1.5. How to install Linux ?

In this section we are going to discuss how to install Linux, if you just want to know what is Linux yourself and have no clue on computer related topics maybe you should try Live-CD Linux distribution (eg. Knoppix or MEPIS) first (provided that you have a recent computer with alot of RAM) which needs no experience just put the CD and boot (restart your computer)!! or check for nearest Linux User Group (LUG) for shows. Installing whatever any operating system involves partitioning, formating, device configuration, ...etc, although some Linux distributions make it easy to install Linux without knowing what those concepts mean. If someone pass a more than 1 year old Linux distribution to you, you had better not judge Linux from it, Linux develop very fast.

Section quotes:

• "If I have trouble installing Linux, something is wrong. Very wrong."
      -- Linus Torvalds
• "Hope this helps some, sorry for not being able to do a brain dump."
      -- Mike Stump helping a clueless user on the gcc mailing list
• "In theory, practice and theory are the same, but in practice they are different."
      -- Larry McVoy
• "Many receive advice, few profit by it."
      -- Publilius Syrus

Section contents:

• 1.5.1. Introduction.
• 1.5.2. Planing.
• 1.5.3. General installation procedure.
• 1.5.4. Installing Mandrake.
• 1.5.5. Installing Red Hat.
• 1.5.6. Installing Debian.
• 1.5.7. Installing Slackware.
• 1.5.8. Dark corners.

1.5.1. Introduction.

I have rewritten this section again! Many new Linux users face difficulties with Installing Linux for the first time, usually they erase their hard drive completely,they lost important data. This section has been rewritten to split each distribution in subsection but first I talk about a generic procedure and at last I put the special cases and work around. Don't read only your own distribution, first you should read them all, and then when it's time to do that on reality just read your own distribution.

1.5.2. Planing.

If you just want to install Linux, this is very simple put the 1st CD then reboot and select to remove every thing on the hard disk to install Linux and thetas all, but do you want that ? If you are reading this you may be installing Linux for the first time and you have another system from the past and precious data you want to keep. At our first steps to Linux world, you may want to keep your previous Windows system along with Linux, in this section we will tell you how .

Your first step is to collect information about your machine, and it's peripherals and cards ... why ? so you can answer the installation program questions just in case it fall to guess it by it's own.

You may gather information from papers that come with your computer or read what is written on the back of each piece or card, you may use some software , if you have an installed Linux or a Live-CD Linux you know how (we will learn how can Linux tells you that) if you have Windows right click on 'my computer' then select 'device manager' tab you will see a tree of the devices you have, on each one just click 'properties', you may access there from 'control panel' then 'system' that was for Windows 9x and Me. write down all that information on a piece of paper. Make sure to write your modem chipset and the serial port of it (COM1,COM2,...etc), your printer model,and don't forget the sound card and video card, remember it's not important to know the vendor (for example a 'Hercules' video card) but to know the chipset, write down how your hard disk is partitioned and the type and size of each partition, go to 'my computer' then right click then select 'properties', and notice the 'File system type' it should be FAT or NTFS if it's not written then it's FAT.

Tip

Windows uses two types of file systems FAT and NTFS the first is used in 95,98 and ME, and both in NT, 2000,2003, and XP. Linux supports FAT and NTFS but the support for NTFS is not ready yet, it's read only. so when you install Windows next time use FAT file system.

If you have no UNIX/Linux experience or you have not do any partitioning before you should install Linux when you are ready to lost all the data on the hard disk just after you backup every thing and have all your data saved on an external media. Be prepared to lost every thing, this can be after Windows is just install and you have no documents yet (or when Windows get too old and damage it's registry and it's time to reinstall it again)

Tip

The language used here is not technical, because basic concepts are not yet discussed.

if you had borrowed Linux CDs from a friend you should copy them first, so you may add more software packages later, those CDs contain thousands of them but not all of them get installed, and you may accidentally remove your old system, then how can you copy them if you don't know yet how to do that with Linux.

Tip

Installing Linux does NOT mean loosing your old system or data, that happen when you accidentally press 'OK' before reading what is written above it.

