You have booted your computer from your USB stick, the live demo is running, and you see the Install Linux Mint icon on the desktop. So let's double-click it and get started.
Or maybe not so fast.
The installation process is easy, absurdly easy for an operating system that most people believe is only for tech gearheads. There is only one step in the process that is at all technical and even it is optional, so don't panic.
But it still is a good idea to think ahead a bit. Just like our famous Daily Kos pie that shows up everywhere, we might benefit by thinking about what we want to do before we do it: eat the pie, throw the pie, or ignore the pie. Believe it or not, this is going to be the most confusing and challenging part of the installation process.
Choosing the type of installation
Before you install Linux, ask yourself one question: how do you intend to use Linux on your computer?
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I will use my computer for:
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Linux
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Dual boot
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Linux + VM
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Windows + VM
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Linux programs only
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X
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Mostly Linux + Windows gaming sessions
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X
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(X)
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Mostly Linux + occasional Windows programs
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(WINE)
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(X)
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X
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Mostly Windows + occasional Linux programs
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(X)
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X
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The grid above shows scenarios for your answer to that question. The Xs indicate my suggestion for the way you should install Linux and the (X)s indicate other good alternatives. (WINE) is a tool to use for running a specific Windows program in Linux and is discussed in the next section.
Here are the four ways you can put your Linux on your PC:
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Install Linux as the only operating system (OS). This is the easy and obvious choice if you plan to use only Linux and its native programs.
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Install both Linux and Windows and at boot you choose which OS to run (dual boot). If you will do your regular computing tasks in Linux but sometimes want to settle down to a long session with a Windows game, like Diablo or Final Fantasy, this would be a good solution. When you want to go gaming, you reboot your PC and choose Windows as the OS to run. For general computing, if you plan to switch between Linux and Windows programs throughout the day, one of the other choices would be better: you would not want to have to reboot your PC to the other operating system a dozen times per day just to use a program of that OS. Rebooting all day long will be a real pain in the ass. If you decide to dual boot, install Windows first and then Linux; Windows is sort of cranky about installing after Linux is already on your hard drive. Seriously, dual booting is a big PITA (see below for some gotchas) so it's usually far easier to use a VM with one or the other operating systems.
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Install Linux as the operating system and, within Linux, install Windows as a virtual machine (VM). We'll discuss VMs below but for now just understand that it means you can run Windows (and its programs) inside Linux as a special kind of process. That, like choice 4, means you can use both operating systems and their programs at the same time.
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Install Windows as the operating system and, within Windows, install Linux as a virtual machine. This would work if you just want to play around with or learn a bit about Linux, or if you have one or two Linux-only programs that you really like and want to use them occasionally. Like choice 3, but exactly the opposite, you would run Linux and its programs within Windows itself.
If you're torn between choices 3 and 4, my advice is to go with number 3. Linux is rock solid, famed for its security against viruses and legions of malware programs targeted at Windows, and its virtualization (VM) abilities are used by commercial web hosting providers all over the world.
We're going to take a detour now to talk about virtual machines, used in choices 3 and 4. If you know that you intend to install Linux alone or to dual boot, you may freely skip down to the next section.
Virtual machines, virtualization, and WINE
Virtualization sounds scary and complicated but the concept is actually fairly simple. Let's use an analogy to understand the idea.
Imagine that you buy an apartment in a condo or co-op building. You decide that it's cold so you go to the thermostat and turn on the heat. You didn't actually turn on the boiler in the basement, you merely opened the valves inside your apartment to let the hot water enter your radiator. The actual heating is owned and controlled by the building association.
You are free to paint your interior walls any color you like and you can even tear out some inside walls to remodel. However, the building association will prevent you from tearing out common walls that adjoin hallways or other people's apartments nor will it let you paint the outside exterior wall of your apartment.
So it is with virtualization. An operating system inside a virtual machine (a “guest”) can do whatever it wants within itself but the VM and outer “host” operating system will prevent it from doing anything which might disrupt or alter the host and the computer's hardware. For example, you cannot use the file manager of a guest OS inside a virtual machine to delete or change files on the hard drive of the host OS.
