Migrating from Windows to Linux
Loosing your Windows instability & Spyware problems for good!

Written By Justin Browning
Email: judstin1@bigpond.net.au

Document Revision 1.00
March 5, 2005

This guide is mainly aimed at newbies to the Linux operating system who want to learn more about it. This guide will take you step-by-step to install a Linux Distribution along side a Windows Partition (dual-boot). It will also give you a brief understanding of how Linux works in terms of the Filesystem and how it differs from Windows Filesystems.

This guide is formatted for easy printing.

Table of Contents:

Introduction:

With the ever-growing hassles of Microsoft Windows, more and more people are deciding to switch over to Linux or wanting to see what Linux is all about. It is the conception that installing and using Linux is a difficult task and only really managed by highly skilled computer nerds, but in actual fact, installing and using Linux is no harder than using Windows.

My theory is… ”If you can spend hours on end dealing with Windows' crashes and removing spyware, then you'll have the skills to operate Linux”.

Linux is a very powerful operating system and has been said that is can perform” up to 90-95% of what Windows can do” . So with that said, most of what you are currently using Windows for, you will be able to still do under Linux.

First Things First:

So, you are currently running Windows and want to change to the Open Source world of Linux. Linux is not just 1 operating system; there are hundreds of them typically called Distributions . It is important to choose the distribution that is right for you, with many catering to differing purposes such as workstations, servers, etc.

A list of commonly used Linux Distributions suited for our purposes are:

•  Mandrake Linux

•  Fedora Core (Formerly Red Hat)

•  Debian

•  SuSE

These distributions have a very clear and easy installation process, all using graphical installation setups (more advanced distros are setup with a command line interface). Most modern linux operating systems can be downloaded off the internet for free or bought for a small fee. A great place to find more information and to download the CD .ISO's, check out http://www.linuxiso.org/.

Differences Between Windows and Linux:

Being a seasoned Windows user, you have become familiar with concepts such as the taskbar, start menu and drives being refered to as C: drive or D: drive.

Linux does still contain these aspects of windows that you have become acustomed to, but work in a slightly different way. As with drives in Windows, they are accessed by way of letters such as c, d, e and so on, but with the filesystem structure Linux uses, these are accessed slightly different, especially removable media such as CD-ROM's. The drive in which your Windows installation is installed to would be drive C, but in Linux, your system will be installed to / which is known as root. Also, the / is not a physical hard drive in your computer like C: in Windows is. The / is a "mount point" in which a drive can be accessed. Think of a mount point as a folder where which ever device is attached to it, can be accessed from it.

For more information on Linux File Systems, visit http://www.novell.com/documentation/suse91/suselinux-adminguide/html/apas02.html

Another thing that a new Linux user should be aware of is the idea of multiple users. Windows has support for multiple users, but it is nowhere as important as it is in Linux. In Linux, you have a user kind of like the Windows Administrator user which is called ROOT. The Root user has permissions to access ANYTHING on the PC, regardless of ownership. With this power, the root can also change system settings, modify boot options and so on.
It is important that when you are using Linux for day to day things such as word processing or whatever, is to use a seperate user account away from the root user. This user has restrictions (typically system settings restrictions) which will not allow them to modify and system settings, which means, while we are still learning, we shouldn't be able to accidently change something that could mess up our whole Linux installation.

Section 1: Backing up Files & Setting up Hard Disks

Backing up Files:

It is important to back up your files for use later when you have your Linux Operating System running. Most commonly used methods for backing up large amounts of data include:

•  2nd Hard Drive

•  CD-R (700MB CD)

You will want your backed up files to be easily accessible so when your Linux installation is complete and you are ready to start using it, you can easily copy your files over to your newly created linux partition.

Setting up Hard Disks:

Since you still have Windows installed, it might be a good idea to resize your Windows partition and give yourself a little free (unpartitioned space) to work with during the Linux Setup. A great program to do this with is PowerQuest Partition Magic or Paragon Partition Resizer.

Most people will tell you "Why do that when the Linux Installation will do that for me?" That is true. The Linux installation will be able to automatically resize your partitions for you, but I think it's a good idea to have your drive ready to go before your start. Resizing your partiton is something you want to get right. You don't want to be in the Linux setup and start resizing, only to find you didn't do it right, and end up loosing your Windows Partiton.

So I always make sure that I've given myself free space to work with before proceeding, just to be safe.

Section 2: Getting Started with the Linux Installation:

Now that you have backed up all of your data you wish to keep, lets move onto the Linux Installation.

Setting up the BIOS:

To be able to boot your computer with the Linux Installation CD-ROM/s, you will need to tell your computer that you want to boot from your CD-ROM Drive First. Different motherboard's BIOS's are different, but you will usually be able to find this setting under --> ADVANCED BIOS FEATURES --> or simply the BOOT menu.