1.5.3. General installation procedure.

The installation program differ from one distribution to another, but they have many things in common they differ in appearance or in the order of the steps, get a paper and write down each message and what is your answer, write something like "I see a message 'Welcome, press ENTER to start installing' and I pressed ENTER" seems boring but this will help you very much when you ask for support in forums. To start installing Linux put the first CD and restart your computer while the CD is still on the driver, it should 'boot', you should see a message telling you that you are about to install Linux , some where you should see the name of the distribution and some other information you may like to read, specially the one saying 'by pressing ENTER you will enter wonder land of GNU/Linux world' , then message after one you are welcomed and told some legal notes like the GNU GPL agreement that gives you freedom, some mention that there are no warranty (Debian is very annoying with all that "NO WARRANTY" messages), you may get some help and some release notes (how this version differ from the preceding one) you may get on-line help by pressing F1. If you get non of those things and the machine boots your old system normally as if there is no CD, then you should change the boot priority see subsection 1.5.8. Dark corners. If things goes OK then follow those steps (need not in order) :

• Allocate a partition for Linux.
• Select software packages and user interfaces ... etc
• Setting up root user (also called superuser) password.
• Add at least one non privileged regular user.
• Set your local setting (Language,country, and time zone)
• Configure peripherals (monitor,resolution,and color depth)
• Set security level and firewall
• Select your favorite boot loader.

If you have one real physical hard drive (as most of us) but when you go to 'my computer' in Windows you will see more than one disk (C, D, E, F, ...etc) , how is that possible even though it's one hard drive ? those are called partitions of the disk, the objective of having partitions is that the operating system handle each partition as a separated disk so you can defragmenting each one, or scan each for errors to save time (only you scan or defragment the part you want), other benefit that you can have a disk larger than the file system limit by dividing it to many smaller partitions. Another benefit we care most about is that each partition could host different operating system.

What we are going to do is to remove one partition completely (and release it to be free) then we install Linux there. You could do that with the partitioning tool you like, for example in Windows, people use the dump FDISK command! or a smarter program like 'partition magic', or what ever tool you have used before. But what almost all Linux users trust the installing program.

Warning

Don't confuse between 'free space' and 'free partition', free space is on a partition, but free partition is non allocated partition.

Warning

Windows goes crazy if you install it on any disk other than 'C', for example if you install it on 'D' then you formatted 'C' then Windows on 'D' will not boot. Linux works every where so forget 'C'.

The tool in your Linux distribution installation program is aimed to remove the partition you plan to put Linux in, and then to create two partitions first is called root (main) partition (mapped to '/') with a native Linux file system like 'ext3', with a large space, since every thing is going to be installed there, and the other is called swap partition (it is not mapped) with 'swapfs' file system, it's used as a virtual memory as the RAM, it should be two times as the size of the RAM, but no more than 128MB, It's OK to have more than 128 but not required, someone was having very high performance I know that was because he has 1GB or swap space. It's OK to have lesser than double size of RAM, but that is the recommended size. some distributions makes a partition mapped to '/boot' to work around old prehistoric BIOS limitations on just accepting more than 500MB of the hard disk space, this partition contains the needed part to boot Linux on the visible part to BIOS, then Linux will handle the rest of the disk, a more recent example BIOS can't boot RAID or LVM technology. Other distributions makes a '/home' partition, if you in future want to install two Linux distributions, having common configuration for users,or having your project and documents so that they are not removed when Linux reinstalled. I myself has a '/rescue' with 20MB to make a small experimental Linux, or '/testing' with 800MB to make my own distribution or Live-CD, all this is just optional. It's easy to guess the size of the root file system('/') by first setting the size of swap as double of RAM, and allocating the rest of the free space to the root file system.

warning

What Windows called 'C' is the first visible disk to Windows even if it's the secondary slave. I have installed Linux on machines having one disk attached to the secondary IDE (secondary master) so what Windows called 'C' is '/dev/hdc1'.

Selecting packages is just your own taste, but here are a piece of advice.

• At your first trials,select as much packages as you can. What ever you do,DO NOT press 'every thing' button, this mean to install more than 2000 of packages,that may replace each other or at least do the same thing, your installation trial may fail because of a small scratch on the last CD in for example the Russian spell checker package.
• If you are using it at home you don't need any servers.
• DO NOT forget to install X11 the graphical interface with at least one of the desktop environment KDE or GNOME.
• At your first trial you may select from the general packages list, and do NOT choose 'select individual packages' this will list with more than 2000 things you never heard of.

