In Part 1 of this installation and setup guide we looked at downloading, verifying, writing to CD and booting with the OzOS Live iso image. Now we get to the fun part.
5. Installing OzOS “Monte Carlo” to a hard drive on your computer.
Take a deep breath. If this is your first experience of a Linux desktop installation there are few things you need to decide BEFORE you start the installer (from an icon on the LiveCD desktop). Please take your time reading this guide and doing any additional reading you might need to feel comfortable installing a new OS on your computer. This is not something that many people do very often and some preparation is very worthwhile - including making your own notes for reference during the install.
If you are installing OzOS on a “new” machine (one that doesn't have an existing Operating System installed) or you fully intend to over-write the existing contents of the hard disk, you could go right ahead and double-click the “install” icon the OZOS Live desktop. You have nothing to loose. May the force be with you.
But if you want to keep either your existing OS (Windows or another Linux distro) or you want to have access to data already on the computer's hard drive, you should do a backup before you start.
Its worth repeating that advice:
BACKUP YOUR EXISTING INSTALLATION NOW!
If it is Windows that you want to keep (in a dual-boot setup with OzOS), it is also important that you have your Windows installation or recovery CD available. Hopefully, you will not need it – but if the installation fails (a rare event) or you later decide to delete OzOS and go back to a Windows-only setup, you will need that disk.
Again, for Windows users who want a dual-boot set up, you will first need to aggressively defragment (DEFRAG) your harddrive/s. Windows spreads files and fragments of files all over a disk (tsk, tsk) and OzOS needs some continuous free space to create a partition to install into. You might need to run defrag several times or delete (temporarily) your Windows swap file to create the free space – we'd suggest at least 5 GB as a minimum - with 10Gb preferred. This step is not necessary if your existing OS is Linux (or any other *nix OS) because they don't fragment files like Windows does. It is also unnecessary if you are installing Ubuntu onto an empty separate physical drive rather than the one with Windows already on it.
As an aside, if you are thinking “I'll just install OzOS for the moment, but reinstall Windows later and dual boot” – Think again. While that is possible (see this link for instructions), it is fraught with danger Will Robinson. Windows (all versions, but especially Vista), is just not comfortable sharing a computer (or the planet, really). It really wants to be the first (and preferrably only) OS on your system. This is really an issue with Windows "boot loader" which will need additional tweaking if you install Windows after Linux. OK, it may not be all that dramatic - but nor is it as straight-forward as the traditional windows-first model. You have been warned.
The OzOS installer will ask you a few questions about how you want it to partition your hard drives. In a dual-boot set up on a single hard disk, you will generally be telling it to reduce the size of the partition currently occupied by your existing OS and files and to create at least two new partitions – a small swap partition and the partition on which OzOS will be installed. This “root” partition is called “/” (forward slash, otherwise pronounced “root”). If you are installing OzOS on a separate physical drive, you will still need to create the root and swap partitions.
You can also create other partitions at this stage. Some people prefer to create a separate partition for the directory called “home” (/home) which will hold all their personal files and settings. There are several advantage in setting up a separate /home partition. If you ever need to recover a borked installation or you simply want to change distros, the /home partition can be left intact when you replace, or re-install, everything else. There's a “How to” about this here. Some people also like to create a partition to allow seamless file sharing between Windows and Linux on dual boot systems. They do this by having a separate partition formatted with the FAT32 folesystem which can be read by both OSs.
It is worth taking a bit of time to plan how you will partition a dual boot system. If either Windows or a Linux distro have too little space, the installation may fail or one will run into space problems soon after you do the install.
There are several excellent references to guide you through the partitioning process.
We recommend the following:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WindowsDualBoot
http://users.bigpond.net.au/hermanzone/
http://apcmag.com/the_definitive_dualbooting_guide_linux_vista_and_xp_st...
http://neosmart.net/wiki/display/EBCD/Ubuntu (dual booting Ubuntu and Vista)
It is certainly also possible to use disk partitioning tools (there's one called “gparted” on the LiveCD) to do all the partition resizing, naming and formatting before you start the installer. Try not to reformat your resized Windows partition. That would be bad.
Apart from deciding and implementing your partitioning options, the install process is very simple. You will be asked a few questions (your name, timezone/location and a password). Don't forget the password. The LiveCD doesn't need one but a full install certainly does. You will be guided through the first few steps in the install process. Once the file copying starts, you can go and have a cup of coffee (or whatever). It will take anywhere between 10 and 30 minutes to finish and you will be invited to reboot (and to remove the CD from its drive). Go for it.
This is the moment of truth. If everything has gone OK, you will get a few “normal” boot screens and then a very plain (white on black) menu something like this:
This is the delightfully named “grub” (or more correctly, the “grub menu”). By default it will boot to your new OzOS login screen - we hope you remember that user name and password you entered during installation. (IF you did THEN log in. ELSE go back to step 5).
