Laura-Ann.0726
New Member
ADMINISTRATOR'S NOTE - This thread is in response to a tutorial here https://linux.org/threads/how-to-create-a-linux-boot-usb-from-windows.55320/
I've used Rufus several times to make bootable thumb drives for Ubuntu, Bodhi, and Mint, and never had a failure. I always use "Write in ISO Image Mode". The only item that can be hard to predict in advance is whether the PC you are going to install the Linux distro to, supports GPT & UEFI, or not. To resolve this problem before you commit a thumb drive to Rufus for burning, you can take a look at the PC's BIOS; if you can't suss out the UEFI question from looking directly at the BIOS, and you have Internet access, and this is a store-bought machine, try Googling the make and model number. If this is a home-built desktop machine in a generic case, and you can boot whatever OS is on the machine, try looking at the system info; this may give you a clue. If it has a 1 or 2 core CPU, it's probably MBR only. If it has 4 or more CPU cores, it probably supports UEFI. If you are going to install this distro on a PC that has a hard disk drive larger than 2 tB, you have to use a 64-bit Linux distro, and select GPT in the Rufus partition scheme box. If this is an older laptop with a 1 or 2 core CPU, you probably won't ever install a hard drive larger than 2 tB in it anyway, so just use the MBR partition scheme.
If you pick GPT in Rufus, and you get an error message from the PC that UEFI isn't supported when you try to install your Linux distro, then you will have to re-burn the thumb drive with the Rufus partition scheme set to MBR, and you will be limited to <2tB disk partitions. Any PC or laptop that gives you this error message is likely so old that it isn't even going to be worth installing a large HDD in it anyway. If this was a 15 year old car with 200,000+ miles on it, you would probably think twice before spending the money to re-build it with a new engine or transmission, right? I'm guessing that the only reason you are even trying to install Linux on an old PC is that's it's open-source and free of charge, eh?
As for the rest of the Rufus options, leave the file system on FAT-32/16kB cluster size. And one last thing: If the PC you are burning this thumb drive on has USB-3 support, I highly recommend you use high-quality USB-3 thumb drives. The burning process will be at least twice as fast as it would be using cheap USB-2 drives. And when I say "cheap", I'm talking about those $2.50 garbage thumb drives you see on Amazon. A 10-pack of "decent" 32-gB, USB-3 thumb drives will cost about $40, and the "best" quality ones in that size from SanDisk or Samsung will cost $60. Those cheap thumb drives are very slow; they are built with dirt-cheap controllers and memory chips, and while they are advertised as USB-3, you're unlikely to get much more than USB-2 speed out of them. And worse, they aren't reliable. Before I got smart and realized that $25 10-packs of thumb drives are usually factory seconds that should have been shredded at the factory and never been sold at all, I usually had 2 or 3 dead-on-arrival right out of the package, and the rest of them fail within 6 months.
I have a couple of tips to add regarding distros for very old laptops. By "very old", I'm referring to laptops with single-core Intel or AMD CPU's, like the Compaq Pressario CQ40~60 series. I recently tried installing Lubuntu, Mint, and Bodhi on a 2006 Compaq CQ60 with a single-core Sempron CPU. All three installed successfully from a Rufus-produced thumb drive. This laptop is obviously pre-UEFI, so I had to use MBR instead of GPT for the partition scheme. The results:
1. Lubuntu was the largest of the three distros, then Mint, and Bodhi was the smallest.
2. All three distros produced screen tearing when trying to run either Firefox or Chromium; while watching system resources in htop, it became obvious that Web browsing, especially trying to watch YouTube videos, was pushing the CPU well beyond it's maximum capacity, and the screen tearing was due to this.
3. Bodhi would run regular apps without pushing the CPU over the limit, but Lubuntu and Mint were experiencing intermittent screen tearing even with regular apps that don't involve video processing.
I have to conclude that in today's world, laptops with single-core CPU's are not worth spending any effort on; they are far too limited in capacity to be useful as general-purpose portable computers. If you have an old laptop, and the hard drive in it is at least 500 gB, remove the drive and put it in a $10 USB enclosure and use it as an external data drive with a newer laptop. For $300 you can get a Lenovo IdeaPad from Best Buy that has a 4-core Ryzen 5 series CPU, 8 gB of DRAM, a 256gB SSD, and a 1920x1080 display. It's not a blazing-fast machine by today's standards, but it's dirt-cheap and won't be totally obsolete for at least 5 or 6 years. You will be far less frustrated with even a cheap machine like this Lenovo, than trying to resurrect a 15 year old laptop with a single core CPU.
