How to install Ubuntu-6.10 on a system with a DG965WH motherboard I am assuming that you want to install a 64-bit version of Ubuntu, since all the interesting processors supported by this motherboard are 64-bit. You will need: Some patience A USB stick of at least 1GB Access to another Linux machine Access to a Net connection USB2 ports on all the machines, or a good book. Some more patience On the Net-connected machine: Download http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/m/mbr/mbr_1.1.9.orig.tar.gz and http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/boot/syslinux/syslinux-3.31.tar.gz and http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/edgy/main/installer-amd64/current/images/hd-media/initrd.gz and http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/edgy/main/installer-amd64/current/images/hd-media/vmlinuz and http://releases.ubuntu.com/edgy/ubuntu-6.10-alternate-amd64.iso Create a file called syslinux.cfg containing the two lines default vmlinuz append initrd=initrd.gz ramdisk_size=12000 root=/dev/ram rw So, that's six files. Transfer them onto the Linux machine by whatever means you wish; carrying them from a Net-connected machine on the USB stick is probably the worst method that works. On the Linux machine: put the six files down somewhere convenient Ensure that nasm and bin86 are both installed (on SuSE, these are called bin86-0.16.0-187.i586.rpm and nasm-0.98.39-3.i586.rpm) Compile the utilities: tar zxvf mbr_1.1.9.orig.tar.gz cd mbr_1.1.9 ./configure make cd .. tar zxvf syslinux-3.31.tar.gz cd syslinux-3.31 make Put the USB stick in. [assume your USB stick appears as /dev/sda; be careful with this bit] fdisk /dev/sda Use 'd' to delete all the partitions; 'n' 'p' '1' to create a new primary partition; 't' 'e' to make it a DOS partition; 'a' '1' to make it bootable; 'w' to write out the partition table mkfs.vfat /dev/sda1 mbr_1.1.9/install-mbr /dev/sda syslinux-3.31/unix/syslinux /dev/sda1 mkdir usbstick mount /dev/sda1 usbstick cp initrd.gz vmlinuz ubuntu-6.10-alternate-amd64.iso syslinux.cfg usbstick umount usbstick Take the USB stick out. Note that during this procedure, if your Net-connected machine and your Linux machine aren't the same machine, you've copied the 700MB file onto the stick twice and off the stick once; if at any time you weren't using a USB2 port, that copy would have taken twenty minutes. I hope you enjoyed the book. On the DG965WH machine: Turn it on and press f2 to get into the BIOS; go to the 'Boot' menu, and set 'Boot USB Devices First' to 'Enable' 'USB Mass Storage Emulation Type' to 'All Fixed Disc' f10, 'y' to save settings. Turn it off, insert the USB stick, turn it on again. Select your language and keyboard setting from the Debian installer. Press alt-f2, ; type the following two lines mkdir -p /dev/loop ln /dev/loop0 /dev/loop/0 and press alt-f1; this gets around a bug in the installer that means it can't mount disc images.