formating linux hard drive on dell mini 9 with Ubuntu 8

Anyone know how to format/erase a hard drive from a linux system?  I want to give away or recycle my old dell mini but need to wipe the drive clean before I do that.  Boot and Nuke didn't work from the new optical drive I used.  It began but then gave me an error message about the optical drive.  Maybe the mini's bios is too old for the optical drive.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.