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Alrighty then, put your distributers CD-ROM in the drive, the boot floppy in the drive, and shutdown that awful OS you've been used to for the last few years :). Hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete, and within a secs you'll be booting into Linux.

This is the really fun part. Depending on your Build, it'll ask you do you want to 'Pass commands to the install program', or something similar to that anyway. Just hit Return, and let the installation do it's own thing. After a few screens of bootup text, the program may ask you if your using a Color Monitor, just hit Return (If your installing Caldera, it wont bother asking). The next thing to do is let the install program know what kind of keyboard you have, so enter the code from the table on-screen and hit Return again. After a few more options, the program will ask you where the souce media is. This means it's looking for the CD-ROM, so let it know that you have a CD-ROM drive. You will then be confronted with a screen full of different CD-ROM drives. Select ATAPI if it's there, practically all Windows CD-ROM drives are ATAPI compatible, if yours isnt, consult the manual for your drive, and then choose the right option.

The program should let you know that it has found the CD, and the rest of the process will begin. Now you have to edit that partition you set aside earlier. The install process will detect that you have no Linux area setup, and will run FDISK. This will immeadiately select your Main hard drive for editing. Type p to print the partition information for that disk. You need to create the Linux Partition now, so type n to create a new partition. It will ask you what kind of partition you want to create, a Primary (1-4) or extended. Choose Primary by hitting 2. The next step is to tell Linux how big it is going to be. You will be given an option along the lines of First Cylinder (492-640) :. This is showing the free space you created earlier, so enter the first value which in this case is 492. A new option of Last Cylinder (493-640) : will appear on-screen, again select the default value which is in this case 640. Now we have to tell FDISK what kind of partition this is. Type t, and select the second primary partition. A prompt will appear asking for the type of area to be setup. Type in 83 and return to the main prompt. Finish this process by typing w, to write the new information to the disk and quit out to the Install Program again.

Hard Drive options will be displayed next (You did make that partition, didn't you?). This will probably confuse you as much as it did me. So, here's a table to make things a bit easier to understand :

Select the partition hda2 (Or decide which is your new Linux partition using the above table), and select install. The program will now format the new area of the Hard Disk, but dont worry, your Windows Partition will still be intact. Choose the option to check for bad blocks during format, this will make sure that the partition is fully alright.

Next, select the programs that you wish to use. I recommend installing all available documentation and any other options you think you may use. If you do not understand any of the options, dont worry, neither did I, just consult your manual and distributor of the build you are using.

After the installation is completed, the program will ask you to set a password for the root user. The root user is the administrator of the Linux OS, and has access to everything on the disk itself. Like any password, pick something that is easy for you to remember, but difficult for others to guess. The program will ask you if you want to run something called 'xf86config', choose not to, we will be running this later.

If you've reached this far, congratulations, you have just installed Linux, the world's best operating system.

USERS COMMENTS

Posted By Niall Walsh 18:27, 14 October 2004

Boot floppies are not normally required anymore.
Nearly all common hardware will be detected automatically.
Questions involved in installing Linux should be as simple as providing a name for the computer, a root password (and setting up user accounts), your location/language settings and choosing what software to install.
If you are installing the software across a network, you may need to provide networking information such as an IP address.
Partition numbers do not indicate what is stored there. For example Dell ships laptops with a very small hidden partition which is in fact hda1 with Windows in hda2.
Most computers have 2 IDE controllers each of which can have up to 2 devices connected. hda and hdb are connected to the primary ide controller, and hdc and hdd the secondary controller. hda and hdc are the master devices on each controller, and hdb and hdd are the slave devices. One easy way to check the names Linux gives your devices is to use a liveCD (like Knoppix) which should let you examine your partitions. You should not need to know about the cd/dvd device names for installation as these should be detected automatically.