The installing program will ask you about the root user password and will not accept less than 6 characters (letters,numbers and symbols) this password should be strong and your little son should not know it, this is the super user password that can do super things and Linux won't say no, he can add or remove packages, and even destroy the computer, having no root password every one can destroy your computer. You should add at least one non privileged regular user (a user with small privileges) with any login name, you may add many with relatively simple password you give to your sons. If you are the only one using the computer then DO NOT ever think of not making a regular user, the root password is not enough, since then you have erase every thing as playing a game. Having a user with password '123456' has much smaller bad effect, or automatic login to KDE (with Mandrake distribution).

Warning

For real work, a password as your name spelled backward,any other dictionary word(s) with numbers in between, repeated, or in sequence characters, All those are very week passwords . Strong password are made from the initials of a long statement then do a transformation on it like 'H!5,n1M.I'Mu1' see section 4.9. system administration

The installation program gives you a list of many languages, you may select more than one language, one of them will be the default language of the system (menus, messages,... etc) , and select the time zone by selecting continent and city, it may allow you to set the hardware clock on UTC/GMT (don't select that unless you know the side effects of that) or synchronize it with a time server (don't select that unless you know what that means).

While configuring hardware it's enough to say 'OK' but first you could 'test' that configuration specially when you configure the video card, to make sure that the resolution is available by both video card and monitor, you may like '800x600' but many programs like gimp (the very very long long filters menu may extend out of the screen) you should test '1024x768' first, and color depth like 32-Bit or 24-Bit (16 million color) is more than what eye can see, 16-Bit(more than 65 thousand color) seems good and fast, be aware 16-Bit not 16 color. Test large values first and if you get a segmented picture then select a lower resolution, if it fail to give you a picture at all then select a lower color depth. If you don't get a picture and it seem like the monitor is not connected at all or you get a message from the monitor itself then it's the high 'vertical refresh rate' that your monitor can't handle, decrease it, nice vertical refresh rate is about 72-75Hz but old monitors and laptop LCDs support only 60-65Hz. Recall the paper we wrote before installing and you may use the same configuration as your old system. When it's the time to configure the firewall, it's simple if you are connected to any network (including Internet) you should use firewall, at your small office or home select a medium security level, not the very high paranoid level, unless you are expert enough to handle that. But if your computer are physically insulated from networks, choose the lowest security level.

