Linux for dummies pdf download

Just make a note of which drive is which as far as the computer sees them: You want to make sure that you leave your Microsoft Windows installation untouched.

All you need to know is which drive Windows or Linux is first and which is second as far as the computer is concerned. Accidents can and often do happen! You need to work through this entire chapter.

You keep your Windows disk as-is without any modifications. If you take this approach, back up your original Windows files before installing Linux, and then restore them in the new Windows virtual machine. Yet another option is a new feature included in the Ubuntu LiveCD.

The Windows Ubuntu Installer Wubi is an application you can use to create the Ubuntu Linux partition as a normal file inside an existing Windows partition, after which it installs Linux as a Windows application.

Because we hate to hear screams of anguish from new Linux users, take a moment to assess what you have and what you need. The following sections walk through the processes required to get your computer ready for a dual-boot environment. Otherwise, during installation, Windows overwrites the part of your hard drive that Linux uses to store its boot menu. This factor can create a mess later when you want to boot back into Linux! Then after you have Windows installed, return here.

Installing a second hard drive Next to replacing the existing operating system, the second easiest way to get Linux onto a computer is to install a second hard drive. Many computers support multiple hard drives, whether chained together on the same disk cable or connected via multiple cables. Usually you can determine how your disk controller is configured by looking at the BIOS setup screen for your computer.

The BIOS setup screen controls the basic hardware configuration on the computer. Figure shows an example of the disk-controller area on a BIOS screen. How you get to the BIOS screen depends on your computer. All it takes is pressing a secret key usually F12 or ESC when your computer first starts. Sometimes the computer tells you on-screen what key to press to enter the BIOS. The standard disk-controller cards in most computers allow up to two devices per controller; often computers have more than one controller installed on the motherboard.

If you see only one cable with an empty connector on it, you should be okay also. The example in Figure shows two hard drive controllers, called a primary and a secondary.

Each hard drive controller can support two devices called a master and a slave. This setup allows you to connect a total of four separate devices to the computer. Be careful to take these drives into account when you evaluate your disk-controller situation. When you have your partitions ready, you have a place to put Linux.

Three types of partitions are available: primary, extended, and logical. A hard drive can have three primary partitions and one extended partition. Inside the extended partition, you can have up to 12 logical partitions — think of an extended partition as just a cardboard box that contains the logical partitions. Logical partitions hold data; extended partitions hold logical partitions. Make a note of the partition you dedicate to Windows and the one you dedicate to Linux.

Jot down which hard drive each partition is on the first, second, third, and so on and the number of each partition on the disk first, second, and so on. You are not limited to a dual boot. You can have three or more operating systems on the computer if you have room. Before you change anything, be sure you collect some important information about your current setup — in particular, these two major things: a whether you have any unpartitioned space left on your hard drive s and b if you do, how much.

Practically speaking, 20GB might be a better amount to shoot for — at minimum. Peeking at your partitions in Windows Vista The Windows Vista operating system is more security minded than previous versions of Windows. No surprise that you have to use an account with administrative privileges to follow the steps. The Vista Control Panel opens. Select Classic View if necessary. Double-click Administrative Tools.

The window displays the various administrative tools available in Vista. Double-click Computer Management. The window displays the various tools available in Vista to manage your computer. You may have to click Continue to get to this dialog box. In the left pane, select Disk Management. The Disk Management tool opens see Figure You may also see some boxes that say Unallocated. If you find an unallocated partition of 10GB or larger, make a note of which disk this partition is on and the numbered partition it occupies on that disk.

You need that information to install Linux in Chapter 3. Do not try to resize Windows Vista partitions unless a tool specifically states that it can safely do so. After you log on, follow these steps: 1. Open the Administrative Tools folder and double-click the Computer Management icon. In the left pane of the Computer Management application, click the Disk Management folder icon. The important thing to look for here is the word Unallocated in the Disk listing. Unallocated partitions are not assigned to any operating system and are available for use in your Linux installation.

