Making a Laptop into a Typewriter



@sp331yi Hey yeah, I can try that. My last question before I set this up this weekend: what can I expect? On the most minimal install, I assume libre will have a gui, but will anything else be there?
Like, I'll press file>open in libre, will it have a file manager, or will I type the file address? Unremovable programs, etc?

Thanks so much for the help thus far
 
@sp331yi Hey yeah, I can try that. My last question before I set this up this weekend: what can I expect? On the most minimal install, I assume libre will have a gui, but will anything else be there?
. . .
No. That is why it is termed 'minimal.'

Here, you need to read this fosslinux.com webpage and do some research on your own on APT
Another fosslinux webpage supplementing the first on Bionic Beaver 18.04
Itsfoss' Apt Command Guide

Read the above and ask questions about anything you do not unserstand and/or want to know
 
Made the usb for Ubuntu mini, things were going smoothly, then things went south. I've just found that the laptop doesn't have an ethernet port, meaning I can't connect to Ubuntu servers for the install. Uh... not sure what to do from here. In the meantime, maybe I'll check fosspup?
 
Ok so I've successfully booted fossapup from a usb, but installation is still difficult. I have some issues while installing where the instructions are vague
-Theres a puppy and boot button. I thiiink I understand what they do, but not how to properly use them.
-At no time am I prompted to choose which sfs' to install from fossa
-After completing the install (with questionable accuracy) the computer fails to load an OS
Documentation is sparse for puppy and nonexistant for fossa
 
A Guide to installing Puppy is here:


As explained above link installer is located in setup in menu.
To delete adrv.sfs once you have installed puppy and rebooted into your installed Puppy click on the sda1 icon on the desktop and you will see the sfs's of your installed pup and delete the adrv. sda1 (or partition you have installed Puppy to) will be your mounted hardrive.

Puppy installer supports frugal installs only now so you will be asked to make a save file of all your settings when you go to first shutdown and reboot - follow the prompts.
 
So once you have installed puppy - the partition you installed it to will appear as an icon on your desktop - click on that to see all the sfs that make up your install as previously explained one is optional software - adrv, the main sfs and the others are firmware and kernel. I'll be back later if you need more help.
 
Good to know about the sfs'. Already read the documentation though. So after a seemingly successful install, I can only boot from usb. All puppy files should be located on the hard drive; I believe the issue lies in the boot file. The menus only allow me to save boot files to the usb, not to the hard drive.

Any ideas?

So under frugal install, a menu pops up with a puppy button and boot button. The boot button asks for the source of the boot files, ie the installing flash drive. Then it asks where to save them to. Only the flash drive is available.
 
Sorry to ask a stupid question but did you partition your hard drive ready to install to it, if it not then you need to do so with gparted and set boot flag to boot in preparation for installing.

I am going to boot fossapup and check a few things......
 
Right had a look at the universal installer and it has changed a bit, but here we go....
1. click on menu/setup---> puppy installer (Which you most likely did. I see now that a frugal installer is also in the menu, go for puppy installer.
2. Left click on installer under the bootflash option or if you like the third option.
Then you should see 3 options one want the one that says Internal hardrive/ssd - this brings up which drive to install to it should say something like sda not sdb.
3.Click on hard drive Icon which will bring up this screen showing hard drive partitions to install to and access to gparted (so you can partition hard drive)
2020-07-22-072108_1280x800_scrot.png
 
It's been a while, but here is the status: After trying several full installs, I could not get it to work, so I went back to frugal. I updated my bios, which resolved some issues, and now I'm stuck at the last step.

Currently I have the boot files on sda1, a fat32 partition with the boot flag. I have fossapup on sda2, an ext4 partition with default flags. When opening up my computer, it does immediately boot from the boot drive (even in uefi mode). The only issue is that sda2 (DiskDrive) is not found. I can confirm the drive exists, but I have no clue what would cause this.

20200813_084211.jpg
 
@Ari32 -- on startup, hit either F2 or F3 and type in the location of the puppy_fossapup64_9.0.4.sfs file as such
Code:
puppy pdev1=sdaX
and wherever the savefile is (save as file on an ext2 partition is my recommendation, but ext4 is fine, too) -- say sdaX -- the command (always begin with 'puppy') would be
Code:
puppy pdev1=sda1 psavemark=sdaX pfix=fsck
where the file system is checked, as well.

I believe the command examples are in the Helps at F2 and F3 (before Puppy boots) -- check them out.
FAT32 can cause issues with Puppy
 
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