1.5.4. Installing Mandrake.

Mandrake is one of the most simple and easy to install distributions because of DrakeX. Put the first CD and restart the computer, you will see a nice graphical welcome message (figure 1), press ENTER to start installing and F1 for more options, those options is for special cases like type 'text' for text mode installation if you have less than 64MB of RAM, or 'rescue' to boot a pre-existing Linux if you have problems with boot loader. Then you select you 'default language' for example 'English', this will be the language of the system messages and the control center, and if you want to support other languages press 'Advanced' and checkout as many you want like 'French'. Then you select keyboard layout you will have a small list if it's not there click 'More'. Then we select the installation method 'normal' or 'expert' and 'install' for new installation or 'upgrade' which can be used if you have an installed Mandrake even if it's older, also can be used to continue a failed installation trial. The expert mode gives you more freedom and flexibility you may use it even if you not an expert, there is always a help and a 'detected' mark on what you should choose. but at your first trial don't let it be expert. Then you choose how you want to repartition the hard disk (figure 4) you have options to 'erase entire disk' , 'use existing partitions' those are from old Linux installation or freed by a utility software, 'use the free space' here you shrink a Windows partition to convert free space to a free partition then use it, select this option if you have only one disk partition, and the last and most useful one is 'custom disk partitioning' which gives you the control to do what ever you want with partitions like add,removing,and resizing partitions, select this way if you want to install Linux as we planned by removing one partition and adding the root and swap partitions. 6. The partitioning tool As you see, here is a map of the hard disk, in the top you see the map key (what each color mean), below you see each partition click on the one you planned to remove (for example 'E' will be the 3rd from left and with mount point '/mnt/win_e'), the click 'delete' from the side bar it will become white (it was blue), then you click on the resulting white area and click 'auto allocate' button at the bottom, Drake will do the job making tree partition the root,home, and swap they will be in red color for ext3 and green for swap. You may do that manually after you delete the partition you could click 'create' from the side bar to make a new partition of type 'swap' and set the size to two times as RAM size no need for the mount point,one more time click 'create' to make the root partition of type 'ext3' with mount point '/', and pull the size scroll to take all the left size. If you want to use 'use the free space' a dialog will show (figure 5) tells you how much you want to leave to Windows, before using this option you should make sure it has been checked with 'scandisk' (using 'defragment' makes things smoother) see 1.5.8. Dark corners subsection. Now we have to select software package groups (figure 7) Select every thing (games,office,..etc) except servers on top right (unless you know what you are doing), make sure you select a graphical interface KDE and/or GNOME on right bottom corner. DO NOT select 'select individual packages' at your first trials. Now Mandrake will select for you some packages of each group you select (the most rated by Mandrake club members) Tip Selecting all package groups does not mean selecting all packages, you just select the classes you want, for example when you select games, not all games get installed, but the most rated games will be installed. Then copying process starts, the first CD will take most of the time (about 15 minutes) then it ask you to put the second CD by 5 minutes it will be done, it may ignore the third CD. CDs content are sorted in popularity and importance order. When copying is finished we come to configuring, setting up the root password, what ever you do, do NOT press 'no password' button (figure 8). Then we add a regular user, the login name could be your first name ('ahmad' for example) or you could a simple name for your little son ('me' for example) and set a password for him, and select a picture for this user, if we are done click 'done', if you want to add more users click 'accept user' (figure 9) If you are at home you my set a simple password for your little son to be '123456' or '666666' and let it login without asking about it, the next dialog (figure 10) asks if you want that feature (autologin) select the user ('ahmad','me',or what ever user you create) and the desktop to login (KDE for example) then click 'yes', if you don't want this feature click 'no'. Then we select to install the boot loader (the program that gives you a menu to select which system you want to boot) typically Mandrake prefer LILO but you may in expert mode select GRUB, you should install boot loader on MBR. When it comes to configure peripherals,hardware,printers,and network it won't be hard, for example, to configuring the network a dialog asks you how you are connected if you are lucky to have an external serial modem then click on modem then click on what port it's connected (if you don't know read the paper we made before installing) you will see '(detected)' mark on what you should select. then you enter you Internet subscription information. If you have an Ethernet card, then it will ask you if you want to use dynamic IP address from DHCP server, or set it manually to a fixed IP address if there is no DHCP server on the network. If it's a laptop computer you may like using DHCP. Mandrake is no more offering all that dialogs for more simplicity, Mandrake offer you a summary (figure 15) of all items and it's configurations, if you don't like any of those click 'configure' button next to it to the right. For example it will guess the time zone according to the language, but if it's not what you want click 'configure'. 15. Summary. Make sure you set the resolution by clicking on 'configure' next to 'graphical interface' and test what you set. If you have printers or network don't forget to configure them. You may make a boot floppy for emergency. Those screenshots is taken from Mandrake 9.0 tutorial except for the above it's from 9.2.

1. Welcome 2. Language 3. Installation method 4. Partitioning method 5. Resize a Windows partition 7. Package selection 8. Root password 9. Adding a user 10. Autologin 11. Network 12. Time zone 13. Monitor 14. Resolution

1.5.5. Installing Red Hat.

Red Hat distribution is one of the most famous distributions (maybe the most) with a clear policy, 'anaconda' is part of this policy. Anaconda (type of snakes) assure you no headache painless installation, it's open source free program as the rest of Red Hat tools. Put the first CD and restart your computer to boot it, then you see a screen with welcome message and some instructions on very small part of what you can do with this boot prompt, to install normally just press ENTER, to use text mode installer type 'linux text', or to use low resolution graphical installer 'linux lowres', many more options like to use the kickstart automated installation or remote media installation can be used. The normal installer is a nice 800x600 easy graphical program, with versions before 8.0 it was using the Linux Frame Buffer (supplied by kernel) driver for X, but now for 8.0 and higher it uses your card specific X driver, this mean more and more cards can use the graphical installer. Red Hat Linux was asking you to configure every thing then start copying, but Fedora not just do some configuration after copying but even after first reboot.

The first message after welcome is about 'media check', select 'test' to check the CDs, one by one, you may skip check any one by selecting 'cancel' to continue installing. This check not only make sure that your CD drive can read them correctly but also that they are not modified or corrupted. At any time you may press F1 for help, also in the graphical installer you may see on-line context help at the side bar on the left, a 'release notes' button below gives you information about how this version differ from the old one, it's good to read it if you have used any Red Hat product before.

Tip

Red Hat has it's own style and clear policy you had better get on with it, rather than try to change it, for example Red Hat prefer GNOME, and provide KDE but Red Hat's KDE look more like GNOME. Red Hat does not support reading 'ntfs', you may download a very small module to enable that, but as a Red Hat user you should not use 'ntfs', and it does not support playing 'mp3', you may get a few kilobytes plugin to play them, but you should use the open 'ogg' replacement.

