Installing Linux Mint on MK1 CF-19

I started posting this up in my "Cleaning up and Speeding up my MK1 CF-19" thread, but decided it was enough of a struggle that it deserves its own thread. I struggle with stuff like this.

I also ALWAYS seem to find the hardest way to go about doing something. What I "think" I am after, is to install Linux on a 32gb thumb drive attached to the WWAN card port. I like this as I can turn that card on/off quickly in bios and have the nice hidden install. In normal use the drive doesn't even show up in Windows. Perfect. That part is well proven too. Works just as I want it to.

So what I did was to use ApplePi Baker to burn the Mint image to the 32gb drive with my MacBook. Plugged the drive into its spot, booted up the MK1 and bam, linux loads. But I want to now install a persistent version onto that same thumbdrive. I don't want any traces of linux on the main HDD. I am having issues making the install go to that drive and it keeps wanting me to define multiple partitions and needing to know how much I want for each one. I want an automatic install with the correct choices made for me since I don't know lol...

Let me try a simple solution... I will shut down and reboot WITHOUT the main HDD in place, since it only takes 5 seconds to pull the caddy out. Nope. While it eliminates me installing linux to that drive, the issue still remains. I think the problem is trying to make the install persistent to the drive the install image is on.

Ugh, well I had to de-case the thumbdrive to make it fit. So I am going to grab my "broken" Acronis image drive and use that for the Linux image, wipe this drive clean, and try again. Will hopefully post up a good progress report shortly!

 

I am probably just talking to myself right now, but I do find myself going back and reading my threads to figure out how I solved an issue. So I will proceed!!!

And the first problem to crash my brain, solved. Seems me and BIOS are easily confused by two identical thumbdrives. At first, I saw both drives showing up in BIOS but couldn't get the right one to boot. Somehow during this mess, I killed the adapter card. I realized I had a problem when the usb drive plugged into there stopped blinking and only one SanDisk Cruzer would show up in BIOS. Then another chunk of time wasted trying to get them in the right boot order, identical names and all that... Sweet that is now condensed into this one paragraph. Now I can move on with life.

So with my blank drive in the now replaced adapter card for the WWAN slot, I finally get it booting into the Linux Mint image on the thumbdrive in the left side USB port.

Clicked on the install Linux Mint disc and started up. It detected a mounted file system, and I noted "untitled" sitting on the "desktop" and asked me if I wanted to unmount file system. It was unclear but I knew I couldn't do any harm with my actual windows HDD pulled out, so I said "yes." I guess that is where it is installing Mint now. Everything else was simple questions even I could answer! Silly stuff like "Would you like to install additional software for flash and to support wireless hardware?" Of course! And I had to put in my wireless password. And pick a user name. I modified the computer name.

It is still installing packages or something. I will babysit it a little longer as I am dying of curiosity, but it is now getting past my normal bedtime, and close to my "too late" badtime... The progress bar is moving super quickly though! It is now finished and restarting. It is taking a concerningly long time to shut down but the Linux Mint logo shows blinking progress dots underneath it.

Hopefully, I didn't break anything in the install... I may have jumped the gun removign the installer USB drive once it went into the shutdown mode. I realized it hadn't told me to do that, so I popped it back in. It just hung on those blinking dots and about 20 minutes I did a forced power down.

I pulled the install thumbdrive and then rebooted. It just loaded up into a Mint desktop! Now I am going to try another shutdown, and reboot with the main drive in play. Oops, it loads up Windows 7. Well, that was another test, just out of order. Shutting back down. STILL shutting back down... Still...

There we go. And of course, my main drive is booting ahead of the USB HDD in BIOS. Fixed. And now...

BOOTING BACK UP INTO LINUX MINT!!!! And holy crap, full shutdown in only 4 seconds!!! Okay next test, turn off the WWAN card in BIOS, and YEPPERS! I just booted up seamlessly into W7!

Okay, my main objective is solved! I now have a hidden fully operational (hopefully) Linux Mint install tucked away on a 32gb thumbdrive plugged into my WWAN card port!

Why bother? Well, I don't like dual boot. Dual boot always breaks things. And a nice invisible solution that is always there, is just SUPER cool! And near ultimate data security if it isn't there, why would you try to get into it? I have wanted to get this working for almost a year now, and had the idea for a lot longer.

Somehow that did whack my clock. The Linux time read correctly last boot, but now booting into windows and it thinks it is 7am instead of 3am. Okay that is fixed for now. If it gets whacked again, that should be a pretty easy problem to fix.

Well I no longer have a big problem to solve and can actually go shut my brain down now. Too tired to really fool around on the new OS. I will post up some pictures of the adapter card I used and also get mission-critical things like a proper desktop image installed tomorrow/later today! Ugh. The whole needing to sleep thing kinda sucks.

 

I just HAD to reboot it and turn on the WWAN card one more time, SO COOL!

I am really looking forward to fooling around with this on Mint! The FN buttons all seem to retain the normal functions like dimming the monitor, turning volume up, and the battery button brings up the power management too! Well my MacBook is lagging way behind my typing and I think it has decided it is past its bedtime too. Lol night all!

 

Very cool, well done. I have ditched Windows on my personal laptops and have learned how to run a VPN and join .001 files back together that I had.