Once the CD-ROM has been set to 1st bootable device, go back and SAVE CHANGES to CMOS. Your computer will restart.

Section 3: The Linux Installation:

For the purpose of this guide, as I regularly install Fedora Core 3 on my PC, I will be taking you through the installation process for the Fedora Core 3 (formerly Redhat) Linux Distribution. Most modern linux distributions have similar installations so I wouldn't worry too much if you are installing another distribution other than Fedora.

Install Screen:
Once your computer reboots and the CD-ROM is in the drive, your CD will load the Install Loader. Here it goes over some advanced options for installing Fedora over networks and so forth, but for our purposes, we will just press ENTER here to begin the GUI installation.

Main Installation Screen:
Once you reach the main installation screen, you will notice that it is all graphical (no command line here). This screen just says "Welcome to Fedora Core 3, blah blah blah...this will install Fedora Core 3 to your PC...". We just need to click NEXT here.

Language Selection:
Here, you will be able to select the language that is appropriate for you. It is initially set to English(US) by default, but to change it, just scroll up and down the list until you find your language. Once your language has been selected, click NEXT.

Keyboard Selection:
This screen allows you to specify which style keyboard you are currently using. Most of us will be fine with the default keyboard setup listed (English) but if not, you can just scroll through the list until you find the apropriate one for you. Once this has been selected, click NEXT.

Mouse Configuration:
This screen asks you to specify which mouse you are currently using. The installation should have automatically detected the appropriate mouse for your system, otherwise just scroll through the list as usuall. Once you have selected your mouse style, click NEXT.

Installation Type:
This is where we get into the bulk of the installation. This screen asks you which type of installation you want. Typically on most modern linux distributions, you should see four (4) options:

  1. Personal Computer
  2. Workstation
  3. Server
  4. Custom

What these four options do is they install the default packages that you would normally use for that type of computer configuration. For example, the Personal Computer option will have packages such as Office & Productivity, games, Internet, etc installed.

The one thing with selecting the default package installations (Personal Computer, Workstation or Server) is that you limit yourself to what you are installing onto your system. For the most flexibility, you should select CUSTOM as your installation type. This way, you will be able to install which ever packages you like, and leave the ones out that you would not use at all.

For our purposes here, we will select CUSTOM. Select CUSTOM, then click NEXT.

Disk Partitioning:
Here is where it really gets interesting. If you didn't resize your Windows Partition like I suggested earlier, you will have to do all the resizing here.

If you did not resize earlier:
Just quickly, you would have to select the disk that you want to resize, (In Windows, your C: drive was Disk 1) in linux it would be hda1. Then click EDIT and change the size of the disk to whatever you want it to be. Lets say you want 20GB for Linux and your hard drive is 80GB, then your new size would be 60GB.
(Total Size - SpaceForLinux = New Partition Size).

Ok, as you can see, we have a list of all our drives and their partitions. A thing to note is that each physical hard drive in linux is given the name HDX. So your first hard drive would be HDA, your second hard drive would be HDB and so on. HDA1 refers to the 1st partition on the first hard drive. HDB2 refers to the 2nd partition on the 2nd hard drive (just to give you an understanding!).

Creating our / ROOT Partition:
So here, we would select our FREE SPACE from the list, and click the NEW button above. Here we will be creating our new Linux partiton. As was stated earlier, linux requires mount points to access drives. It is general Linux knowledge to install the Linux OS to the / mount point, so we will select / from the mount point drop down list. Under filesystem we will select EXT3. There are many different types of Linux file systems, but for our purposes here, we will use EXT3. When that is done, choose the size you want for the new partiton. In this guide, we are using 20GB for Linux overall, so we will specify 19GB for the / partition.
When that is done, click OK.

Creating our SWAP Partition:
Now, our / partition is created, but we also need a Linux SWAP partition. Think of the SWAP partition as the Virtual Memory (Windows term) of Linux. As the SWAP does not have a mount point, we will leave the mount point box for now. Go down and select SWAP from the filesystem box. Note that when you select this, the mount point box becomes unavaliable. Specify the size of the SWAP partition. Here we will say 1GB for the SWAP, totalling our Linux partitions to 20GB. Once thats done, click OK.

You will now be back to the Disk Partitioning screen as we saw before. As you can see, we have our 2 newly created partitions, 1 / partition and 1 SWAP partition. When you can see these 2 new partitions, select NEXT.

Boot Loader:
This screen is the boot loader screen. Usually if you were installing Linux on its own without Windows along side it, you could just simply skip this screen and click NEXT, but since we are dual booting, we will need to change some things.

