In the past, installing UNIX of any kind has been a difficult task. Today's Linux distributions, as well as the newer Solaris and *BSD variants, have installation programs and utilities to make installation and configuration easier than ever.
Backup Your Data First!!!
When doing any task of this magnitude on your computer, or even in everyday computing, you should always back up the data on your machine. Nothing is more frustrating than to have to reconstruct lost data from scratch. Backing up your data ensures that your data is safe.
Even if you do not plan to convert to Linux, you still need to get in the habit of backing up your data on your hard drive.
Start with a Full Backup First
If you are just starting a backup plan, or even if you have not backed your data up in a while, you will need to do a full backup. For those of you not familiar, backing up data means you are making a backup copy of your data (personal settings, photos, videos, documents, audio clips, etc.) to another storage medium for safekeeping.
A Full Backup means you will need to backup everything stored in your home directories on your system. If you are a system administrator, a Full Backup to you means backing up all home directories in your system, and maybe global settings for software applications and network configuration.
In any case, you can use a CD/DVD burning application to make a full backup of your system to CD or DVD disks. Ideally, DVD-R DL and DVD+R DL discs are best for this type of backup as they have storage capacities of 8.5GB per disc. However, your DVD burner must be able to support the medium in order to create such backups. For most of us, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, and DVD+RW will do for such purposes.
Bonus: If you are using DVD+RW discs, you can rewrite the discs by simply rewriting on top of the old data. No reformatting is needed for these type of discs. DVD-RAM discs take the concept one step further by reading and writing the data directly to the DVD-RAM disc in much the same way as data is written to a floppy diskette. Unlike floppies, you must still use a CD burning application to write to DVD-RAM discs.
In any case, you must do a full backup of your data before you commit your hard disks to Linux.
Try a Live CD
The current trend for Linux is to burn a CD containing a fully configured Linux distribution of which you can boot and use directly from the CD or DVD. These are called Live CD distributions, and are a safe way to try Linux before installing the distribution on your hard drive. Live distributions are also tools for safely repairing Windows and Linux PCs whose file systems have been damaged, or for diagosing hardware installed on your PC.
Next, we need to plan how to partition your hard drive. Once you have partitioned the hard drive go to the next step (shown below).
Install Linux
Now, choose your distribution, place it in the CD-ROM or DVD-ROM and restart your system. Most systems built over the past ten years can boot from a CD-ROM or DVD-ROM, or can be made, through a single download, to boot from a CD-ROM or DVD-ROM. If your system cannot boot from a CD-ROM, chances are it is too old to run a modern Linux distribution, as it may not have the system memory needed for running today's distributions. Of course, you can always find an older Linux distribution that is usable on that system.
Create a Normal User Account for Your Linux System
During the installation process, you will be creating two accounts, the system administrator account, called root, and a normal user account.
Most of the time you should use your normal user account for everyday tasks. Only if you are doing an extensive amount of system administration should you use the root account. Using the normal user account minimizes the possibility of irreparable (usually accidental) damage to your Linux machine.
If you are using Ubuntu, your system administrator password is the same as the normal user account for the first user account your create, which should have been created at the time of Ubuntu installation.
Most Hardware Should Be Setup Already
Modern distributions should have your system hardware setup for you automatically. The major distributions also contain utilities that allow you to set up and/or configure your hardware for specific needs. Some devices, such as Hewlett-Packard's all-in one machines, need special configuration.
Of course, Linux is not perfect when it comes to being ready out of the box, but neither is Windows. One of the reasons I recommend SimplyMEPIS, PCLinuxOS, or Mandriva for those just starting out is that they provide the best configuration tools of any distribution available.
