Episode: 2523 Title: HPR2523: Run Linux on a Windows Box Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2523/hpr2523.mp3 Transcribed: 2025-10-19 04:45:08 --- This is HPR Episode 2523 entitled Run Linux on a Windows Box. It is hosted by KWP and is about 13 minutes long and carries an explicit flag. The summary is HP Streambook with Windows 10. This episode of HPR is brought to you by archive.org. Support universal access to all knowledge by heading over to archive.org forward slash donate. Support universal access to all knowledge by heading over to archive.org. Support universal access to all knowledge by heading over to archive.org. Support universal access to all knowledge by heading over to archive.org. Support universal access to all knowledge by heading over to archive.org. Support universal access to all knowledge by heading over to archive.org. Good day. My name is JWP and I'm going to do a hacker public radio thing about my HP Streambook and its other failure with Linux and having to go get a Windows 10 license. And how that felt and what that was about. And then I want to talk about the Microsoft Store and installing Debian on the Microsoft Store. So a couple of years ago in a pawn shop in Corpus Christi I found a HP Streambook that was given the blue screen of death and I knew exactly what it was. It was the person that had the box before. Pondit didn't come back for it and it didn't have a power supply or anything like that. And so I think I got it for like 90 bucks because it was it was broke. And then I put men on it and it worked for a very long time with men on it with no problem at all. And then I upgraded and I could never get the Windows driver to work. I tried four or five different distributions. I tried going to the real tech. Get thing and recompound in the module every time and you know eventually it just got to be such a pain in the butt that it wasn't a pleasure to use this thing anymore. And I was using an ethernet cable doggle a lot. And so I said well let's think about this what it was what it is that I need this thing for. And what it basically is is that it connects other things and it plays media. Okay. And so I said well let's see. So I had to because I do iTunes I had to have a Windows 10 box and it's a really old box. I've had it for a long time and it runs Windows 10 and iTunes and that's all the thing does and it stays off most of the time. But I felt that since I've had an Apple account since a pretty much the very beginning of the iPod revolution that I should you know have a copy of all of my things from Apple. So it was there and I had to redo the box and it didn't like my Windows license and I had I forget where I got I think I got the license from work. And so I said okay well I'll buy the bullet and I'll go buy the 99 orals for the Windows 10 home. And what I didn't know was that when you register the Microsoft key for 99 bucks and you buy it in the EU in particularly Germany that you yourself are entitled to use that license at any time on any box as long as it's not multiple boxes connected at the same time. And so I said okay well so I got the copy of Windows on stick I took mint off put Windows 10 on installed all of my sync things so the Google the Dropbox so this was basically to keep all of my little content together. Yes I mean it's only got a 32 gigabyte internal and I put a 128 gigabyte micro SD card in it so it does keep some things there. But overall the Windows 10 experience so far has been pretty good I have to wait a little bit when I turn it on because it does all the syncing and the malware thing and all that neat stuff so that happens. But I didn't have any trouble with the license and I was pretty bummed that I couldn't do Linux anymore and so I tried to see why gin run Windows run Linux and Windows and I could never get the repo to download everything correctly. But interestingly I went to I heard on a podcast that you could get Davien in a Microsoft store so I clicked on the Windows 10 icon on this HP stream and I went to the Windows store and I typed Linux and there was a bunch of Linux stuff in there and so I wanted the Davien can do Linux and it was a 79 megabyte download in the store. And then it's not switched I'm going to click the launch and see what it does and let's see the it says the WS optional is not enabled please enable it and try again press any key to continue don't know what that is so I have to enable the WSL component pause. So we're back now so what I had to do was there's this thing called Windows PowerShell and it's installed on the computer and by the way it's copy and paste function it's a real pain in the butt but the so I had to get this Windows PowerShell and of course Ubuntu already has on ask Ubuntu exactly how to enable this WSL feature in Windows. So what it is is you have to open this power shell and then you have to copy the command that's on ask Ubuntu about enable and you have to run it as administrator so I had to figure out how to do that so what you do is you press the Windows key you find the power shell and the application section you right click on the power on the power shell thing and run as administrator ask you if you really want to do it you click it. You again figure out how to paste the simple text from ask Ubuntu into the tool I had to use the notepad and then put it into notepad and then right click because it didn't want to do it directly from the edge browser. So then of course it needed a reboot so I've never really redone an audacity project before but it seems to work really fine so we're learning many many things doing this and so I click the install and it says this may take a few minutes and now it wants a Linux user name. So I type my my Linux user name and it I typed it in I press enter I'm waiting for it to. It says please create a UNIX user account the user name does not need to match a Windows user name okay and that wants a password and retops a password. And password update successfully. Oh okay so so it's got my machine name and now I have a thing on it and let's see if out of the box I can SSH so SSH my user name at sdf.loamstarr.org SSH not so I have to pseudo apt get install SSH. So let's see let's see if that'll get it in and again the debut and just comes as a Windows app. So let's paste control V and it doesn't like that okay yeah and so we have to do pseudo in front of that and I'm sorry I'm not going to do that. And so we have to do pseudo in front of that and I'm unable to locate package open SSH client. So I guess I got to do some more reading about how to install wait okay so maybe I should do pseudo apt get update first. Yeah okay so it's pseudo apt get update is it goes through the stretch release so it says debut.org and then it's stress stretch release and it's going through the normal looks like normal normal Linux I should have thought of to do the update update and upgrade immediately I just thought it would be there at our box. So it appears that in the moment that nothing really is there that you get something that has apt in it and let's see so does it have SSH no it doesn't have SSH so that would be the first thing that I would want. So let's let's try that pseudo asset and sure enough it works like a champ and it's 10.7 megabytes so now I have a fully working console without using any virtualization technology. So no hyper V, no big space, no anything at all and I've got a full debut and stretch SSH client and I'm sure I can do EMAX and VI and nano and I can run my current Linux console life to perfection. I would guess in this as and I would assume that it's only as a client I can't do it as a as a like set up a server but I could check and see that I'm not going to mess around and mess this up it seems to be really one thing that I will do notice is that is that it seems to be running a little a little slower than it would natively than it would natively on there but it's installing it seemed to be doing quite well okay so it's done so now we can go back to the original original command which was SSH to SDF.longstar.org you get your free shell account there and let's see I did that and I'm waiting and will it let me Yes please save the fingerprint and password okay so I'm in I'm in and I really like that SDF.org because it lets you let's start our org because it lets you have that old Alpine mail mail server mail account thing mail client like nano you can't do very much else there and they do do some free democracy SSH tunneling so like if you live in a place that's going to repress you like China or something SDF will let you SSH to them and point your browser through there so you can read whatever news you want or Facebook or Twitter without government interference all right hey I hope you like this it was a little strange because I sort of did it on the fly I didn't have notes or anything but I'll try to I hope that it was helpful so you can it my debut Linux install is text only and it looks it looks everything like I would get from Raspbian on a pie on a pie that I carry in my work briefcase all right hey take care be safe and if you need anything drop me a note at jdvp5 at hotmail.com thank you so much bye bye you've been listening to hecka public radio at hecka public radio dot org we are a community podcast network that releases shows every weekday Monday through Friday today show like all our shows was contributed by an HBR listener like yourself if you ever thought of recording a podcast then click on our contribute to find out how easy it is hecka public radio was founded by the digital dog pound and the infonomican computer club and it's part of the binary revolution at binrev.com if you have comments on today's show please email the host directly leave a comment on the website or record a follow-up episode yourself unless otherwise stated today's show is released on the creative comments attribution share a light 3.0 license