Install 22.04 on old (2014) laptop?

[Qqmike]

I located all the info! YouTube how-to + SSD specs/vendors. I'll think on this ...

[Qqmike]

Like this one, right? Actually, even 250 GB would do the trick for my user; in fact, more than enough.
https://www.crucial.com/ssd/mx500/ct...sd1/ct11178905

Just 10 #0 screws. I think I'll feel better if I first make sure I can open the case (maybe tomorrow). Never been opened, may take some prying with a small flat piece of metal or plastic card.

[GreyGeek]

I've been using that exact SSD for my main drive for two years. Here's the data on my installation:
btrfs fi usage /
Overall:
Device size: 463.51GiB
Device allocated: 163.07GiB
Device unallocated: 300.44GiB
Device missing: 0.00B
Used: 161.44GiB
Free (estimated): 301.13GiB (min: 150.91GiB)
Free (statfs, df): 301.13GiB
Data ratio: 1.00
Metadata ratio: 2.00
Global reserve: 287.16MiB (used: 0.00B)
Multiple profiles: no

Data,single: Size:159.01GiB, Used:158.32GiB (99.57%)
/dev/sda3 159.01GiB

Metadata,DUP: Size:2.00GiB, Used:1.56GiB (77.88%)
/dev/sda3 4.00GiB

System,DUP: Size:32.00MiB, Used:48.00KiB (0.15%)
/dev/sda3 64.00MiB

Unallocated:
/dev/sda3 300.44GiB


root@jerry-hplaptop17cn1xxx:/# mount /dev/disk/by-uuid/ad119c3b-1ebe-4ddf-b0c6-5e4f6b6f5f18 /mnt
root@jerry-hplaptop17cn1xxx:/# vdir /mnt
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 288 Mar 8 13:32 @
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 156 Mar 11 18:24 snapshots

root@jerry-hplaptop17cn1xxx:/# vdir /mnt/snapshots/
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 288 Mar 8 13:32 @202303081655
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 288 Mar 8 13:32 @202303082054
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 288 Mar 8 13:32 @202303092035
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 288 Mar 8 13:32 @202303101758
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 288 Mar 8 13:32 @202303111705
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 288 Mar 8 13:32 @202303111824


As you can see I'm using only 163GB of SSD space.
S.M.A.R.T says
"weak sectors were not found. The health is determined by SSD specific S.M.A.R.T. attribute(s): Soapbox Wear Leveling Count

No actions needed."
It says my POWER ON TIME is 653 days and I've written 3.3 TB of data. It also says I have 1000 days left, but that's a guess based on wear leveling.
For me the drive has been faultless.

[Schwarzer Kater]

The Crucial MX500 will be worth it. And this is the right type of SATA SSD.

[…] may take some prying with a small flat piece of metal or plastic card.

Don't use metal but plastic!

[Qqmike]

👍right

[Qqmike]

OK, so I ordered the Crucial 500 GB SSD ($45). It will arrive within a week. I did test to see that I could open the laptop case, no problems, just gotta be careful and patient popping it off and keeping the small screws. We'll see how this goes. Then to install 22.04. Many thanks. (I DID use a cheater -- very small, thin, flat metal screw driver to get it started on the hinge side! ha-ha ... also used a high-intensity flashlight to see exactly what was up, so as to be extra careful.)

[Qqmike]

I can't find where we were all discussing this, but it's relevant here, so I'll post a note here while waiting for the SSD to arrive from Crucial.

Many of you, notably claydoh, have suggested using Etcher to make bootable USBs. I just did that to make a live GParted USB and am here to report how slick Etcher works. Almost too slick, like magic. (And I did test the live gparted stick to ensure it boots by UEFI without issue.)

(Btw, The GParted website says you can simply use dd on the gparted AMD64 (Debian-based)iso image, BUT the resulting USB will only boot by Legacy MBR/BIOS, not by UEFI.)

[claydoh]

The Gparted website says you can simply use dd on the gparted AMD64 (Debian-based)iso image, BUT the resulting USB will only boot by Legacy MBR/BIOS, not by UEFI

The structure or formatting for the contents of an 'iso' image can differ. Each distro can use wildly different things for this, so what is appropriate for this GParted image may not be relevant to any other OS image.
While I do like Etcher, I mostly use dd to create USB sticks for EFI installs (that's all I have/use, outside of my Arm stuff), unless directed specifically not to (such as the GParted Live image).

