Professor Norm Matloff's Beginner's Guide to Installing Linu

[mary talpas]

3.1 Assumptions
3.1.1 Generality/Specificity of Coverage
This part of the tutorial will not go into the details for installing one particular distribution. That would
be impractical, since the details for any one distribution often change substantially from one release to the
next. So instead, this section on installation will discuss the major points you should watch for during the
procedure. It will sometimes use Ubuntu as an example for concreteness, but the principles should be similar
for most other distributions.
3.1.2 Your Machine
It is assumed that you have an Intel-compatible desktop or notebook, with a bootable CD-ROM or DVD
drive. You should have at least 128M of RAM. I recommend that you have at least 10G of disk space
available for Linux, though 5G would probably be enough. If you have a smaller machine, try one of the
distros designed specifically for that purpose, discussed in Section 3.5.
3.2 Determine Your Hardware Details
The Linux installation program will be able to sense most of your hardware information. So, you can
probably skip our section here. But if you want to take about five minutes extra time here, it could be
helpful later if you write down some of your hardware types before beginning installation.
You could download the free program Hardinfo, and run it to record a list of your hardware. Or to check
your hardware from Windows XP, select My Computer j Control Panel j System j Hardware j Device Manager.
Click General to get the amount of RAM and CPU type. Then go to Device Manager, and click on the
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‘+’ next to each component, e.g. ”Disk drives,” ”Display adapters” and so on. Write down the information,
including your hard drive type, such as IDE; your video card make and model; your monitor make and
model; the type of connection used for your mouse, such as PS/2; the make and model of your printer; etc.
Do you still have the manual which came with your monitor? If so, check the specs in the back, and write
down the horizontal sync and vertical refresh rate, and the make and model.
3.3 Partioning Your Hard Drive
Today most Linux distros, such as Mandriva, SuSE and Ubuntu, do the disk partitioning for you. This is a
major advantage, as partitioning is a vital but delicate operation. Later in this section, I’ll give you some
advice for the Ubuntu case, and also give you some options to use if you have a distro that does not do
automatic partitioning.
But I do suggest that even if you will have automatic partitioning done, it would still be worthwhile for you
to read Section 3.3.1. This would be useful both for the installation process and later on in your role as an
“informed consumer.”
3.3.1 What Is Partitioning?
Again, it is probably not necessary for you to know the material here, and it is rather detailed, but you may
find it useful at some point. I do recommend that you take a few minutes and read this section.
A hard drive will consist of one or more partitions. A partition is a set of contiguous space (sequential
blocks) on the disk, and is treated as an independent disk.
So, assuming you want your system to include bothWindows and Linux (termed a dual boot situation, since
you can boot either system), you will need at least one partition for Windows and one (actually two) for
Linux.
It’s important to understand how the naming works: In Linux systems, all I/O devices are treated as “files.”
If your first hard drive is of the IDE type, the entire drive is probably called /dev/hda, i.e. the “file” hda
within the directory /dev. In the case of SATA-type hard drives, the notation is /dev/sda etc.
Your first CD-ROM/DVD drive is likely /dev/hdc (your third “hard drive”), your first USB port is likely
/dev/sdf1 and so on.
Partitions within your first drive are called /dev/hda1, /dev/hda2 and so on. Your original Windows single
partition was probably /dev/hda1.
Within a partition you’ll have some type of file system. The disk consists simply of a long stream of bytes,
with no structure, so the OS needs to have a way of organizing them into files, recording where in that
stream each file has its bytes. But you don’t need to know the details. Windows XP and Vista use the
NTFS file system. The standard Linux file system is ext2 (number 0x83, sometimes called Linux native), or
possibly ext3, for your main Linux partition and of type swap for your swap partition (number 0x82, used
for temporary storage during the time the OS is running).
PCs were originally designed to have up to four “real” partitions, called primary partitions. After people
found that to be too constraining, logical or extended partitions were invented. You should install Linux in
a primary partition, for recovery reasons, but it is not necessary.
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3.3.2 Before You Do the Partitioning
Before you start, give some thought as to how much of the original partition you want to keep for Windows
and how much you want to leave for Linux. If you plan to become a serious Linux user,1 you’ll want to
allocate at least half of the space for Linux.
You really ought to run Windows’ chkdsk command first, in case you have any bad sectors on your hard
drive. You may also wish to defragment.
3.3.3 Partitioning Using GParted
Today most distros will invoke a partitioning program to do your partitioning. This could be the famous
GParted program, or one that the authors of your distro wrote themselves.
You can use GParted on your own by downloading and booting a GParted live CD before you install Linux,
but I’ll assume here that your Linux installation program invokes either GParted or another program written
specifically for your distro.
Since every distro will handle this a bit differently, what I will do here is just give you an understanding of
what operations need to be done, with the specific mouse clicks needed varying from one distro to another.
