should work with various hardware as long as it can be managed by the built-in linux drivers (except for example nvidia graphics and broadcom wifi). So I hope that such a system will work also in your stubborn computer. After booting into it you can install the meta package xubuntu-desktop, maybe with the command line sudo apt install --no-install-recommends xubuntu-desktop – sudodus May 05 '23 at 15:34
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    @joe.s, See this link for details about the compressed images of Ubuntu Server. – sudodus May 05 '23 at 15:36
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    @joe.s, You can find the Jammy (22.04.x) version here. See details in my previous comment about how to extract and clone it to a drive. Please notice that it will use the whole drive (overwrite whatever was there before). There are also details about the first log in (user:ubuntu / password:ubuntu). – sudodus May 05 '23 at 21:34
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    I'll add another though... I'm involved in QA of Ubuntu & especially flavors, and have a variety of hardware that I use for that purpose (~25 boxes).. I've used a thinkpad didn't have bootable USB ports (the original ports were fried & replacement USB ports the machine wouldn't boot from) but didn't want to write ISOs to DVD just for it; so I'd boot & install on that machine via them downloaded & stored on ISO.. with a script modifying the installed system's bootloader to offer the additional ISOs (I didn't full disk install so as to overwrite my boot setup).. – guiverc May 06 '23 at 02:41
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    I still see no specific release details... and I consider that really matters, as well as what checks/verification you perform (which varies on unstated product/release) thus have no idea if your issue is user procedural as you've omitted the basic stats that provide software stack details... That detail in my experience matters (ie. matching hardware with software stack) as I've found some good results by selecting specific ISOs (you gave no details) for installing on older hardware, where same release but different ISO (different stack) had issues... Specifics matter. – guiverc May 06 '23 at 02:44
  • Please be specific; 22.04 is the 2022-April release... the latest is of course 23.04 being the 2023-April release.. Your use of 22.04 & term latest makes little sense given that was 3 releases ago (22.04.2 being the latest respin of the older LTS release - if that's what you mean please be specific)... Details do matter. – guiverc May 08 '23 at 23:12
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    @joe.s, wired internet. If there is an RJ-45 port you can get an ethernet cable and connect it to your router. Otherwise you could move the drive with Ubuntu Server to a computer with such an RJ-45 port or with a wifi chip/card, that works with the built-in linux drivers, But it is a bit complicated to connect to wifi in text mode. Anyway, when you have a [wired] connection you can install the program packages that you want, and the lubuntu-desktop and other ?buntu*-desktop meta packages also contain GUI software that makes it easier to connect wifi, also in the target computer. – sudodus May 09 '23 at 02:16

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