Make a note of which disk this partition is on and what its partition number is on that disk. You use that information when you install your Linux distribution in Chapter 3.

You can wipe out your data if you make any changes with it. If you see the large disk prompt, choose Y at this prompt and then press Enter. Display the current drive-partition information.

If you have more than one hard drive in your computer, FDISK displays a fifth menu choice so you can change between disks. Type 5 and press Enter. Type the number of the disk you want and then press Enter. To display partition information for the disk number displayed, type 4 and press Enter.

Figure indicates that no free, unallocated disk space is available on the drive. In all these situations, you need to move data around to make room — not only to install Linux but also to store any files you want to keep in your Linux filesystem.

The key is to determine if you have extra space available on your existing C: drive that you can convert into a separate partition. All the Windows operating systems allow you to easily see how much space is available on the C: drive. Double-click My Computer to open the Computer Management tool. Highlight your first drive. You see something like what is shown in Figure If you find that your Windows drives are all too full and you have no room to spare or you download and save too many audio, video, or graphics files , it may be time to save some of your files to CDs or DVDs so you can delete them from your hard drive.

Chapter 2: Prepping Your Computer for Linux Defragmenting files During the normal course of using your workstation, the Windows system writes pieces of files at random places on the hard drive. This can spread data out over the entire disk. This is commonly done using a defragmenting tool. Defragmenting is a common process in the Windows world.

As Windows creates and removes files, file data gets split into various blocks scattered around the hard drive. Defragmenting reassembles the blocks so they form contiguous files, and puts those files in an equally contiguous area near the beginning of the hard drive area. All versions of Windows include a utility for defragmenting the hard drive. You can get to the defragmentation utility from the Computer Management window. Just select the Disk Defragmenter option.

Windows XP provides a handy defragmenter window that shows progress as files are moved about, as shown in Figure Often it takes more than one pass to get all the files into a common area. Figure The Windows 98 Disk Defragmenter utility. Parts of this section can help you out; they address fixing general hardware problems.

Other chapters address more specific hardware issues such as sound cards Chapter 13 , wireless cards Chapter 9 , and so on. The biggest problem areas are wireless cards and the very latest whiz-bang multimedia hardware — such as fancy new versions of video cards, sound cards, and image scanners. Supported and Compatible are fine most of the time for a home user.

Ultimately, the best way to tell whether a piece of hardware is supported is to do a Web search. Go to www. No endorsement of any hardware mentioned as examples is implied here, of course. Such a search is likely to show you what problems and successes people have run into with that particular piece of hardware.

A great place to start is www. The point is to look and see whether they exist. The driver the software that tells the operating system how to use the hardware for download might actually be included in your Linux installation.

Only download the driver from the vendor if this is the only way you can get it. If worst comes to worst, you might not find any information on the hardware in question involving Linux. Try it anyway if you already have the item.

You may find that it works fine. Or you might not be able to use the very latest features, whereas the rest works just fine for example, with a latest-generation video card, the newest fancy features might not work, but you can still use it as a generic SVGA at the very least.

See www. However, laptops often contain WinModems. This is a standard for laptops, and provides a way to plug in additional feature cards. If your computer is already running Windows, you can collect a lot of information from the Windows environment. Then choose the Device Manager menu to access the list of hardware installed on your machine as shown in Figure You can double-click each item within the Device Manager to display the corresponding details. A warning dialog box will appear; when it does, click Continue.

Hardware, from the Internet. The Dr. This tool is shareware, and the usage and fee information is available from the Gebhard Software Web site at www. On some systems, the video information is displayed from the BIOS as the computer boots.

You may have to reboot several times to read the information if it goes by too fast. Also, some systems display the PCI components and their settings as the system is starting up. You may have to reboot several times to gather all the information.

