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I bought an HP Mini about a year ago and I've never been able to use it. My friend sold it to me and it was a great little machine when I first looked at it. It was running Windows 7 but he decided to wipe the entire HDD (including the recovery partition). It doesn't have a optical drive.

Anyway, I have no idea what the computer needs at this point. I was able to make a boot drive for Ubuntu on a thumb drive and it works.. Barely. It's super slow and never stops reminding me I'm out of space. I want to install Ubuntu and be some with it but I'm not sure how... Or if the thing even has enough space for it.

I tried installing it, running it.. Nothing is working and I guess it's because it needs drivers but how do I know which ones I need? It seems like it should be so simple but every time I try something else I end up putting it back in the closet for another 3 months. Can someone please help with this?

Oli
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user419322
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    There should be no issue installing Ubuntu 32-bit (!) from a pen drive. To get directions please [edit] your question to report all errors you get. – Takkat Jun 12 '15 at 07:13
  • Mini 100 or 1000? – Organic Marble Jun 12 '15 at 11:40
  • Thank you everyone. I'm not sure if I asked the right thing because when he wrote out his info he also wiped out the factory reset partition so I don't think the computer knows what to do when I try to install it... OK looking at all these q and a and it's all gibberish so I wasnt sure if I had given all the info you needed. I'm sure the biggest problem is my lack of computer knowledge. – user419322 Jun 12 '15 at 22:04
  • You don't need any of the 'factory' or recovery content. You can install Ubuntu regardless. You just need an install DVD or USB. – david6 Jun 13 '15 at 02:03
  • possible duplicate of How do I install Ubuntu? – Pilot6 Jun 19 '15 at 09:04

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You can easily install Ubuntu 14.04.2 LTS (32-bit), from USB. I have done this successfully on 20 (or more) HP 210-1000s Netbooks (and similar/earlier models). Check elsewhere on this forum on how to create the USB installer.

It needs to be 32-bit, due to issues with Intel Atom graphics chipset/drivers.

You may have issues with WiFi, but check output from: dmesg | grep -e b43 -e Broadcom -e 43xx

Fix is: (using Ethernet cable)

sudo apt-get install linux-firmware-nonfree

sudo modprobe -r b43
sudo modprobe b43

To confirm:

dmesg | grep -e b43 -e Broadcom -e 43xx
david6
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