Then it offer you some installation classes you may select the one you like. Desktop For small office and home usage, with graphical interface, this option is not offered before 8.0 Workstation As the previous one with administrating and development tools. Server A server (with or without the graphical X). Custom More and more configuration dialogs, to make it as your like. There was 'every thing' class but they moved it later in package select. If there is a detected pre-installed old version, there will be 'upgrade' class, in which there will be no partitioning process. On usual installation classes, then partitioning methods are 'automatic' and manual with 'disk druid' which is relatively simple (like the Mandrake Disk Drake without 'auto allocate') , at least it's simpler than manual with 'fdisk' which is no more available on Fedora.

Select 'automatic' if you have a non allocated free partition,old Linux partitions you want to reuse, or you want to erase the entire disk. Usually you should select 'manual with disk druid' so you can remove a partition where you want to install Linux then you add new swap partition two times as you RAM size, and a root partition (mount point '/') with all the rest space of file system type ext3, then select each Windows partition and click 'edit' and give it mount point like '/mnt/win_c' and make sure that you keep 'do NOT format' option is on, or else you will lose data on it, and do so with other Linux partitions if you have other distributions.

Then you select package groups (Games,office,development,...etc) next to each group you see 'details' to select them package by package, and if you select 'custom' you will see more details. This dialog looks exactly like figure on section 3.4 Installing pre-compiled software packages.. This smart tool will select nice collection of packages but make sure that you select KDE (it's not selected by default, Red Hat policy!). Do NOT select 'everything' option, if you want more packages select them all but do NOR select the 'everything' option. If you selection brake the dependency rules, it will prompt you to fix this, select 'install packages to satisfy dependency' and it will fix this problem. Then you set the root user password, type it twice, then you set up the boot loader it will be GRUB but you may explicitly ask for LILO (Red Hat Linux 8.0 release notes that they may exclude LILO in future versions, but it still there) you may change names of the boot loader menu items, for example click on 'Other' or 'Dos' then on 'edit' and rename it to 'Windows98' you may make it the default and you may set a boot loader password. Then it will copy files and install them,after all this it could continue the configuration process after it congratulate you and reboot then it will ask you for root password then it will continue configuration (in Fedora), but in older versions you will continue configuration before rebooting. You should add a regular user by entering his full name,login name,and hist password twice. Then we configure network connection, checkout the box with the network card (like first Ethernet card eth0) then configure it's address, you may give it a fixed address and name or get it from DHCP server, on both cases make sure it will be activated automatically on boot. If you choose 'server' installation class some related configuration will be done. Firewall configuration is simple you just select what network interface to trust, and what service to allow (if it's not on the menu just enter the port and protocol).

1.5.6. Installing Debian.

Debian, the choice of professional Linux users. It should not be you first trial. Debian installer d-i is not as beautiful as 'anaconda' or 'DrakeX' it lakes graphical interface,but it is the most powerful. Debian can be installed via floppy disks or USB flash memory disks, more over it can boot and installed remotely via DHCP/TFTP, Debian can be installed from your old UNIX/Linux without booting, or from you old LILO/GRUB and even loadlin from DOS. You may install Debian if you have only the installer and boot files (very small) and get the rest from network LAN or Internet. You may upgrade from version to version on the fly keeping your old configurations and even without reboot, this is good for servers that keep up and running even when you are reinstalling the system.

For regular installation, put first CD to get 'isolinux' boot prompt with welcome message,press F1 to F10 to get several help screens talking about some feature of what Debian installer can do. It's enough to press ENTER or you may type some options to specify some extra drivers or how to get files (from CDs,hard disk,network,...etc) you may specify the flavor you like for example type 'linux26' to use the new 2.6 kernel, or you may type 'linux DEBCONF_PRIORITY=medium' to get more expert dialogs, if you set it to 'high' you will get normal level, if you set it to 'critical' lesser dialogs, only you will get critical settings that can be guessed by installer like you language, if you set it to 'low' you will be asked for each and every thing like 'should I load foobar driver ?' this will be useful if there is a driver casing problems.