I have 4 toughbooks here with me all restored to 7, they are on eBay Philippines but I'm not holding my breath. Might end up with Mint on all of them. I wish I could Linux those 3E's I have but such is life.

 

Well daymn! Everything seems to work except for the Keyboard, enter, rotate, and lock keys on the front panel! Wireless switch works, all the FN keys above work. Digitizer works.

Plugged a thimbdrive in, that works. Grabbed a pictur off to set for the background, works.

Not only that, but this thing is actualy "quick" again on the internet. Using it now in fact!

I will give it some time, but if I could get my primary software packages I need running on this, I can easily see it getting installed on the SSD drive I was planning to transfer the W7 install over to.

For an OS install, this has to be near the easiest one I have ever done. Everything working right out of the box. And I wasn't going about installing it in a straightforward spot either. That was the only hard part of the install.

 

Jeff probably knows how to make the buttons work, but I never use them personally.

 

Some light reading for you. Kode-niner actually understands this stuff.

Start at the beginning for earlier Marks.

http://toughbooktalk.com/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=2873&start=70

 

"Light" reading eh?! I have no clue what language is being spoken there. Sounds like a form of geeklish...

I have found a serious problem that needs to be solved before I put a lot of time into this. When typing, I was seeing a slight lag from what I was writing to what was showing up. I could watch words form when I paused and looked at the screen. And I am not the fastest typer by far. I do okay though.

So problem 1, keyboard lag.

Problem 2, flash intensive crap overwhelms it. Like the silly rabbit holes below. Sure just don't go there and that stuff actually slows down my Mac too. This problem is not too concerning I guess. And I might simply be seeing a limitation of the base hardware. It is old tech at this point.

I may go ahead and pop a Mint install onto the SSD and see if that makes a difference and solves the lag. Again, I am likely using a really "clogged" pipeline where I put the install. If the SSD install works fast, then I will explore other ideas.

Even with these issues, this machine is actually usable now. I can actually use it on the internet again!!!

Quick question. So a linux "live boot cd" (or USB these days) will find and autoload drivers every time. Does an "installed" version work the same way? Say if I installed this on an SSD drive in a proper caddy, could I swap that caddy into the MK5 also without causing issues?

 

I'm assuming you are not running an SSD yet n the Mk1, that will speed things up considerably. But remember you still have a core duo 1.06 CPU, pardon me if I explain what you already know.
A computer is a calculator..... period, it crunches numbers. You probably know all this, the SSD will remove most of the hard drive latency so the OS will be able to run much faster.

But it's never going to be fast, the CPU is running at it's limit and of course,that is set in stone. I have a motion computing tablet I bought nib for less then $50. Core solo 1.2, won't even run XP .I replaced the 4200rpm zif drive with a 32gb zif SSD. At least it will run Linux and is usable, not bad actually once it boots. Trust me, replacing the drive in that was a real pita.

You should be able to switch drives on Linux.

 

I do it all the time....32 bit runs in a wider range. Simply put...if it runs in your MK1 it will drop into your later Marks. (CF-30MK1 will run in a CF-31MK3 for instance)
The drivers are there already....Linux writes a kernel each session according to the hardware it sees.

Limiting factors are:

1. 32 vs 64 bit....... (My CF-19 MK1 doesn't like 64 bit)
2. Non-PAE vs PAE.
3. Occasional hardware issues like the CF-31Mk2 touchpad.
4. And a few others.
5. Written this a.m. and just now sending.

 

Switching between the Mk1 and the Mk5 I would run a 32 bit distro. Peppermint is a favorite as it is simple and lightweight with a very user friendly interface. I'm running that on the motion i3 and core solo, on my i3 and i5 Dell's (blasphemy, forgive me for my sins..lol) I'm running Mint 18.3.

On the core solo I can watch YouTube and do what ever on the web with it and I have a solitaire collection installed and it runs it fine. Digitizer screens work flawlessly.

 

Correct, I am not running the SSD drive in the computer yet. As mentioned, I have an adapter card plugged into the WWAN card slot with a 32gb thumbdrive plugged into there.

I am kinda suspecting that is the bottleneck causing my issues. So for now the next experiment is likely to be putting a Linux install on the SSD drive I have sitting in standby. But, I am not sure Linux will be the final answer. I have some very specific software bits that I need to have on this machine.

 

Can you run your programs on XP?

 

And the Mk5 got Linux tonight, Windows was throwing errors and endless restarts...phooey. Or as I said #@%$##&*^%% thing.

 

I am not sure if I can run the programs on XP... Well, my most critical program I can actually get a Linux installer for. But I have several supporting programs and a pretty specific workflow I need to support that. The XP connection is kinda interesting though, what is your thought on that?

I just found the Panasonic XP installer cd that Shawn sent me though. I can easily (hopefully) load that up on the other drive.

 

Try it on the SSD.

Might be a bios issue. Confirm you are running the appropriate bios. I forgot whether your MK1 was a touchscreen or a tablet bios.

 

Another thing to consider is there are 2 basic versions of Windows 7, they are very stripped down but might run what you need.

 

If you're up to it, this post is where things get interesting:
http://toughbooktalk.com/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=2873&start=10#p24755

I tried to simplify it as much as possible by just having to run a script, but simplicity is relative I suppose.

Things don't line up properly with my MK4 dual touch, though. Haven't really pursued it any further.