Le 07.05.2013 23:23, Patrick Bartek a écrit :
Unfortunately, the Thinkpad 240X we're discussing here can't boot directly off a CD or even a USB thumb drive for that matter. Natively, it can only boot off a floppy or internal hard drive. (Isaid this thing was ancient. ;-) ) And except for the hard drive, allother drives are externals.
I understand that kind of problems. My old computer have a CD reader so it was not too hard... (I had some problems anyway, but I was able to quickly fix them)
But you can install a system from an ISO quite easily if a system which support boot customizations is installed (like, by example, Debian).
I did it some times, and I have noticed various issues depending on your boot loader and partition scheme.
For boot loader, it depends if the installed version is able to directly boot an ISO or not. If yes, things are made simpler. If not, you can anyway use a gentoo-like method for installation: boot your system, create a partition for the future system, make a chroot and do your installation job from it (I have never tried that with Debian, but gentoo have a description about how to install gentoo from another distro, which might be adapted to your needs).
For partition schemes, there are few things I have noticed to help:* obviously, if you have a /home partition, it helps because you can split it to create space for the future system, which allows you to keep a working and reliable system * if /boot is on it's own partition and if there is enough space, you can copy there the installation ISO and configure your boot loader to boot it. Grub is able to boot ISOs IIRC. * if you can manage enough space in a new partition, you can dd the ISO on a dedicated partition and boot that partition.
Every time I did such experimentations (I guess, 6-8 in 2 years... I love to destroy my systems, and I never look at where I am doing it :D) it took me some times and readings to achieve my goals, but I am a beginner with linux stuff (*and* a tinkerer, which explains why my system broke so often ;) ).
But every times I was able to have a fully working system.Maybe I should redo that for fun tomorrow and write the steps somewhere, in case it might help someone...
Of course, you can also buy new hardware, but it is not sure it will fit your needs (you said something does not work on linux and windows XP? I doubt it will work with windows 8 :D ) and, is not it less fun? ;) (I understand however that people do not think tinkering with their OS is fun, and you might be in such situation. Sometimes, people just wants/needs something which just works.)