Linux Mint on an Acer netbook help

**mntnmama1** · June 15th, 2013

Hello

I am brand new to the world of Linux. I have heard great things and want to put linuxmint on my old acer aspire one ZA3. It currently runs Windows Vista Basic and is painfully slow.

I downloaded linuxmint via torrent and converted it with Vuze. I then used a iso to usb downloader and put it on usb. I set the boot menu to boot from usb. However when I do this, and select f12 it then tells me to remove any devises and or media and hit any key to continue. I left in the usb and hit enter and windows still loads up.

Can anyone help me, what have I done wrong... why wont it work?

**Mark Phelps** · June 15th, 2013

First of all, you should probably post this in the Linux Mint forums -- because although Mint is BASED on Ubuntu, it is not the same --especially with booting. I know because I recently installed Mint 15 on my desktop and it took a lot of tweaking to get the installer and screens to work properly.

What you SHOULD do (since it worked for me) is the following:
1) make sure you downloaded the correct ISO for your PC (32 bit or 64 bit)
2) Use the Universal Installer from PendriveLinux.com to create a bootable USB of Mint. I' ve used this installer for several releases now, and it always works great.
3) When you boot from the USB, if you have any troubles getting to a desktop or having the screens display properly, then you need to intervene in the boot process by changing boot parms.

IF you want more details on modifying the boot parms, please post on the Mint forums -- and I will gladly help you there.

**oldos2er** · June 15th, 2013

Moved to Other OS/Distro Support.

**snowpine** · June 15th, 2013

Linux Mint documentation will help you install: http://www.linuxmint.com/documentati...glish_15.0.pdf

Windows Vista is slow because your "netbook" hardware is underpowered for a full-featured modern operating system. Therefore be sure to choose a Linux distribution that is designed specifically for older/slower hardware. Linux Mint with the LXDE or Xfce environments might be a good choice for you, or Lubuntu/Xubuntu if you prefer to get support here as opposed to Mint forums.

**Francis Marion** · June 15th, 2013

I'm still pretty new to the linux world but I'm running my acer netbook (ZG5) on Lubuntu. I initially tried Mint and Ubuntu....Ubuntu was actually faster than Mint...but in the end they were both too slow on the machine. I couldn't be happier with Lubuntu and I even found a gig stick of ram in an old unused machine that I slapped in the netbook as well. It runs faster than my newer Vaio running windows 7 now....