Lenovo and Knoppix

[grandad]

Hi Guy's. Got a problem that has mew baffled. I have a Lenovo G580 Laptop running Windows 8. I hate windows 8 and want to get rid of it and replace it with Knoppix. Does anyone have any experience of removing win 8 from this laptop and installing Knoppix in its place? I would be very grateful to anyone able to put me on the right tracks. Regards Walt.

[gpearman]

Grandad,

I share your Win 8 concerns. Generally, a clean install involves reformatting a hard drive. Be careful there. Dual booting requires repartitioning. This can be done thru the computer managemant console. Some install packages help with that. Win 8.1 is slightly better than 8 and is a free upgrade. With use, somethings become clearer - easier. Reverting to 7 is generally free for Win * licenses. On a newer, UEFI system, some BIOS tweaking is necessary. Search for what's best for your particular system. If you have an OEM OS, there will be recovery partitions. Each manufacturer handles this differently. If you're still under warranty - watch out. If your HDD is decent size, think about dual. It really depends on what software you have and would like to keep. Some stuff runs slow in Wine or a virtual machine. My old simulators for instance. x-plane 9.71 runs well in 8.1 in compatiblilty mode. Knoppix shines as a live system and it's really looking good on my old laptop from a USB stick. Fast and neat. Its got persistance so user state and data go where you go, as long as you can mainpulate a machine to boot USB. I'm still solving issues w/ a wireless keyboard and the USB boot on an Acer Win 8.1 tower. Boots from disc fine. I'm on it now. I've just torrented CAELinux(ubuntu based and really cool) and put it on DVD. It will soon have a place of its own. Fedora is also nice and very fuctional. What ever you do, back your stuff up first; just in case. If this is your first time, more study is required. Take notes.

In this house:
Win 98
XP Home, Media Edition and Pro
Win 7 Ultimate
Windows 8.1 Pro
Fedora 20 'Heisenbug'
Knoppix 7.2
CAELinux 2011
Android
6 machines
This is why I'm crazy.