Boy, was I ever disappointed the first time I tried out Linux. Under Windows, I downloaded the appropriate file, burned it to a CD (the live installers were smaller back then), left the disc in the drive, and rebooted. I was pumped up, anticipating this huge change in my tech life.
And up came Windows.
Okay, it wasn't really Windows, it was Ubuntu. But it seemed an awful lot like Windows. It had a taskbar (at the top of the screen), icons on the desktop, and a main menu for finding the installed programs. Double-clicking an icon activated the designated program. Right-clicking an icon gave me a mini-menu of choices like in Windows, even if they were phrased a bit differently. I opened the word processor, the music player, the web browser, the video player, and more. The differences between them and the equivalent Windows programs that I used were no greater than between my preferred Windows programs and other Windows programs which I had tried out at times.
What a ripoff! I had been expecting something dramatic, something that would make me feel dazzled by a breathtaking leap forward in my cyber geekdom, something that would make me believe I had been transported to the science station on the bridge of the starship Enterprise.
If I wasn't dazzled, couldn't I at least be bewildered and challenged? This was Linux, why wasn't I being forced to desperately type out arcane commands like the DOS and CP/M commands I had mastered when Windows was still but a gleam in Bill Gates' eye?
Sure, it looked kind of cool, like Windows' somewhat exotic cousin from some faraway land. But, bottom line, I just pointed and clicked and selected menu actions like I had already been doing for many years.
Prepare yourself to be disappointed. We are about to take a journey to the familiar, where you will be able to put your existing computing skills to use without having to learn everything all over again. Your next stop, the Linux Zone [cue mysterious music].
Actually, I think you will be more pleasantly surprised than disappointed. Most of us aren't such tech gearheads that we look forward to learning how to navigate onscreen using an Elbow Touchpad or needing to learn Klingon to type in commands. We just want to read our mail, browse our favorite websites, compose a letter or create a spreadsheet, and do dozens of other routine tasks. With modern versions of Linux, you will be doing all of those things within minutes of starting your first Linux session and within a half hour you will probably barely notice that you're not doing them in Windows anymore.
In my previous article, An Introductory Look at Linux, you saw that Linux can do a lot of handy things, often in easier or better ways than Windows, and that you can customize its look-and-feel to suit your fancy. But you also saw that it's not all that different so you will pick it up quickly. Perhaps I will do a future article to explore some actions and options that are unique to Linux, but for now, let's just get you started and then you can learn the fun way: trying things out on your own.
"Live Installs" to demo Linux
We will create a “live install” of Linux Mint, one of the most popular “distros” (versions) of Linux. With the live install, you can try out Mint without any risk whatsoever to your computer: it runs entirely in memory and doesn't change anything on your hard drive. When you decide to exit the Mint demo, it will simply vanish away and the next time your computer starts up Windows will load just like it always does.
If you enjoy the experience and want to run Mint regularly, either in place of or along with Windows by choosing Linux or Windows at startup, you can double-click the Install Linux Mint icon during the demonstration. That will change your computer, running a graphical installation routine to let you put Linux Mint on your hard drive. So this article should be useful even if you already know you want to install Linux; you will need to do the procedures described here to set up a USB stick which you use for the demo as well as the installation.
What follows will apply to many popular distros of Linux as well, such as Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Xubuntu, Kubuntu, Manjaro, Mandriva, and more. You can visit the website of distros you want to try out, download the installer (an ISO file) and then use a Linux-on-USB-stick tool described below to create a “live install” of each one.
About USB sticks
To get started, let's first define an important term that I will toss around during this article: what is a USB stick? You may know it by other names, like thumb drive, pendrive, key drive, or USB drive. It's those little doohickeys that often fit on a keychain and have a USB connector, frequently covered by a removable cap. Many people use them to store a backup copy of their important files or to transfer files from a computer to another computer or other device.
What a USB stick is not is a memory card, like those tiny SD cards that you slide into your camera or tablet for extra storage capacity. Most modern PCs will boot (start up the operating system) from a USB stick but many will not boot from a memory card.
Some older PCs may not allow you to boot from a USB stick. In that case, you can create a live install on a DVD and run it. Like a USB stick, it will let you demo Linux and it will have an icon or option to let you install the Linux distro if you wish. A DVD can be handy because they're cheap and you can give them away to friends or family to use whereas a USB stick is a bit more costly. On the other hand, a DVD is frozen in time with the version you put on it; a USB stick can easily be updated with the newest version of your favorite distro (plus, we will see later how you can use it to give yourself your own personal Linux computer-on-the-go with your personal data files).
I won't go into the process of creating live installs on DVDs here. It's pretty easy, just burning the ISO to DVD in Windows like you may have done for other files at times. If you need the DVD option, Google is your friend.
You will probably need a USB stick that has at least 1 GB of capacity but many distros will need 2 GB or slightly more to be installed successfully on the stick. Even better, buy a stick with 4 or more GB and you can use the handy trick mentioned above which I will describe later in this article.
