I started working on installing Fedora on the laptop I got from Danika's mom. Let's just say it has been interesting. I spent a fair amount of time creating a bootable USB key that has the full install image. It hadn't occurred to me to check if the laptop actually supported booting from USB before spending the time getting a key set up. Well, I got the key setup, booted into the BIOS to select "boot from USB", and guess what? No "boot from USB" option. There are several options, most having to do with docking station components, but nothing USB related. I checked the version of the BIOS and there had been several updates, so I got the latest BIOS and installed it thinking USB may be an option, but no luck.
Since that laptop has none of the components to do a "disk" type install, I figured I would just set it up to do a diskless/network install (pxe, boot from the NIC). I had setup up diskless installs a few times before and took good enough notes the last time, that it was pretty quick to set everything up and start the install. At that point it was getting late, so I went to bed and figured I would check the install in the morning. Well, this morning I checked and the install appears to have completed... but, it looks like there are issues with the hard drive. Smart reported some problems, so the next thing I am going to do is run bad blocks on it, and then start looking for a new hard drive.