You can then unfreeze it by pressing any key when you have finished reading. Stored in a small area of memory and retained by a battery, this is sometimes referred to as CMOS Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor , which indicates the type of computer chip that can store and retain information. The amount of information stored in the BIOS can range from very little to quite a lot. If you choose to access the BIOS, make sure you do so before any operating systems load. Most manufacturers indicate the keyboard key or key sequence that gets you into the BIOS or Setup on-screen when the system is starting up — for example, Press Del to enter Setup.

Some BIOS environments also use the function keys; look for a list of function-key options at the top or bottom of the screen. Be especially leery of labels on hardware boxes and Web sites that include the term Win as in Windows. These components, such as WinModems, rely on Microsoft Windows to be able to function — even worse, the packaging may show nothing that suggests this limitation.

Only a very slight chance exists that you can find a Linux driver for Win hardware. If you do find one, copy it to a storage device such as a CD or flash drive before you install Linux. For more information about WinModems in particular, see Chapter 8. You need to copy these disc images to your hard drive before you burn them onto separate bootable CD or DVDs.

Wikis are becoming popular for generating community-based support sites because anyone with the desire to contribute can pitch in with a minimum of hassle. This chapter provides the details. The installer is actually pretty smart. The installer is just adjusting what it offers based on the hardware in your system and what you choose to install.

In this chapter, we show you how to install a Linux desktop on your personal computer. If you want to install a Linux server on your network, plenty of other books focus on servers. It is just not possible to cover both desktop and server functions to a satisfying depth in a book of this size. Many systems today are configured to do this already, so you may not need to make any changes. For some systems, you need to press a key during the boot process to bring up a menu, which allows you to select which device to boot from.

Once you get the hang of installing Linux using these methods, you can tackle just about any Linux installation out there. For example, one distribution may present account creation before disk partitions; another may reverse the order of those two topics. Most distributions go through the same basic choices, so reading this chapter could still be helpful for something other than Ubuntu or Fedora.

On the other hand, if you burned your own CDs or DVD, you may be experiencing one of two different problems. First, the burn may have become corrupted; to solve this problem, try burning the disc again at a slower speed.

If the newly burned disc also fails the media check, the file s may have become corrupted during download. To solve this problem, download the disc image again. Ubuntu guides you through all the steps required to set up the system, and then installs the entire Ubuntu system without prompting you for too much information. This is a common format used for distributing Linux distributions. Just follow these steps: 1. When you start the Ubuntu installation, the first window you get is the Language window.

Select the language to use for the installation, then click Forward. This selects the language Ubuntu uses to display text messages used during the installation process, plus sets the default language used when the operating system runs. Each individual application may or may not detect the default language configured in Ubuntu.

The second window in the installation process allows you to select the time zone for your area. Select a time zone and then click Forward.

This window allows you to select your location via either the map or the drop-down menu. Although selecting the time zone from the graphical map sounds like a good idea, it can often be a challenge, depending on how many cities Ubuntu recognizes around your particular city. While this may sound like a simple option, it can get complicated if you have a keyboard that includes special keys. Ubuntu recognizes hundreds of different keyboard types, and it lists them all in the keyboard selection window.

Select a keyboard, then click Forward. The Keyboard configuration window lists the different types of keyboards commonly used based on your country. Ubuntu provides a suggested option for you based on what it detects as your keyboard. This may or may not be right. If you want to fine-tune things, the lower portion of the window allows you to experiment. On the left side is a list of countries; on the right side is a list of the different known keyboard types used in the country selected.

Select your country from the left-side list first; then select your keyboard type from the right-side list. You can click in the right-side list and start to type the name of your keyboard type to jump quickly to that selection.

Under the two listings is an area where you can test the keyboard selection. Just type any special or unique characters available on your keyboard to see whether the setting you selected produces the proper characters. The next step in the installation is quite possibly the most important, and the most complicated. You tell the Ubuntu installer exactly where to place the Ubuntu operating system on your system. One bad move here can really ruin your day.

