A practical exercise for starters: install Linux on your PC.
Read the installation manual for your distribution and/or the
Installation HOWTO and do it.
-
Will this distribution run on my hardware?
Check with
https://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Hardware-HOWTO/index.html
when in doubt about compatibility of your hardware.
-
What kind of keyboard do I have (number of keys, layout)? What
kind of mouse (serial/parallel, number of buttons)? How many MB of
RAM?
-
Will I install a basic workstation or a server, or will I need
to select specific packages myself?
-
Will I install from my hard disk, from a CD-ROM, or using the
network? Should I adapt the BIOS for any of this? Does the
installation method require a boot disk?
-
Will Linux be the only system on this computer, or will it be a
dual boot installation? Should I make a large partition in order to
install virtual systems later on, or is this a virtual installation
itself?
-
Is this computer in a network? What is its hostname, IP address?
Are there any gateway servers or other important networked machines
my box should communicate with?
 |
Linux expects to be
networked |
| |
Not using the network or configuring it incorrectly may result
in slow startup.
|
-
Is this computer a gateway/router/firewall? (If you have to
think about this question, it probably isn't.)
-
Partitioning: let the installation program do it for you this
time, we will discuss partitions in detail in
Chapter 3. There is system-specific
documentation available if you want to know everything about it. If
your Linux distribution does not offer default partitioning, that
probably means it is not suited for beginners.
-
Will this machine start up in text mode or in graphical
mode?
-
Think of a good password for the administrator of this machine
(root). Create a non-root user account (non-privileged access to
the system).
-
Do I need a rescue disk? (recommended)
-
Which languages do I want?
In the following chapters we will find out if the installation
has been successful.