You can change which OS boots by default and also the time available to select an alternative. (Hopefully, if you chose to dual-boot, your other OS is listed on the grub menu – if not, its probably still there but you will need to edit the menu) There are lots of other things about the grub menu that can be changed too – including whether or not it displays over a background image. We'll leave you to explore the possibilities by directing you to GRUB link
By this stage, having explored the default OzOS desktop with the LiveCD, you should be reasonably familiar with the layout and functions (left-click on the desktop for the main menu, right-click for your “Favorites”, the i-bar and the i-box, the desktop switcher etc.) No doubt you will want to change at least some things about the look and feel of your desktop and install some new applications. e17 has lots of options and there's heaps of software available.
6. Completing the Installation
Before you start tweaking and installing things on a fresh OzOS installation, here's a couple of things we recommend you do first:
Update your installation
Linux distros get irregular updates via the net. These updates may plug security holes, fix software bugs or update packages (programs) to newer versions. It is a really, really good idea to keep up to date. When we packaged OzOS “Monte Carlo” it was fully up to date. But that was what? hours, days, weeks, months ago?
You should immediately update your installation.
OzOS uses the Debian/Ubuntu package management system which is brilliant at managing this update process.
Without going into chapter and verse on Debian package management (we'll get to that some other time!), here's a quick and easy guide to getting your updates installed:
For the purposes of this mini “How To” we are going to start the inbuilt package management “front end” program called “Synaptic Package Manager”
- By default, OzOS has Synaptic on the “Favorites” menu – so use the mouse to right-click on the desktop and select “Synaptic Package Manager”
- You will need to enter your password.
- The Synaptic window will appear.
- You will be using the first three buttons on the bar under the menus - “Reload”' “Mark All Updates” and “Apply”. Don't worry if “Apply” is “grayed out”.
- Click on “Reload” to tell Synaptic to fetch an updated list of all the software in the Ubuntu and OzOS Repositories (or “repos” - the online servers that hold all available software). It may take a minute or two until all the lists are downloaded (there are more that 10,000 packages!)
- When that's done, click “Mark All Updates”. If there are updates, the “Apply” button will become active.
- Click “Apply” and you will be presented with a dialog box showing information about the available updates (including the number and total size of packages with updates).
We strongly suggest you accept them all. Click “Apply” on the dialog box and sit back while the packages download and install. - It may take a while (you will be presented with an estimate of total download time), but your intervention is probably not needed (although occasionally during installation you may be asked to agree to having a configuration file overwritten – just agree at this stage.)
While the download is happening, there's no reason not to get on with other things (Linux really does multi-task and so can you!). Just don't try to start another package management task – Synaptic doesn't like that and you will be told to stop doing it.
When the download and installation are complete, you can close Synaptic .
There are several other ways to update and install new software, but Synaptic is probably the one you will come back to over and over again. We have provided a separate "How To" on software installation which goes through the whole process. Check it out sometime.
More experienced users will probably scoff at the above walk-though and do exactly the same thing with a couple of commands typed into a terminal window (sudo apt-get update and sudo apt-get upgrade). Bully for them. You could also open a terminal window and type gksudo update-manager. That's yet another way.
Update the e17 files
Another similar thing we'd recommend is specific to OzOS – updating the files that run the e17 desktop manager. The OzOS implementation of e17 is not in “normal” repositories but in another kind of server arrangement (called cvs) that suits programs under heavy development. You don't have to do this update very often, but its a good idea to do it on a fresh install (and maybe every month or so if you want to remain up-to-date)
Again there are a couple of different ways to run e17 updates.
The easiest way is to run a menu-driven tool (under Applications>System>Update e17 on your right-click menu).
The e17_update will start working. You can watch progress but its pretty boring. It may take quite a while, so don't just sit there - do something useful until it finishes. You could, for example, reopen Synaptic and use the “search” button to find some interesting packages. Or you could click this link and take a browse through our very own apt:foo page for some packages you might like. apt:foo is like using Synaptic from a web page. Or it could actually be a ferret.
When the e17_update is finished, you should have a fully up-to-date installation of OzOS “Monte Carlo”. Enjoy the freedom! Don't do anything silly and tuck your shirt in.
We have prepared a few more “How-tos” for new users of OzOS and a FAQ to help you better cope with any issues that do arise. The OzOS Forums on CafeLinux are also available if you need help. If you do have any problems that aren't covered in any of these existing sources, please do post a report on the forums. That is one very important way you can contribute to making OzOS more “bullet-proof”.
Aubrey
CafeLinux Dogsbody and
official OzOS crash-test dummy
http://www.linuxfortravelers.com/burn-the-downloaded-ubuntu-file-to-a-bl...
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HowToMD5SUM
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BurningIsoHowto
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/GraphicalInstall
http://neosmart.net/wiki/display/EBCD/Ubuntu (dual booting Ubuntu and Vista)