If you went through the steps in Chapter 2, you should be all set for this step. Figure shows an example of what the partition window looks like. Select a disk setup method and then click Forward. If you want to run an Ubuntu-only workstation, this is the quickest and easiest way to go. If you select this method, skip to Step Be careful — this is the default installation option! When you choose to install Ubuntu on the entire hard drive, any previously installed operating system and data will be removed.

Be sure to back up any important files you have before you do the Ubuntu installation. It provides a partition utility, shown in Figure , for you to create, edit, or delete hard-drive partitions. The manual partition utility displays the current hard drives, along with any existing partitions configured in them.

Each hard drive appears as a separate item in the partition listing and is assigned a device name such as sda for the first hard drive and sdb for the second hard drive. You can manually remove, modify, or create individual partitions on any hard drives installed on the system. If you choose to partition an existing operating system, remember that bad things can and often do happen. Be sure you remember your disk-space requirements determined in Chapter 2 to use here!

To resize an existing Windows partition, select the partition from the partition list, and then click the Edit Partition button. You can then resize the partition to the amount you want to free up space make sure you freed up the space as shown in Chapter 2 to create a new partition.

When you have empty space on the hard drive, or if you have a second hard drive, click the New Partition button to create the new partition. The Create Partition window appears, allowing you to select the size of the new partition. You can add the new partition to the empty space on the first hard drive, or add it to the second hard drive.

Select a filesystem for your Ubuntu partition in the Create Partition window. Part of the manual partition process is to assign a filesystem to each partition. A filesystem is a method used for storing and accessing files on the partition; lots of different filesystem formats are available.

Unlike some other operating systems, Ubuntu supports several different filesystems. Table shows the filesystem types available for you when creating disk partitions in Ubuntu.

Table Ubuntu Partition Filesystem Type Partition Type Description ext3 A popular Linux journaling filesystem more about that in a minute that is an extension over the original Linux ext2 filesystem. ReiserFS The first journaling filesystem supported in Linux. The most common partition type and the default used by the Ubuntu guided methods is the ext3 format.

This format provides Ubuntu with a journaling filesystem that records file changes in a log file before it attempts to commit them to the disk. If the system should crash before it can properly commit the data, the filesystem uses the journal that is, the log file to finish committing the pending files to disk; then it returns the disk to a normal state.

Whatever your Linux needs — work, fun, or just a hobby — this bestselling, evergreen guide will get you up and coding in the open source revolution in no time at all. Your email address will not be published. Fortunately, Linux provides fairly easy ways to find help, as shown here: Type This.

To Find This. Can also be used as apropos [keyword]. I just want is a Win10 replacement , and do not need any certification. Is there any Linux that may do the task to get rid of Microsoft for ever?

It depends on what you use your computer for? If you do not use some Windows-specific programs, you can use any mainstream distribution like Ubuntu, Mint or even the Windows-look alike Zorin OS for this purpose. Please log in again. The login page will open in a new tab. After logging in you can close it and return to this page. Introduction to Linux by Linux Foundation [Video Course] If you have no idea about what is Linux and you want to get started with it, I suggest you to go ahead with the free video course provided by the Linux Foundation on edX.

Introduction To Linux. Linux Journey [Online Portal] Not official and perhaps not very popular. My advice, bookmark this website: Linux Journey. Learn Linux In 5 Days. Linux Fundamentals [eBook] This free eBook by Paul Cobbaut teaches you about Linux history, installation and focuses on the basic Linux commands you should know. You can get the book from the link below: Linux Fundamentals.

Advanced Linux Programming [eBook] As the name suggests, this is for advanced users who are or want to develop software for Linux. Advanced Linux Programming.

Linux From Scratch [eBook] If you think you know enough about Linux and you are a pro, then why not create your own Linux distribution? Linux From Scratch. The Linux Command Line. Bash Reference Manual. Bash Guide for Beginners [eBook] If you just want to get started with Bash scripting, this could be a good companion for you. Bash Guide for Beginners. Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide [eBook] If you think you already know basics of Bash scripting and you want to take your skills to the next level, this is what you need.

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