TR Forums

.

From a Windows box you can use the "Universal USB Installer" or "unetbootin" tools to create a bootable USB stick from a Linux ISO.

unetbootin should work. Is it possible to just take the iso and direct-write it straight to the USB stick? (dd command under Linux, but I'm guessing there's an alternative in Windows). This is how Arch works since you can burn the iso to a disk or just dump it onto a USB stick directly.

Assuming you're using Windows to download the ISO to your hard drive, and run the app to setup the USB drive, you can use Win32 Disk Imager from: https://launchpad.net/win32-image-writer/+download

Disk Imager will read the ISO from your drive (you'll have to point the app to where it's located) and xfer it to your USB flash drive and make it bootable. You may want to open My Computer and confirm the drive letter of your USB flash drive, so that you don't erase your hard drive posting.php?mode=edit&f=30&p=1141319#

Already used it to install Linux Mint to a partition on an SSD on an HP Phenom II laptop and installed Ubuntu on an Intel Core2Duo desktop and a Phenom II x6 Desktop (SSD), no issues just about a week ago.

My install's were a bit more complicated than yours, as the laptop has an SSD partitioned as 2 drives, and a 640GB SATA HD as the second drive. The Phenom II X6 desktop has an SSD partitioned as 2 drives, a 640GB SATA HD and a 1.5TB SATA HD. Both computers' primary partitions on the first drives (SSD's) are running Windows 7. Linux was installed on both SSD's 2nd free partition.

I am using BootIt BareMetal (by Terabyte Unlimited) to handle boot options on all 3 PC's. But the Linux bootloader that is installed does install a boot menu which autodetects your Windows installation as long as you don't wipe it out by accident (by making wrong choices, usually) during the install.

The Core2Duo has 2HD's, but the 1st HD was split in 2 (Win7 on 1st partition) and Ubuntu installed on the 2nd partition.

You shouldn't have any problems. You may want to designate a "/" (root) partition (for the OS), a swap partition, and perhaps a /home partition to store your data and app settings. But if the drive is bare, or you are willing to delete everything on it, a default install should be almost trivial, just choose the option to use the entire drive at the beginning of the installation. I never actually saw that option since Win7 was already installed on all 3 PC's, and I had to customize the install choosing option 3, "Something Else" instead of Install Ubuntu alongside Windows 7 and the Replace Windows 7 with Ubuntu options.

I had no issues with sound, graphics, and video card detection on any of my installs.

Linux treated the SSD's just like regular drives.

Have fun!

.