Okay, I have a Lenovo ThinkPad E540. I want to load a Linux program. I want a dual-boot. I have very little knowledge in how to go about this. I have no CD/DVD burner, but have a 15GB USB. I had Ubuntu load once, but it said the spooler was missing. Then my CPU was running at almost 100%. I formatted it off. I want to get Linux to work as a dual-boot.
Also, I know how to partition off the drive and format it. The problem is that there is only NTFS, exFAT and exFAT32 available and Linux needs ext2, ext3, or ext4 format. What do I do? How do I get Linux on here? Do I need to mount it somewhere? Do I need to reconfigure the BIOS? or should I just leave this one alone? Help please. Thank you to those who help me as much as possible!

P.S. If there is a better Linux distro to use on a system, please let me know. The purpose of getting Linux is to use command line interface (CLI) and not so much a GUI.

Check the site below which shows the minimum hardware requirements to run Ubuntu and compare it to your hardware. If your computer is capable of booting from a usb, you can download the Ubuntu iso and then download unetbootin or pendrivelinux and use either to create a bootable usb drive. You will then need to enter the BIOS setup and configure it to boot from the usb.

You need free or unallocated space on the drive on which to install Ubuntu or whichever Linux you choose. You don't need to create partitions beforehand although you can. Since you can't format from windows you might as well do it during the install.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/In...emRequirements

Depends. Compare the hardware requirements to your hardware. You can check the site below for general information on hundreds of Linux distributions.

http://distrowatch.com/

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Assuming that this model is pre uefi, then it should be fairly straight forward. Creating a bootable usb drive can be a pain though.
If you have (or can borrow) an external usb cd/dvd drive you can boot and install from that using a cd/dvd also burnt from that device.
If you install either Ubuntu, or Mint, the installer will try to shrink the partition on which Windows is installed; Debian will look for free space/unallocated space.
Also I would defragment the Windows install using its own tools before any shrinking, assuming that there is not already any unallocated space, ie space on the drive that has no partition on it.

Fred.

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