The default OS that will load at the moment is our Windows partition. We want to make Fedora load as the default when we start our computer so we will click the checkbox next to FEDORA, and that will select our Linux partition to boot first. Simple enough! Once that's done, click NEXT.

Network Configuration:
This is the network configuration screen. If you have a network card installed in your computer, everything should be automatically detected for you, but if you are connected to a network off a router or something, you may have to change some things, but here we will leave everything here and click NEXT.

Firewall Configuration:
This screen asks you if you would like to enable Fedora's software firewall for added security. It is set to enabled by default and you'll be fine just leaving it, but if you don't want it enabled, just click the DISABLE button, then click NEXT to continue.

Timezone & City Selection:
This screen is pretty self explainitory. We've all seen it in various Windows Installations. Just select your timezone and city, then click NEXT.

Set Root Password Screen:
We've seen a similar screen to this in the Windows 2000 / XP Installations as Administrator Password. In linux however, the ROOT of the system is much more powerful. It is very import to have multiple users on a linux machine, even if you are the only user. The root user has no restrictions on any part of the system and has the power to change whatever he likes. This kind of power can be dangerous to a linux beginner, so we will be creating a new user later on in the guide.

For now, choose a password for the ROOT user, one that is easy to remember. When that has been done, click NEXT to continue.

Package Selection Screen:
Now, this is package selection screen. We are only seeing this now becuase before at the Installation Type screen, we chose CUSTOM. If you chose Personal Computer, Workstation or Server, you will not see this screen. However, since we have selected CUSTOM, lets go over the packages.

To save time explaining what each package is for (its pretty obvious anyway by the name) I've listed all the packages availiable along with the selections that I believe we will need.

CAT = Package Category, X = Selected, OPT = Optional

PACKAGE CATEGORY/NAME
SELECTED?
COMMENT
Desktops: CAT  
XWindow System X (Required for GUI) GUI User Interface
GNOME Desktop Environment X GUI Desktop
KDE Desktop Enviromnent OPT  
Applications: CAT  
Editors X Text editors - like notepad
Engineering & Calculators OPT Calculators and graphs
Graphical Internet X Web Browsers
Text Based Internet X telnet like programs
Office & Productivity X Office suite - Open Office
Sound & Video X Audio & Video playback
Authoring & Publishing X HTML & PDF Authoring
Graphics X Paint like programs
Games & Entertainment X If you want to play games.
Servers: CAT  
Server Configuration OPT Sets up LANs
Web Server OPT Settings for a Web Server - IIS
Mail Server OPT Settings for a Mail Server
Windows File Server OPT Sharing Windows Files over a network
DNS Name Server OPT Creating a DNS server on your PC
FTP Server OPT Allowing your PC to become an FTP file server
SQL Server OPT Installs SQL Server
News Server OPT Settings for a News Server
Network Services OPT Network Administration Tools
Development: CAT Needed for compiling programs
Development Tools X C#, C++ Perl, Python Compilers (needed to install programs)
X Software Development X Software for developing GUI software
GNome Development X Develops Software for the GNOME environment
KDE Development X Develops Software fot the KDE Desktop Enviromnent
System: CAT  
Administration Tools X Administer your system
System Tools X Such as display properties, keyboard and mouse settings.
Print Support X If you wish to print

Ready to Install Screen:
This is the final 'gut check' for installing Fedora Core 3 on your system. When you click next, setup will format your har disk with your new partitions you created in the setup and begin installing the software packages to your computer.

The installation of Linux can be quite lengthy so be prepared for a bit of a wait, a typical linux installation can take anywhere from 1 to 2 hours, depending on how fast your computer is. If you have a really fast computer, it could only take 10 mins. It also depends on how many software packages you are installing.

When everything has finished installing, a screen will be displayed saying "Congratulations, you have successfully installed Fedora Core 3 to your system..." the usually thing you see when you install a new operating system.

Thats it, well done. You've successfully installed Linux to your machine. When you reboot your computer after the installation has completed, linux will begin to load, ready for you to start exploring the wonderful world of crash free operating systems (you will really come to hate windows once you get familiar with linux its not funny).

Conclusion:

If some things are still a little unclear, I stumbled across a great video clip released by Tomshardware.com which outlines the installation process, as well as how to use your new system. They also have many other videos on other aspects of linux from using the desktop, to installing apps, a very useful resource.

Other video clip sources released by Toms Hardware Guide:

Setting up and Installing Linux - Video 1 - Toms Hardware Guide (very useful)
Using the Linux Desktop - Video 2 - Toms Hardware Guide
Installing Applications - Video 3 - Toms Hardware Guide

Thank you for reading my guide. If you have any suggestions on how to make it better, please let me know at judstin1@bigpond.net.au

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