16.04LTS on Compaq Mini 110 netbook: my experience (boot issue, WiFi)

[adriaan4]

Hi there,

Wanted a little computer for the kids. Although 16 years of experience with installing Linux, it is always a hassle, but this one was very tough: I was not able to produce a bootable USB disk that was accepted by the Compaq. I had the 'no operating system' message and the black screen of death over and over again.

I started to create the bootable USB on a Mac. I used the command line like

sudo dd if=/Users/me/lubuntu-16.04-desktop-i386.iso of=/dev/disk1 bs=1m

Then I used Startup Disk Creator on another Linux machine (no VM, a native Linux machine)

I used 3 USB flash drives and even a real USB HDD.

NOTHING WORKED. GRRRRRR

After many, many tries with many USB disks and distributions, this one helped me:

Make your Bootable USB disk with Unetbootin.
http://unetbootin.github.io/

I chose the Lubuntu 16.04 live version, that worked.

I don't know what went wrong with the other USB-disk-writings, but is was a terrible proces.

----

After installing I encountered 2 issues:

Error 1: during boot the system hangs giving the following message:

/dev/sda5: clean, xxx/xxxx files, xxx/xxxx blocks


Solution:
Reboot
Select 'Advanced options for Lubuntu'
Start Lubuntu in recovery mode
check 'resume normal boot'
Now it started one-time, and gives the LXDE window manager
Plug in an ethernet-cable, make sure to get internet connection.

See visit
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2322482

sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-intel

did the trick.



Error 2:
Also: WiFi would not work. I have seen that before on other laptops that I installed Linux on.
beware of the broadcom device: see
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2221087

sudo apt-get install firmware-b43-installer

Hope this helps others!

A