Your USB stick should either be empty or not have any files on it that you want to preserve. The programs we will use will wipe the stick's contents in order to make the stick bootable (that is, to set up special instruction files your PC can use to load and run the selected Linux distro at startup).
Getting the installation file of a distro to test drive
You will need something to put on the USB stick: the code and programs of the Linux distro that you wish to try out or install. These are usually packaged in a single large file which special programs can use to create the various files and folders to put on your USB stick. That file type is called an ISO and, unsurprisingly, it has ISO as the 3-letter extension of the filename; for example, linuxmint-17.3-cinnamon-64bit.iso.
You can download the ISO for Linux Mint at https://www.linuxmint.com/download.php. It looks confusing, but don't worry! There are options for various “flavors” of Mint. In my previous article, I told you that Mint comes with its own unique interface, or desktop environment, named Cinnamon. The Mint team also offer an edition with another popular desktop, MATE, for those who prefer it. There are also options to include codecs (special bits of software for playing music and video files) as well as editions meant for manufacturers, to install Mint on new computers like in an assembly line.
For now, the only decision you really need to make is between 32-bit and 64-bit. If your PC has 4 or more GB of memory (RAM), you will need to use the 64-bit edition (so that Linux can properly use all of that memory). If your computer is more than 4 or 5 years old, and has less than 4 GB of RAM, it may use an older CPU that only understands 32-bit operations.
In Windows, you can check to see if Windows (and the computer) are using 64-bits or not by clicking Start, then right-clicking My Computer, then selecting Properties; in the System section, you will see "x64 Edition" if it is using 64 bits. When in doubt, try the 64-bit edition and the installer will let you know that's a mistake with an error message.
So, for most people, click the 64-bit Cinnamon edition and it will take you to the download page for it. There you will find many links because secure copies of that ISO are stored on cooperating servers around the world. Any link will work but if you pick one closer to you geographically, it will probably download much faster than one on the other side of the globe.
You will also see a panel at the top of the page with information about the ISO. One important item is called MD5 and it has a long complicated alphanumeric value. It is a checksum, a clever way of verifying that the file you download is free of errors (or malicious tampering). Basically, a program can scan the file and calculate the MD5 number based on every single byte in it; if even a single byte changes, a vastly different MD5 checksum will be the result and you will know something is awry and that you should try downloading again or perhaps switch to the link of a different server.
Newer versions of Windows have a tool for checking the MD5 number. To use it, you need to open a DOS command box. Using the file manager, Explorer, you right-click on the folder where you saved the downloaded ISO and choose "Open command window here" from the context menu. In the DOS box, type:
CertUtil -hashfile downloadedfilename.iso MD5
[Note: replace downloadedfilename.iso with the actual filename.ext when you type this command]
The resulting checksum should match that on the Mint download page.
Pre-Vista versions of Windows need to install a checksum program. You can find instructions here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/841290.
Making a USB live install stick
There are a number of Windows programs that create Linux live installs for you. Google the topic and you may find one you like better than my suggestion. I have barely used Windows for several years but when I did I found one such program that worked well for me: LinuxLive USB Creator, abbreviated as LiLi.
LinuxLive USB Creator has a feature, which I did not find in similar programs, that you might like: it lets you try out a Linux distro within Windows itself, running in a special kind of window called a virtual machine. So you can just start up the Linux distro without even having to reboot your PC.
Lili has a detailed step-by-step guide on its website, which I encourage you to read and follow. It's actually a fairly simple process and I will condense the main steps for you here.
Notice that at each step, LiLi displays a red-yellow-green traffic light.
- Red will tell you that the step is incomplete or incorrectly done
- Yellow means there may be an option you want to adjust still but nothing problematic
- Green means that step is complete and correctly done
Step 1
Select your USB stick from a dropdown list of such devices currently inserted in your PC.
Step 2
Select the source of the distro you are going to put on the USB stick. Generally you will click the ISO/IMG/ZIP button and then navigate to the ISO file you downloaded from the Linux Mint site or from another distro's website. If you didn't already download an ISO, LiLi can do it for you if you click the Download button.
Step 3
You can choose to make your USB-stick Linux sessions persistent. That means when you save a document, it really will get saved on the USB stick rather than simply vanishing, like everything else about the Linux session, when you shut down the PC. Also, you could download and install programs from the Software Manager, customize your desktop, maintain your high scores in solitaire, and so on. This option will let you choose the amount of space on the USB stick to dedicate for saving your files, settings, and installed programs. Set aside 200MB to 500MB for it, if you wish, and see my tip below for a better way to save your personal documents, spreadsheets, and other files you create.
Step 4
Set some options in this next step.
- You can “hide” the Linux distro files on your USB stick; that means setting the file and folder attributes to “hidden” which Windows does by default for its own system files. It can prevent you from accidentally deleting a file since you will never see it to accidentally click. Personally, I don't hide the files; I just leave that entire partition of the USB stick alone, as per the tip I write about below.
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LiLi can format your USB stick to use the FAT32 file system, native to Windows and compatible with almost all operating systems. Doing so will erase all data on the stick (or the partition) which is fine because you are just going to keep the files and folders for the live install on it anyway.