Debian installer is a blue text based program, use left and right arrows,Tab,and SHIFT+Tab to move between buttons, and use up and down arrows,PageUP and Page Down to move in lists and menus, If you press a letter A-Z the cursor will move to first choice with that letter in the menu. Press SPACE to activate options in checkboxs, press ENTER to bush the highlighted button, if the cursor is on 'Finish' button and you press ENTER then it will end and accept the configurations. The installer will open 4 screens, the first is the installer, and the second is a shell (command like),the third is failure log report, ,the fourth is a report of files (downloading,copying,and extraction), to move between them use 'ALT+F1', 'ALT+F2', 'ALT+F3', and 'ALT+F4'.

After welcome message you may (in 'low' and 'medium' levels, it won't show in 'critical' and normal 'high' level) a menu to select what step to do. Then you select your language (and country, If this language is spoken in many countries like 'English' and 'Arabic') it then detect your hardware and asks for your keyboard layout (you may later after installation use 'kbdconfig' to change it) then it will try DHCP protocol to configure your network address, if it works it asks you to proceed,but if it fail it then it asks you to retry or use a manual fixed address then it asks for that (the address,name,DNS,gateway,...etc).

Then it decide how to get files (CDs,hard disk,network,...etc) , if you set the hard disk as media source,it will search automatically for 'iso' images in the root directory on each partition then on single depth folders like 'C:\debian\cd1.iso' but not 'C:\downloads\debian\cd1.iso', then if it fails to find them it will search everything (slowly). After finding the media source then it will check it's consistency using md5sum.

Then it comes to partitioning to make at least two partitions one with mount point '/' and another with type swap. A program called 'partman' will give you some options like automatic partitioning (erasing entire disk or allocating free partitions), you may be asked on how many partitions you want to make ('/' and swap or '/','/home',and swap, and maybe more) then you get to manual partitioning to edit if you want. Manual partitioning gives a menu of disks and partitions allocated and free, then some options like 'finish' to accept and continue. you may select a partition then decide what you want to do with it, for example move to 'hda1' then press ENTER then choose use without format then set it's mount point to something like '/mnt/win_c', the same way if 'hda5' is the home partition you want to share between Debian and Fedora, select it then use and set mount point as '/home'. You may use 'partman' to erase a partition, and allocate free space and format it with what ever file system you like, for example you may select 'hda6' which may represent 'E' (you may guess by counting 'C' 'D' 'E' but you should ignore 'extended') then delete it, you may then ask for automatic partitioning on this partition. You may use the conventional method, remove a partition then select the free space and allocate a new swap partition as double size of RAM size, then you allocate a new partitions of native Linux type 'ext3','xfs', or 'reiserfs' and make sure it's used with mount point '/'.

Then it copy small (the compulsory) part of Debian and asks you to select a kernel, it may differ on version like 2.4 and 2.6, newer versions has more features,and they are faster but older version are needed to be able to install driver for some fake modems (softmodems), but it may differ on compile-time configurations like the support of multiple processors (SMP) and some kernels are optimized for specific CPU for example 386 will work on any Intel AI32 (also called PC or IBM compatible with 32-Bit), 586 which is for Pentium I or higher (which will not work with older 386 or 486, but it will work with Pentium like CPUs eg. Athlon from AMD) 686 which need a Pentium 2 or more, and athlon will work very fast for AMD based CPUs like Duron, Athlon, and AthlonXP (I think this does not include AMD K6 and before).

Then your Debian is ready to reboot, it will give the choice between LILO and GRUB, then it will detect other systems and add them to boot menu.

Debian now reboots for the first time, then it ask you to do some configurations like time zone (it may guess it from the country), then it may (depend on installation level) ask about using shadow passwords (you should accept this) then we configure root user password,then we create a non-privileges regular user, by entering his full name, login name, and password.

Then you configure your dialup Internet connection if any (and if you have real modem) via setting 'ppp' to dial your ISP phone number, and send you login and password, so you may get more packages from Debian repositories so we configure 'apt' package tool, you select Internet mirrors, LAN sources, and the most important you may add Debian CDs you have to apt database, apt will scan them all to make a list of packages, you may scan the first four CDs for example and scan the rest of the 13 CDs later, any way scanning CDs does not take time. If you select some Internet mirrors (you should trust them because they are the same place where your CDs come from) you may configure proxy if any. You may do all this 'apt' configuration later using 'apt-setup' command.

Then you select the method of selecting packages one of those that you select the task you want and it install the suitable packages, this done by 'tasksel' tool (you may use it later), the other method is to select package by package using 'dselect' (not recommended) or 'aptitude' tools, I recommend using 'tasksel' while installing and using 'aptitude' or 'synaptic' later after installing, you may use 'tasksel' later also. In 'tasksel' make sure you select X11,desktop environment, and maybe if you like C development ...etc. 'tasksel' will install about 30MB even if you select nothing those are good packages that make you Debian life more easy.

