I have recently turned on to BioLinux 6, and I run it daily on one machine with an Intel Core i5 processor. I have been interested to install BL6 on an older Pentium 4 machine. First, understand that I've been successful installing Ubuntu Linux 10.10 on this older machine, so I'm fairly confident that the processor is able to do the trick. The trouble comes when I insert the disk for BL6, I repeatedly get the error "x86 is expected, but found only i686 processor. Find a kernel appropriate for your processor." OK, so I found alternative means to boot with BL6, only to be foiled again: the machine is old enough that I have no option to boot from a USB key, though options for onboard NIC and cardbus NIC are present (I don't understand what boot options these represent). So I can't use the USB boot option (or at least my understanding of this jargon is poor enough that I'd profit from a bit of explanation if booting from the USB key is possible somehow).<br>
So, I considered this conundrum a bit, and concluded that I'd prefer to put an archival copy of BioLinux 5 on the machine, then choose from the options from the GRUB menu. Here is where it gets really interesting. So I download and burn the DVD-ROM, then insert and attempt to boot. I went into the BIOS and specified the boot order (verified numerous times), only to realize that the machine now refuses to boot from the DVD-ROM!! I don't get it. It boots straight from the hard disk copy of ubuntu 10.10.<br>
I will add that during the time I've been looking at BL6, I have manually downloaded a few of the packages for BL6 from the nebc site. Among these are the welcome page with Craig Venter's Institute advertised proudly. For the booting process, I don't really know what's keeping the DVD-ROM from working properly. Could it be one or more of the packages that identify the boot process as a (BL6) updated version of what's in the boot (DVD-ROM) drive? If so, is there any way to remove the offending packages, and get the archived (BL5) version of the software on the GRUB menu?<br>
Thanks,<br>John Bradsher<br clear="all"><br>-- <br><font size="4"><span style="font-family: times new roman,serif;">John Bradsher</span></font><br><br>