- The last option in this section is to let you run Mint (or another distro, if you downloaded it) inside a window on Windows itself, in the virtual machine that I described above. Leave it unchecked if you don't plan to do that as it adds a lot of overhead. Also, be aware that sessions run in virtual machine mode aren't persistent, no matter if you set that option in the previous section.
Step 5
Now you're ready to make your USB stick for Linux Mint—click the lightning bolt and sit back and relax until LiLi tells you it's finished. It shouldn't take too long, perhaps five minutes or so, but creating a large persistence file may add some extra time.
When all is done, use Windows to safely remove your USB stick. You don't need to actually physically remove it if you plan to test drive Linux right away by rebooting your computer.
Test driving Linux with your USB stick
At this point, you can reboot your computer or start it up if you prepared your USB stick previously and now want to try it out. Be sure to insert the USB stick in a USB port before the computer boots up and keep your eyes peeled.
You will need to tell the computer to load the operating system on the USB stick instead of Windows on your hard drive. You do that by pressing a special key during startup; that key varies from manufacturer to manufacturer so I can just give you some possible ideas: Del, Esc, F2, F10, and so on.
A message will flash onscreen briefly telling you which key to use, so you need to be fast (or just reboot again and get it the second time). Some computers will show a key for something like Boot Menu or Boot Options; that will let you select the device (hard drive, USB drive, etc.) where the computer should first search for an operating system.
If your computer doesn't show that, it will show something like BIOS Setup or BIOS Options or Enter BIOS. That's more complex but somewhere on the screens there you will find an option to tell the computer to boot to USB, by picking from a list or moving items like HDD (hard disk drive) down and USB up so that the computer tries it first. You will need to press some key to save and exit and the computer will then boot again.
If you correctly configured the boot order, you will see a logo of Linux Mint (or other distro that you prepped with LiLi) and in a short time the Linux desktop will appear. Congratulations, you've crossed over to the wild side of computing, you're running Linux!
Play around with it, give it a spin. Remember that it's all running in memory and this is just a test drive, so you don't need to worry about messing things up. The worst that could happen would be that you would have to wipe your memory stick and run LiLi all over again.
When you've finished your test drive, you can shut down or reboot the computer by clicking the Menu button in the lower left corner and clicking the Quit button at the bottom left side. Be sure to remove your USB stick or enter your BIOS again and set it to try your hard disk first, so that you don't just automatically reboot to the Linux live install.
My Tip for techno-geeks about persistence
Here's my promised tip for dealing with persistence. It's oriented toward people who are a bit savvy with computers so if you don't understand it, don't worry. Just mark it down as something to come back to some day and learn about when you have time.
You can save your personal files from Linux session to session without using the persistence option (although also using persistence is great for preserving your settings and installed software). This method has a number of advantages which I will present in a moment.
The way to do it is to partition your USB stick. Allocate at least 2.5 GB for the first partition, mark it as bootable (under Attributes in most partition utility programs), label it as Linux or LinuxLive or LiveInstall or something similar, and format it as FAT32.
Allocate the remainder of the USB stick to another partition and label it something like MyStuff or DataFiles or whatever you like. Format it as FAT32 if you will use it with Windows or as Ext3/Ext4 if you will use it solely in Linux (and want to keep snoopy Windows users from being able to examine your personal files if they nab your USB stick).
When you boot up Linux, you can mount the second partition in the file manager and have access to all of your files. Saving changed files there works, regardless of persistence or not on your live install stick. Dividing your stick into two partitions also means you can still use the second partition of the stick for simple backups or transferring files from device to device; otherwise, your files saved in a persistent session are sort of “trapped” within the persistence file of the live install and not accessible outside of a session.
It also lets you update the Linux partition of the USB stick with a new release of the distro or put a different distro on it to try out. You just update the first partition and your second partition still has all of your files saved and ready to use.
By setting up a personal data partition, you can run any Linux distro you want on any computer that is handy and always have your personal stuff at your fingertips.
Tux waves goodbye for now
This has been lengthy to read (and write!) but it actually isn't difficult and you probably could have created two or three USB sticks during this time, had you already had a bit of knowledge and experience with the process. When you do it once, you'll find it a snap to do it again, so go ahead and try out several different distros of Linux. It's fun and you may find the one that perfectly suits your personality and way of doing things. Mint takes the classic approach, comfortable for Windows users; Debian is more barebones for serious Linux fans; Ubuntu is wildly different with its unusual Unity interface; and others offer their own particular features and styles. Somewhere out there, you'll find the Linux that's just right for you.
In our next exciting action-filled episode, Tux and I will give you some guidance about the process of actually installing Linux on your computer.
Tuesday, May 10, 2016 · 2:22:41 AM +00:00 · Krotor
One important thing which I forgot to note in this article. Running Linux from a USB stick will be slower and feel much less snappy than if you actually install Linux on your computer. That shouldn't be surprising considering it is juggling everything in its memory and configuring programs on the fly every time they start up. So enjoy the demo but expect that the "real thing" will be peppy as all get out. Overall, Linux runs a lean, mean machine that will surprise most Windows users.