'Aptitude' is nice menu driven text based program, press F10 to activate menu, this menu has items like searching for a package and even playing 'minesweeper' game. Use arrows to more or select a package to be installed or remove, to show dependency list press 'd', to start installing press 'g', and 'q' to quit.

Then you select how mail transport agent (MTA) work, you may set it to a remote Internet or LAN account, or local (on your computer) this can be used not just to communicate between users but also can be used by 'daemon' programs or 'cron' jobs to send important messages to the administrator (root user), you may leave it with no MTA (not recommended), Debian default MTA is 'exim4'.

All important settings can be done later using Debian specific tools see Distribution specific tools appendix you may see the file '/usr/share/doc/HTML/index.html' which is generated by 'dhelp' package, and contain an index of documentation.

1.5.7. Installing Slackware.

The lazy distribution 'slackware' installed is just a shell-script (at least this how it seems to me last time I see it) Even in graphical mode it's just a white wallpaper with slackware logo, with xterm in the middle with the simple installation window. This script will call GNU tools needed for each step, you should learn 'fdisk','cfdisk', and 'parted' see 4.8. Disk Management section. and 'adduser' and 'passwd' tools, see 4.9. System Administration section, Do NOT let this be your first Linux trial, you should be expert enough and remember it's more BSD like that SysV as the rest of distributions.

1.5.8. Dark corners.

You may be able to install Linux without reading this subsection, but in some rare cases when things goes wrong, you will need those information. It's recommended you know those things and make sure nothing will go wrong before you try to install Linux.

When you press power button of your computer, a system called BIOS saved in ROM memory will do a test called POST to test hardware, you will see RAM counter while it's being checked, you will see LEDs of hard,compact and floppy disks flashing then it will rest the keyboard (look keyboard LEDs) ... etc, if there is a problem it will make a beep sound, and print a message like "Press F1 to resume", while all that happen a message saying 'Press DEL to enter BIOS setup' (different BIOS makers use different keys) if you did not see any of those things, and get a graphical logo, then you may press ESC (maybe) to see what this picture hides, I don't know why people hate useful text screens and like to see commercial advertisements, then BIOS searches for operating system with some order called boot priorities it could be CD,floppy,and then MBR of master primary disk, BIOS will load boot record, and run it. BIOS will be available for later call by OS or programs to fascinate using hardware.

Tip

BIOS system is a very old 16-Bit system designed before multi tasking ages, the first step Linux do after moving to 32-Bit mode, is to hide BIOS and offer it's own substituting functions with modern 32-Bit multi tasking design , which gives Linux more portability and speed no other OS can do.

Enter BIOS setup (press DEL just after POST test), you will see text menus that using it differ from vendor to another, usually you could use arrows to move and F1 to F12 to save or exit without saving, look at the bottom of the screen or at side bar you may see some help. BIOS settings are saved on a memory called CMOS powered by little battery, when this battery become empty those settings get lost and you back to the default settings.

Warning

Missing with BIOS may cause your computer to stop working, and not leaving POST test until you fix those settings on BIOS setup to the correct values. Do NOT change values you don't know and you are not asked to change, the good news is that you could enter BIOS setup and then exit without saving by turn off the computer! You may get the default settings by selecting 'Load BIOS default'.

We need to do a few setting in BIOS, first of all is the boot sequence or boot priorities, CDROM should have higher priority than your hard disk, your BIOS could have items like 'boot 1st','boot 2nd', and 'boot 3d' move to 'boot 1st' then press ENTER, then select CDROM, on some BIOS you may see one item 'boot sequence' and you press +/- or Page Up/Down to change it's value. Disks can be expressed in words like 'Compact Disk CD/DVD-ROM', 'Floppy/Removable Media' and 'Hard/Fixed Drive/Disk' and may be expressed as letters like 'A' for floppy and 'C' for hard disk.

Tip

some BIOS gives you a boot menu without using BIOS setup, just by pressing a key like F2,F10 or F12 (differ from BIOS to another)

Power management in BIOS is important to have automatic shutdown (if you have bad power management configuration you need to press the power button after you select shutdown or issue the 'halt' command) and in the long term to protect our environment (by saving power when you are not using your computer). Because Linux manages power better than BIOS you should disable all means of BIOS power management like doze, standby, suspend, nap, and sleep which should be set off ,disable,minimum saving or longest time, but keeping the power management enabled some BIOS systems gives you the choice between disabled and APM/enabled, and some other systems gives you APM,ACPI and disabled, any way you should not select disabled, but to choose between APM(the old standard) and ACPI(the new standard with more features) is simple select what your distribution support, if you have a recent distribution select ACPI.