If they ever drop the need for optical drive (ISO) support for installers, one could almost literally just copy the contents of a directory to an external drive with the correct directory structure, and is fat32 (required for the EFi part, which means under4Gb size iirc), and it would boot on an EFI system,
https://askubuntu.com/questions/3958...usb-live-media
This is a method used for creating a USB as seen on the GParted pages
https://gparted.org/liveusb.php#linux-method-b
(the instructions are overly involved, as they are meant for the command line user, but pointy-clicky methods work the same, and some steps can be skipped, as seen in the directions.
A small USB stick very well could already be Fat32 and GPT right out of the packaging, for example.

Too many steps to do this for an Ubuntu ISO, when dd is a single short command, or using an app.
Plus verifying an iso download is probably a much simpler process, iirc

[kc1di]

Let us know what you choose. 22.04 or 20.4 I think your laptop would work well with either one.

[Qqmike]

kc1di, I posted the results below, my time 3/19/23. 22.04 seems to be OK on that laptop!

[Qqmike]

I'm going to try 22.04; I have the live USB ready to go; of course, I also have an old 20.04 USB that I've used before. Still waiting on the SSD for the laptop.

[Qqmike]

claydoh, post Help the New Guy

I tried Method B Manual. But no-go. Everything was looking OK as I followed the steps.
The zip file is Stable directory (.iso/.zip), (for i686, i686-pae and amd64 architectures)
Running sudo bash makeboot.sh /dev/sdb1 looked OK -- it returned with a message that for GPT there is no need to run that command; all that is necessary is to make the USB FAT32 partition with the boot flag. I thought I set the boot flag using KDE Partition Manager. I checked this and found it was set (under Properties, boot). I tried to check it also in gparted, but I got all sorts of errors, can't read the file system, need mtools (which I do have), etc.
Anyway, I did try to boot from the live USB so created and did get a UEFI USB boot option in my ASUS UEFI-BIOS boot menu. I tried to boot it but got a grub prompt, then I TABed, got some command choices, but nothing I recognized. Finally had to hard-restart the PC.
Just FYI.

[Qqmike]

Re Post #25
I rechecked my work and tried again. Made sure I had a GPT and /dev/sdb1 FAT32 was set with the boot flag (and so is ef00 = ESP). It would not re-boot into the live USB, even though it appeared in the Boot Override menu of the UEFI-BIO (which I selected as an option). The PC re-booted into Kubuntu, ignoring the Boot Override option I selected.

[Qqmike]

Installed 22.04 in the (old) 2014 ASUS laptop: Done deal. ✔

(laptop specs are in Post 1)
(I changed the title of this thread; before is was, I think, "What would you do?")

Kubuntu 22.04 seems to run on the laptop OK.


Notes, comments, points of nervousness:

-- Backed up everything (just the user data from Kubuntu 18.04; no config files) on a thumb drive.

-- Prepared the laptop:

> BIOS update: why not?

(I did read the details at ASUS ...) Got it from the ASUS website, used the ASUS EZ Flash Utility -->
(unzip the ASUS download, grab the BIOS file, copy to a FAT32 USB drive, keep the USB plugged in, reboot the laptop, access BIOS, Advanced menu, select the EZ Flash option which then will copy the BIOS from your thumb drive to the firmware and then re-boot the machine)

> Installed the new SSD into the laptop, replacing the older stock HDD.

SSD: Crucial MX500 500GB 3D NAND SATA 2.5-inch 7mm (with 9.5mm adapter) Internal SSD; CT500MX500SSD1; Configuration ID: CT11178905

> Installed new CMOS battery, CR2032 3V (why not?)


-- Partitioning:

TRIED to use GParted live USB to make a GPT and format it: No go! Wouldn't boot, ASUS BIOS didn't even see it.

I am so frustrated with GParted live these days -- back in 2017 I never had the slightest issue making or using a GParted live thumb drive. This GParted live USB does work on my desktop PC, a newer machine with ASUS board (2021).

But then ...

