Install CentOS 6 over windows XP?

I recently bought a laptop for 40.00 from a friend of mine and I was wondering has anyone done a install over windows and replaced it with Linux? I do not want to run a VMware Player or workstation I want to do a wipe of windows and a clean install of CentosLinux to aid me in attaining my RCHSA. Im not sure if my PC is up to par to even do this so here are the specs

The Memory is the important thing....

Memory slot 1 - 1024MB
Drive C:\ - Total space 975.44MB
Drive Z:\ - Total space 63.75MB

Will this even be enough memory to do a clean install???

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Comments

ITSpectre

varelg wrote: »

To begin with, CentOS 6 won't help you get RHCSA. It has to be CentOS 7. Further, there's no 32-bit version of CentOS 7, and I suspect your laptop's processor isn't 64-bit-capable.
In addition to Linux Academy subscription, you may also consider getting:
- a virtualization product that would allow nested virtualization. That way, when the time comes to study KVM, you won't have to deal with installation of Linux on hardware. Linux is very picky about hardware and prefers business-grade laptops.
- a Red Hat desktop support subscription. It's really cheap ($49 a year) and will pay back in spades. You'll get access to their Knowledge Base which opens many doors for you in terms of preparation for the exam and further.
If you are still interested in having a dedicated Red Hat Linux computer of your own and not a virtual installation, you may want to check out Red Hat's list of PC's tested to work with Linux. For laptops, it's basically Lenovo T440s and up.

I see what your saying. a cheap laptop is not gonna cut it. If I don't want to buy a good laptop then I just need to use vmware player on my desktop and then study with linux academy or RedHat desktop support sub. And then use that until I can get a good PC then install linux on that and lab it up.

asummers

A cheap laptop can cut it if it is the right laptop. Assuming you are not planning to use KVM for virtualization then a modest laptop with 1-2gb will be fine.

Your issues are nothing to do with Linux but to do with the actual laptop being a corporate laptop i.e. the hard disk is fully encrypted and you are locked out of the BIOS to change the boot order.

I would look to see if you can clear the BIOS on your laptop, once you are in you will be able to boot from usb - or do what I do with my laptop and boot from network using PXE (a good learning exercise too)

ITSpectre

UPDATE!

I met my friend yesterday evening and swapped laptops. He had a different laptop that was not locked out of the BIOS. But this laptop poses a challenge that I want to dive into. This Laptop does not boot from the USB. It can only boot from CD or floppy. But from what I read online I can either load the OS on a enternal CD drive reader... or a SD card. So I welcome the challenge...

ITSpectre

So the model of the Cheap PC I have now is the Toshiba portage M200. The Linux forums said that bc this laptop will not boot from a USB stick the only way I can get the image onto the machine is either by external CD drive or boot from a SD card and make a "floppy image".

So according to the Linux Forums I should be able to create a image on the SD card then boot from floppy/sd and I should be good.

varelg

Part of what I was saying is that you don't have to install linux on hardware at all. As long as your virtualization solution supports nested virtualization.
Processor on your new laptop, is it 64-bit? Are you installing Centos 7?

Chinook

You could use DBAN on the machine and see if that will wipe the drives. There are certain versions of linux (command line online) which are very small. I think one is called Tiny Linux or something like that. If you're only running the command line in Linux, 1 GB of RAM is sufficient.

Linux Academy makes great sense if it's in your budget. You can choose between multiple distro's of Linux and it's included as part of the package.

I do have one question. Do you have prior Linux experience? If not, you might want to consider LPI's Linux Essentials. It's basically an introduction course to Linux through LPI. Linux Academy has training for it.

ITSpectre

varelg wrote: »

Part of what I was saying is that you don't have to install linux on hardware at all. As long as your virtualization solution supports nested virtualization.
Processor on your new laptop, is it 64-bit? Are you installing Centos 7?