I’ll assume that you want yourWindows and Linux systems to coexist on the same hard drive. So when your
distro’s installer program asks you whether you want to use the entire disk, be sure to say no! Of course, if
you do want to erase Windows, or if you are installing Linux on a separate drive from Windows, you can go
ahead and use the whole drive.
Here are the main steps in GParted, roughly stated (you may see some variation):
 Select the disk you wish to repartition. If you have only one disk, it will be something like /dev/hda.
(See Section 3.3.1.)
 Select the partition whereWindows resides. This will typically be the largest one, and almost certainly
of file system type NTFS.
 Note how much space is remaining, and decide how much of it you want to remove from theWindows
partition in order to make a partition for Linux.
 Now resize, in this case shrink, the Windows partition. The partioner will ask you how much room to
make.
 Adjust the partition size according to your desired value.
 You’ll need to make the main Linux partition primary, of type ext2 or ext3, and set to be bootable.
 You’ll need a smaller partition of type linux-swap. This is not used for files, but rather as “scratch
space” by the OS.2
1And as mentioned in Section 8.1, if you want to learn Linux, the only way to do it is to become a serious, every day user.
2Most modern operating systems, including Windows and Linux, use virtual memory. This allows situations in which the total
memory, i.e. RAM, needed for all of the programs we are currently running, exceeds the amount of physical memory we have. This
is accomplished by temporarily placing some of the memory contents on disk, in the swap partition. Virtual memory also enables
certain safety features, such as preventing one program from writing to the data of another.
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 You’ll then have to commit, i.e. save, the changes to the partitions. This might take a few minutes, so
be patient.
 The next time you boot Windows, you will be asked if you want a disk consistency check. Definitely
say yes.
3.4 The Installation Process
3.4.1 To Begin
By the way, if you are upgrading or replacing another version or distribution of Linux, see Section 10 before
beginning.
Put your Linux CD-ROM or DVD in the drive, and reboot. The installation program should begin.3
3.4.2 Questions You May Be Asked During the Installation Process
The trend in time is for the installation programs to actually ask you fewer and fewer questions, i.e. the
process has become more and more automated. Most of the questions discussed in this section will NOT be
asked—Ubuntu will probably ask none of them—but the information here will give you an idea of how to
answer if they are asked.
 Some distributions will give you a choice of several installation types, which vary in terms of what
kinds of application software will be installed. If you are a CS student, you need to make sure your
installation will include compilers, editors, debuggers and so on. Note that you can always add more
applications later on. But since most people now have plenty of disk space, it is easier to simply ask
for everything.
 Assuming you’ll want a dual-boot system, i.e. you’ll be having bothWindows and Linux available for
booting, you need some sort of boot loader. This is a program which upon powerup of your computer
will ask you which OS you wish to boot at that time. Your distribution will probably use the GRUB
boot loader, or possibly LILO. It doesn’t matter that much for a beginner, but if asked, definitely
indicate that you want to be able to boot both OSs. (If you are not asked, the distro should make it
dual-boot by default.) Take the defaults for everything else, e.g. the choice of bootloader program.
 If you’re asked whether you want 3-button mouse emulation, say yes. If you have only a 2-button
mouse (the wheel does count as a button), this emulation will enable cut-and-paste window operations.
 You’ll need a GUI (“graphical user intrface”) desktop manager. The two most widely-used GUI desktop
managers for Linux are KDE and GNOME. Each has its band of devoted followers. I generally
use GNOME these days, but both are good. It really doesn’t matter which one you choose for new
users, and you can always switch later if desired. Choose one (or both).
 I mentioned earlier that disk partitioning has over the years been one of the two major issues in Linux
installation. The other has been configuring for the video card and monitor.
3 If not, you must change the BIOS settings to make the CD-ROM bootable (and the first device checked during the boot
process); see your computer’s manual on how to do this.
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With today’s modern Linux installation programs, this is typically not a problem. They are pretty
good at identifying your video card, and guessing good settings to use. Typically they will give you a
chance to test those settings out before continuing with the installation process, with a test image. My
experience has generally been that that is sufficient.
If that image does not turn out well, the installation program will typically give you a chance to state
the make and model of your video card, and horizontal sync, vertical refresh rate, and make and
model of your monitor. That is why I asked earlier if you still have the manual for your monitor. (On
a laptop, though, you often don’t have this information, since its monitor is built in.)
By the way, once a configuration has been decided on, it will be saved to a file, such as /etc/X11/xorg.conf.
You can look at this later if you are curious as to what configuration the installer has chosen for you,
and can modify it if you know what needs to be tweaked.
 You may be asked if your machine has a static Internet address. In most cases, the answer should be
no; for a home machine or wireless use you probably get a dynamic Internet address, using a protocol
named DHCP.