So, I booted into the Live Kubuntu USB installer, ran Install, selected Manual partitioning, and got cold feet during the partitioning because of some reason I can't recall at the moment, backed out of the installation ...
In the live Kubuntu session opened KDE Partition Manager, and used it to make the GPT and partitions with labels etc.: sda1 = ESP; sda2 = root /; sda3 = /home; sda4 = swap.
Then I ran the Install Kubuntu program, selected Manual, selected everything: standard apps, updates, 3rd party.
Installed with no problems, fairly quickly, too.

Comments, question

Question: BIOS Time is UTC?

The laptop BIOS time was 19:09:00. My time (Mountain) was (approx.) 1:09 (or 13:09 military time) => +6 hours difference => looks like BIOS runs on UTC (GMT) time?
Is that how you guys see it, too? Although, some BIOSes may run on local time, too, I presume.

ASUS UEFI-BIOS

I really like ASUS motherboards and UEFI-BIOS when I build my own system. But this laptop came with Windows (2014), and the BIOS is totally dumbed down:
> Totally focused (mainly) on Windows OS.
> Secure Boot is set automatically with no apparent way to disable it.
> The UEFI-BIOS did not recognize the bootable GParted live USB.
> Generally, there are very few user settings.


Discover updates offered UEFI_dbx update

We have discussed this in another thread recently:
https://www.kubuntuforums.net/forum/...cabinet-format

The laptop is on version 77, the latest version is 217.
But, the laptop is too old to receive such updates, which I do not consider to be a problem in this user-case; see here:

sudo fwupdmgr get-devices
WARNING: UEFI capsule updates not available or enabled in firmware setup
See [URL]https://github.com/fwupd/fwupd/wiki/PluginFlag:capsules-unsupported[/URL] for more information.

UEFI dbx:
Device ID: 362301da643102b9f38477387e2193e57abaa590
Summary: UEFI revocation database
[B]Current version: 77 [/B]
Minimum Version: 77
Vendor: UEFI:Linux Foundation

The link explains:

PluginFlag:capsules unsupported
LinuxOnTheDesktop edited this page · 4 revisions

At startup fwupd checks to see if the UEFI UpdateCapsule interface is available. If this is detected, a message is shown with a link to this page.

The WARNING: UEFI capsule updates not available or enabled will show if you are running on a system with no detected entries in the ESRT ACPI table. This is most commonly because the system is correctly running in UEFI mode in the system firmware setup, but "Capsule Updates" has been turned off. This may have been the default setting from the hardware vendor, or may have been done by your systems administrator. Most typically entering the firmware setup screen and enabling capsule updates will cause this warning to disappear, and also make firmware updates possible. The relevant option may be poorly labelled, for example "allow Windows UEFI updates".

This warning can be ignored if UEFI firmware updates are not desired. It can be disabled by adding DisabledPlugins=test;invalid;uefi to /etc/fwupd/daemon.conf or recompiling the daemon without UEFI support.

Some older hardware (usually hardware produced before 2015) does not support the ACPI ESRT table. It is possible, but unlikely, that flashing the latest vendor BIOS, using either Windows or a LiveCD, will add support for this table.

Conclusion

So thanks for all the help & tips and for pushing me into breaking open the laptop case to install an SSD in this older machine.
AFAIK, 22.04 runs good on the laptop. I'm not sure it will get a full "test" because the user-case is very basic: email, docs & pics, Firefox, photos, etc.

[claydoh]

I'm not sure it will get a full "test" because the user-case is very basic: email, docs & pics, Firefox, photos, etc.

And in that you re-used something that might have been discarded, and instead will get good use (and experience!) with.

[Qqmike]

Yep. Should be good for another 3 years, at least, maybe longer with another Kubuntu upgrade.

[jlittle]

Thank you for your detailed... story. IMO it's likely it will help someone.

I am so frustrated with GParted live these days ... The UEFI-BIOS did not recognize the bootable GParted live USB.
So KDE Partition Manager... [for the win]

KDE Partition Manager used to not do some tasks that gparted could, but the gap has lessened. I much prefer it, because it honours my theme.

Question: BIOS Time is UTC?

Linux system time is UTC, so by default it sets the mobo clock to that. Windows by default sets it to local time, by default. Both these days can work with either, IIRC.