Its not 64bit.... So I cant install centos7. Im really installing Linux to learn the command lines and such for a job i may be going for. A basic linux engineer role. But I have centos7 on my main PC. running in Vmware player

ITSpectre

Chinook wrote: »

You could use DBAN on the machine and see if that will wipe the drives. There are certain versions of linux (command line online) which are very small. I think one is called Tiny Linux or something like that. If you're only running the command line in Linux, 1 GB of RAM is sufficient.

Linux Academy makes great sense if it's in your budget. You can choose between multiple distro's of Linux and it's included as part of the package.

I do have one question. Do you have prior Linux experience? If not, you might want to consider LPI's Linux Essentials. It's basically an introduction course to Linux through LPI. Linux Academy has training for it.

Thanks for that. I need to go ahead and finish that course!!! Yes I knew about it, ive just been busy with work that I have not gotten a chance to work with the class.

varelg

ITSpectre wrote: »

Its not 64bit.... So I cant install centos7. Im really installing Linux to learn the command lines and such for a job i may be going for. A basic linux engineer role. But I have centos7 on my main PC. running in Vmware player

Stick with what you had already set up. I am not sure if VMWare Player allows nested virtualization, but it's good enough to start with.
Linux running under a hypervisor of some sort may be a datacenter setup solution of choice these days, few testimonials from a discussion on the Red Hat Community board suggest. In those cases, they were running Red Hat under a VMWare hypervisor. Even the enterprise is shunning Linux on bare metal.

varelg

Full disclosure, I have two bare metal installs of CentOS at home, a dual boot laptop that is used daily (though have not booted into its CentOS 7 install lately) and a CentOS 6 on an old laptop that used to run Windows XP (Sony Vaio with Intel Centrino processor). The dual-boot laptop was used as the server for network install of CentOS 6 on the old laptop...

DoubleNNs

You could always put Linux on your main computer

I ran CentOS 7 for almost a year on my daily laptop. I'd use CentOS on my current computer, but it was nearly impossible to get CentOS to work on my Dell XPS 2016, so I'm using Fedora right now.

Alternatively, if you like Mac OS X, you can use that to learn the bash shell and scripting (tho OS X administration is very different from Linux administration). Once the MacBook Pro Retina refresh happens, I'll most likely grab a 13" MBPR.

varelg

DoubleNNs wrote: »

... Once the MacBook Pro Retina refresh happens, I'll most likely grab a 13" MBPR.

Dual core and smaller screen... I am looking to switch to MBPR too, though. Part for work (some new customers rely on Mac, maybe will have to support them) part for Parallels (Linux apps show along native Mac apps) and bash prompt just looks so awesome on Retina...

ITSpectre

DoubleNNs wrote: »

You could always put Linux on your main computer
I ran CentOS 7 for almost a year on my daily laptop. I'd use CentOS on my current computer, but it was nearly impossible to get CentOS to work on my Dell XPS 2016, so I'm using Fedora right now.

Alternatively, if you like Mac OS X, you can use that to learn the bash shell and scripting (tho OS X administration is very different from Linux administration). Once the MacBook Pro Retina refresh happens, I'll most likely grab a 13" MBPR.

Trust me I want to do this.... BUT Im a gamer and I have steam games... So I would loose the ability to play my games on the weekends. I have it running in vmware player but Im just looking for a cheap laptop to put it on so when im at work and have downtime I can be running commands.

ITSpectre

DoubleNNs wrote: »

You could always put Linux on your main computer
I ran CentOS 7 for almost a year on my daily laptop. I'd use CentOS on my current computer, but it was nearly impossible to get CentOS to work on my Dell XPS 2016, so I'm using Fedora right now.

Alternatively, if you like Mac OS X, you can use that to learn the bash shell and scripting (tho OS X administration is very different from Linux administration). Once the MacBook Pro Retina refresh happens, I'll most likely grab a 13" MBPR.

So i tried booting CentOS from a USB and that was a no go... so today after work im getting a small screwdriver and im taking the HD out and reformatting the drive and putting centOS on it... and that should do the trick.