I've used Rufus several times to make bootable thumb drives for Ubuntu, Bodhi, and Mint, and never had a failure. I always use "Write in ISO Image Mode". The only item that can be hard to predict in advance is whether the PC you are going to install the Linux distro to, supports GPT & UEFI, or not. To resolve this problem before you commit a thumb drive to Rufus for burning, you can take a look at the PC's BIOS; if you can't suss out the UEFI question from looking directly at the BIOS, and you have Internet access, and this is a store-bought machine, try Googling the make and model number. If this is a home-built desktop machine in a generic case, and you can boot whatever OS is on the machine, try looking at the system info; this may give you a clue. If it has a 1 or 2 core CPU, it's probably MBR only. If it has 4 or more CPU cores, it probably supports UEFI. If you are going to install this distro on a PC that has a hard disk drive larger than 2 tB, you have to use a 64-bit Linux distro, and select GPT in the Rufus partition scheme box. If this is an older laptop with a 1 or 2 core CPU, you probably won't ever install a hard drive larger than 2 tB in it anyway, so just use the MBR partition scheme.
If you pick GPT in Rufus, and you get an error message from the PC that UEFI isn't supported when you try to install your Linux distro, then you will have to re-burn the thumb drive with the Rufus partition scheme set to MBR, and you will be limited to <2tB disk partitions. Any PC or laptop that gives you this error message is likely so old that it isn't even going to be worth installing a large HDD in it anyway. If this was a 15 year old car with 200,000+ miles on it, you would probably think twice before spending the money to re-build it with a new engine or transmission, right? I'm guessing that the only reason you are even trying to install Linux on an old PC is that's it's open-source and free of charge, eh?
As for the rest of the Rufus options, leave the file system on FAT-32/16kB cluster size. And one last thing: If the PC you are burning this thumb drive on has USB-3 support, I highly recommend you use high-quality USB-3 thumb drives. The burning process will be at least twice as fast as it would be using cheap USB-2 drives. And when I say "cheap", I'm talking about those $2.50 garbage thumb drives you see on Amazon. A 10-pack of "decent" 32-gB, USB-3 thumb drives will cost about $40, and the "best" quality ones in that size from SanDisk or Samsung will cost $60. Those cheap thumb drives are very slow; they are built with dirt-cheap controllers and memory chips, and while they are advertised as USB-3, you're unlikely to get much more than USB-2 speed out of them. And worse, they aren't reliable. Before I got smart and realized that $25 10-packs of thumb drives are usually factory seconds that should have been shredded at the factory and never been sold at all, I usually had 2 or 3 dead-on-arrival right out of the package, and the rest of them fail within 6 months.
I have a couple of tips to add regarding distros for very old laptops. By "very old", I'm referring to laptops with single-core Intel or AMD CPU's, like the Compaq Pressario CQ40~60 series. I recently tried installing Lubuntu, Mint, and Bodhi on a 2006 Compaq CQ60 with a single-core Sempron CPU. All three installed successfully from a Rufus-produced thumb drive. This laptop is obviously pre-UEFI, so I had to use MBR instead of GPT for the partition scheme. The results:
1. Lubuntu was the largest of the three distros, then Mint, and Bodhi was the smallest.
2. All three distros produced screen tearing when trying to run either Firefox or Chromium; while watching system resources in htop, it became obvious that Web browsing, especially trying to watch YouTube videos, was pushing the CPU well beyond it's maximum capacity, and the screen tearing was due to this.
3. Bodhi would run regular apps without pushing the CPU over the limit, but Lubuntu and Mint were experiencing intermittent screen tearing even with regular apps that don't involve video processing.
I have to conclude that in today's world, laptops with single-core CPU's are not worth spending any effort on; they are far too limited in capacity to be useful as general-purpose portable computers. If you have an old laptop, and the hard drive in it is at least 500 gB, remove the drive and put it in a $10 USB enclosure and use it as an external data drive with a newer laptop. For $300 you can get a Lenovo IdeaPad from Best Buy that has a 4-core Ryzen 5 series CPU, 8 gB of DRAM, a 256gB SSD, and a 1920x1080 display. It's not a blazing-fast machine by today's standards, but it's dirt-cheap and won't be totally obsolete for at least 5 or 6 years. You will be far less frustrated with even a cheap machine like this Lenovo, than trying to resurrect a 15 year old laptop with a single core CPU.
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