Make sure you set the 'Plug and Play' to be done by BIOS, this mean to set it on 'Non-PnP aware OS' or Enabled this mean not to relay on the OS to do this settings. Also make sure you disable virus checking in BIOS since all what this do is to watch changing in MBR and warn you that this is a virus, MBR will be changed when you have got a boot virus or a new boot loader of any operating system. If you don't have a normal PS keyboard but instead you have a USB keyboard make sure to enable emulation usually called 'legacy keyboard emulation', if you have a CPU with more than one speed, disable 'software change of CPU turbo/speed' because it may accidentally happen.

About memory management select as much as you can of 'extended' as low as you can of 'expanded', and disable all means of 'Shadow memory' even for video shadow, shadow is to have a copy of slow ROM in faster RAM, but Linux use no BIOS and no ROM so we save your fast RAM. If you have motherboard 'Intel endeavor' then 'Debian GNU/Linux Installation Guide' recommend that you enable the Linear Frame Buffer (LFB). Assure you enable 'RAM Parity check' but this check is useless if your RAM chip has 'Virtual (fake) Parity', you can know if there is a real parity chip if you see extra odd smaller chip on the RAM slot.

If you could not boot the Linux CD because you have an old BIOS, you fear from changing your BIOS boot priority, or even if you did not copy the CDs correctly. We have many work around :

• Make a bootable floppy or USB.
• Use 'loadlin' program from DOS or (Windows)
• Using a preinstalled smart boot loader like GRUB or LILO

A few distributions may offer you booting from DOS using 'loadlin', like in Red Hat Linux 8.0 you may just run 'autoboot.bat' file, just type bold commands after the '>' prompt (don't type comments in green italic font)

C:\> dosstart No spaces
C:\> G: replace G with your CDROM letter
G:\> dir /w
G:\> cd \dosutils
G:\DOSUTILS> dir /w
G:\DOSUTILS> autoboot.bat 

If you don't trust the Installer to do partitioning and you doubt that it could case damage, you may use the program you have been used in your old system like DOS/Windows fdisk or the commercial 'partition magic' utility to remove (release) a partition then use automatic partitioning when you install Linux. (although you should know that the utility in Linux Installers is very safe and powerful )

If you have only one big partition (for example you have a single 40GB partition) although this is a stupid way of wasting your disk efficiency (space and speed), it's very common lazy way of partitioning your drive (Once I was asked to install Linux on many computers with single partition and the worst it was NTFS) if you where a bit lucky having FAT partition you may use Mandrake Disk Drake to resize it (figure 5) or press ALT+F2 in Debian or Red Hat to get a shell prompt and type 'parted' as in section 4.8. Disk Management to resize it. You may use 'fips' GNU tool which work under DOS (if you have Windows you be get to DOS as we mention before) but in case of single 'NTFS' partition you may not use GNU tools to resize it but you only may use your old system utilities. Remember before you resize a partition you should check it (with 'scandisk' for example) and you may get larger size and fater resizing if you use 'defragment'. Remember that resizing could fail and case data lose, and if it could fail it will. If you have NTFS you may like to move to FAT (you may need to reinstall Windows) since Linux support reading and writing from FAT but only reading from NTFS, at least one partition to share data between Linux and Windows.

Windows installer knows nothing about Linux, so you should install Linux after Windows, Linux boot loaders can boot the two systems but Windows boot loader can't. You may need to install Windows later like when it comes to it's regular re-installation time (When Windows get to it's worst state that you could not stand, like when it display 'Registry Errors') then Windows installer will remove the Linux boor loader and put it's stupid boot loader which only can boot Windows (If it offer formatting Linux partition to make them 'usable' you should say NO) here we can see one of Linux powerful features you need not reinstall Linux or even upgrade it, only you need to boot it and fix the boot loader, put the first CD and then type 'linux rescue' to boot in rescue mode, you may use any Live-CD distribution or bootable Linux floppy then you type

bash# mkdir /mnt/linux
bash# mount /dev/hda5 /mnt/linux
bash# chroot /mnt/linux