Hi,
I was talking to Dale about my issues with finding and installing the right distro on my old HP laptop.
Here is what I wrote:
“I am trying to install a small distro Linux (Puppy, Slax or AntiX - my favourite) on a HP Pavilion X2, 10.1”, with no CD but with one USB slot. Antix works from a VirtualMachine but it won’t boot and install itself and I get some sort of messages (one file missing). I disabled some security on BIOS and disabled BitLocker. Any help/ advice will be much appreciated."
Since then, I tried Sparky Linux and that one worked as a spark, except the touchpad. The keyboard worked perfect and the touchpad - not at all.
Also, I tried Slax, LXLE, Solus, Xenial PUP - none worked - no booting.
So, at the moment, I like Antix (but no wifi connection to it) and Sparky (but no touchpad) - in the order of preferences.
Hey @Rhino!
Does your HP have an ethernet port for you to connect it to the router? If yes, then we can try to locate the driver for your AntiX Linux. Though I haven’t tested its non-SystemD part.
If you’re able to install AntiX with wired network, please open up a terminal and send me the output of the following terminal command:
lspci
So that I can see if it detects the hardware chip for your WiFi and try to locate the necessary firmware and driver for it. I have an HP that has issues on its WiFi, but a driver is available. So, there’s a good chance we can solve this.
Thanks for your answer. This is a 2 in 1 laptop (tablet with an attached keyboard), and no ports except 1 x USB port and a micro HDMI. So, there is no wired network.
When I tried Sparky Linux, I had wifi but the touchpad didn’t work. So, if I didn’t have the touchscreen, I wouldn’t be able to do anything. I’m happy with any of them working properly. Just getting out of Windows.
I tried again antix-19.4, in the hope that it might work. This time the wifi wasn’t there to connect to and also the touchpad didn’t work.
I attached a screenshot.
I am not surprised about the fact that they don’t work. From the command you posted, it basically doesn’t recognize most of your hardware. I’ll need to “sacrifice” one of my systems to see how antiX works.
I managed to fully install Sparky a few times and it is working almost like a dream: 39 seconds from off to full on. Touchpad is working, except the 2 finger scroll, which I’ll have to look into it.
I don’t know why antiX didn’t work and this one does but I’m happy with Sparky.
Almost all the apps that I wanted are installed and it’s quite user friendly.
Thanks Vasileios
