Linux and Peanuts

You see, I had this crazy idea of installing an OS on the MP3 player. So that the next time I go to the computer lab, I can just plug in the player and voila! I have all my works with me! Now, this is portability.

So, is it possible to run an OS from the MP3 player?

Only one way to find out. This called for an experiment.

Firstly, the experiment subjects.

MP3 player: Creative Zen Vision: M, with 8GB partitioned
Operating System: Ubuntu/Linux 7.04

A note for the not-so-enlightened: I know it sounds "Maorish" but Ubuntu isn't KOJA's long-lost sibling. In fact, the word is of African origin, meaning "humanity to others". It's a Linux distribution based on Debian. Okay, that's all I can tell you; because like most of the rest of the world, I've been using solely Windows and even the mere task of pronouncing "Linux" is an incredible tongue twister to me.

But, I digressed.

Anyway, quite to my expectation, the installation did work.

Now, the moment of truth: to see if it is possible to boot from the MP3 player.

If the installation took "almost an eternity", the startup took "an eternity"; I had to give up half-way before the player decided to explode due to overheating. And so, the experiment ended without a result.

Nah, big deal. As if I didn't see that coming.

But, things started getting worse after that. What I really didn't see coming was that I messed up the boot loader. For some reason, I could no longer boot the computer without connecting the player.

Shucks, that's ridiculous! I'm screwed...

Then, I started my feeble attempts to fix the computer.

The first attempt was to revert the to out-of-the-box settings but that failed because I couldn't call up Disk Recovery.

The second attempt was to format the disk and install a fresh copy; that should've worked but the problem is, the laptop doesn't come with an installation disk. Everything necessary for installation is backed up in hard disk partitions called HDDRECOVERY and DATA; as if those people from Toshiba didn't anticipate something stupid like this to happen.

The third attempt was to use the installation disk borrowed from J. In fact, that was the only thing that worked so far but I couldn't satisfy myself with an illegal copy of Windows, which was why I eventually decided to go ahead with installing Ubuntu instead. That took another few tries. And by the n-th try, I've effectively wiped out HDDRECOVERY; by the (n+1)-th try, I went, "What the heck!" and decided to wipe out DATA as well.

Hah, now no turning back. I'm stuck with Linux!

...Which was rather a bad idea for someone who can't tell apart Linux from peanuts: I have to start from scratch. Sigh.

Peanuts, anyone?