Notes on Installation

Preparation

If you are connecting to the Internet through a plain phone line, you must ensure you will still be able to do so in Linux. The modem that is build into your laptop is most likely not a true modem,, but a Winmodem, a software simulation of one. It will not work in Linux. You will need to buy a real physical modem that you can hold in your hand. I am using a Dynex PCMCIA V.92 modem that I could find cheap. It works, but I do not particularly recommend it. The normal price is high and my subjective impression is that the Winmodem is slightly faster.

Make sure you have current backups and can recover your machine's operating system(s). Do not hope that "it will be OK."

If you are completely replacing an existing Linux system, (since this version might solve problems you had with the earlier version,) you probably also want:

• Save the content of /etc/fstab.
• Write down the disk mount directories to recreate.
• Save the contents of crontab -e.
• Export the bookmarks in Firefox.
• Export the Firefox ADBlock Plus content.
• Save the Firefox InformEnter content.
• Write down the other extensions to restore.
• Write down the plugins to restore, and consider how to do so.
• Write down the CUPS IP addresses of your network printers.
• Write down the IP addresses and mount info of your network disks.
• Write down the information on your ISP provider.

Attach all peripherals.

Boot the install disk

Then put the CD/DVD in the drive and restart the machine. Follow instructions. Usually, you can just press return on the default choice. Sometimes, you do need to enter text such as your name, password, and the machine name. Remember that the machine name can contain hyphens, but not underscores or spaces. On a network, you may need to consult with the network administrator on what to call your machine.

The dreaded partitioning

On Debian, that means that you will need to do manual partitioning. On Ubuntu, I did manual partitioning too, since it was not clear to me what the program was going to do if I did not.

My hard disk was actually already partitioned into two partitions. In other words, it had two Windows systems on it. That is common; the second Windows system is a very small one, intended to recover your system if something happens to the normal Windows system. You must reduce the disk size of the big, normal Windows system to make room for Linux. Select the big Windows partition and then the option that reduces it size. Do not reduce the size to whatever is stated as the minimum. Not all software runs on Linux, so you may still need Windows, and then you need some free Windows disk space to put your stuff.

Resizing the Windows system will give you free space for Linux. (If you already had a Linux system that you are completely replacing, you would instead be deleting that to create the free space.)

• In Debian, you can now simply select "automatically partition the free space." It will create a Linux system disk and a swap space. It did not make the swap space big enough to hibernate on my machines. But I am not a bear.
• In Ubuntu, you must create the two separately. Create first the Linux disk partition, giving it all free space except for a couple of gigabytes (GB, 1 GB = 1000 MB = 1000^2 kB = 1000^3 B, or 1 GB = 1024 MB = 1024^2 kB = 1024^3 B, depending on who you talk to), or so for swap space. Note: if you want to be able to hibernate your machine, the swap space must be greater than your RAM memory. Since I have 4 GB of RAM on my machine I chose a swap space a bit bigger than 1024^3 bytes, so that all of RAM can be written to swap if needed. If you have less RAM, you should still keep a couple of GB of swap space. Select menu option "/" for the Linux disk. Then select the remaining free space and put menu option "swap space" in it.

I may note that I never use hibernate: I find it a safer idea to save my work and shut down the system instead. Then, unless my hard disk gets corrupted somehow, I know that my work is safe.