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Okay! I'm completely new to Linux and here's what I want to do. I have MacBook that I use for my daily use that I don't want to change. I also have an old desktop that just sits there. It has windows XP on it and it's really just collecting dust. The thing is full of viruses and adware and spyware and God knows what else...

Anyway, I've downloaded the Ubuntu desktop ISO to an empty 2GB flash drive. here's my project: I want to completely erase everything (I mean EVERYTHING) on this old XP PC and install Ubuntu so that I can continue learning and coding. How do I do this using a flash drive and my MacBook. I can't seem to find someone with a similar project.

By the way, the old computer is a Dell XPS. Let me know if you have the answer!!!

lifecrisis
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1 Answers1

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This is the official documentation.

It sounds like right now you have one big iso file sitting on the USB drive. That's not going to work to boot and start the installer. To set that up using your MacBook, you'll want to download unetbootin

That will let you extract the files from the iso onto the USB device in a bootable format.

At that point, you should be able to plug the USB drive into the computer you plan on installing Linux on, tell it to boot from the device (either by going into the BIOS and changing the boot order or selecting the boot menu by hitting F12).

This should boot into an installer which will walk you through the process. It's really straightforward, especially if you don't do a lot of customization at this point. You should be able to tell it to use the entire hard drive which will completely wipe out your existing Windows installation.

DoubleD
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    And if the computer BIOS will not allow booting from the USB (common on non-UEFI BIOS), burning a bootable DVD on the MacBook through Disk Utility using the .iso image he downloaded would be the other, easy route. – douggro Dec 11 '14 at 20:36
  • Great point. If you have a blank DVD that way is maybe even easier. – DoubleD Dec 11 '14 at 20:39
  • Okay guys, we're on a roll!!! Some more questions. I did exactly what you said with unetbootin. I now get to a screen where i can choose "Erase Disk and Install Ubuntu" or something like that. When i click continue, I get an error at the "Where are you" Screen. A little window with "??? ???" twice pops up and it will only go back from there. What could be happening? I'm not able to connect to the internet from this computer yet. Could that be the problem? – lifecrisis Dec 11 '14 at 22:00
  • When it does that you can try hitting the left ALT key and F4. That should take you to the error console. It might say what's wrong there. ALT-F1 will take you back to the installer screen. – DoubleD Dec 11 '14 at 22:39
  • hmm... nothin'. ALT-F4 does nothing here... It just takes me back to the previous part of the menu on the Ubuntu Desktop CTRL-ALT-F4 takes me to one of the hidden terminals, but it gives me no information. I find NOTHING out there about this problem! Irksome! – lifecrisis Dec 11 '14 at 22:49
  • OK, typically it is CTRL-ALT but I was looking at some documentation that said otherwise. You might try CTRL-ALT and all of the F keys one at a time. It might be sending errors to a different one. Is this Ubuntu 14.04? – DoubleD Dec 11 '14 at 22:55
  • Yes, Ubuntu 14.04. I'll try all the F-keys... I assume you mean F1-F6... I don't have enough fingers for the rest! Haha! – lifecrisis Dec 11 '14 at 23:03
  • No Luck... I just get the same terminals I got before. No new information. – lifecrisis Dec 11 '14 at 23:09
  • Can you get the network working? It looks like it should have tried at an earlier step. I don't know if that will help, though. – DoubleD Dec 11 '14 at 23:17
  • No go on the network... however... the computer is TEN years old. Could that be the problem? It seems reasonable that maybe the newest Ubuntu might just not be compatible with my hardware. – lifecrisis Dec 11 '14 at 23:33
  • Is it a 32 bit CPU? Did you get the 32 bit ISO? It should have said if that was the issue though. Apart from that it could be age, but I just installed centos on a computer about that age, it had to be 32 bit and it worked. I don't think centos has better support for older hardware than ubuntu, so... – DoubleD Dec 11 '14 at 23:46