Back in the real word of your computer, here are a few ways that a VM isolates your guest operating system from that of its host. When you create a VM, in which you will install the guest OS, you tell it to use a designated amount of memory (RAM). That memory cannot then be used or shared with the host OS so there is no danger that the two OSes will corrupt each other's operations.
You also designate an amount of hard disk space for the guest OS to use. The host OS then creates a single large file of that size and marks it as reserved. Inside the VM, the guest can then treat that reserved space like it would a hard drive but it will not have access to the actual hard drive used by the host OS. However, you can optionally set up a shared folder (directory) which both the host and guest can access, making it easy to share files that you use in both operating systems.
Thus you can run Linux, create a virtual machine that will use 1 GB of memory and 5 GB of disk space, slip a Windows DVD into the drive and run it to install Windows as a guest. You can also do the reverse, using the Linux ISO file (as discussed in the previous article) to install Linux as a guest in a VM on a Windows system.
The best known virtualization program is VirtualBox and it has free versions for Linux, Windows, and Mac. VirtualBox can be installed from the Software Manager of Linux Mint and can be downloaded from its website for Windows or Mac (https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads). A quick installation guide can be read here: https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch01.html and there are more detailed manuals and tutorials on the website.
Finally, let's talk about WINE. It is an emulator for Linux rather than a virtualizer. Think of it as a translator. With WINE a Windows program can run in Linux and WINE translates its operations to code and instructions that Linux uses. For example, the program might issue a Windows instruction to paint a red circle 100 pixels in diameter at specific place on the screen; WINE intercepts that order and translates it to the equivalent instruction in Linux code.
WINE is somewhat more complex to use than a VM and some Windows programs run great under it while others act strangely or won't run at all. You can check the programs database at WINE's website to read about other people's problems or successes and how they tweaked things for a specific Windows program.
One advantage of WINE over VirtualBox is that you do not need a copy of Windows to install since WINE doesn't rely on Windows itself. WINE can be installed from Mint's Software Manager.
Step by step guide to installing Mint
I shouldn't need to say this but I must anyway:
Back up your files before installing Mint or doing anything else that has the potential to lose your files and data!
Whew, now the hard part is out of the way. You've decided how you want to install and run Linux, so let's get to it. The rest of this article will (mostly) be a guide for a simple Linux-only installation but it will also be useful to anyone who has chosen one of the other options. There are many excellent guides, with more details and problem-solving tips, on the net so I encourage you to consult one if you encounter any issues or plan to do a dual boot installation.
Step 1
Double-click the Install Linux Mint icon on the desktop of the live demo. Give it a few moments and the Mint graphical installer will appear to take you step by step through the installation.
Step 2
Select your language from the list and press Continue. Mint is available in dozens of languages. Selecting a non-English language will make installation a few minutes longer because Mint will download the designated language support files during the process.
Step 3
Mint will ask you to confirm a few things. You need about 9 GB of disk space free and your internet connection should be working (so Mint can download updated files during installation). If running on a laptop, Mint will ask you to plug it into the wall socket so a low battery doesn't abort the installation.
Step 4
Here you will choose the type of installation we discussed above. If Windows is installed on your PC, Mint will recognize it and offer to let you keep Windows and install Mint along with it (dual boot). Mint will also let you erase Windows and install Mint as the only operating system.
If you want to dual boot with Windows but do not see the choice to install Mint alongside Windows, you may need to manually partition your hard disk. Review the next section of this article carefully.
If no Windows is present, you won't see that option. In some cases, with computers that use UEFI booting, the installer may not be able to see that Windows is present. In that case, you will need to manually partition the disk, as described below, leaving the existing partitions on it as they are (you will see they show EFI and NTFS as the partition types when you use the partitioning tool).
Unless you know what you are doing, I recommend that you leave the two boxes unchecked which ask about encrypting Mint and using LVM.
Now we're going to take another brief detour to techy stuff: partitioning. If your eyes glaze over at that, just accept one of the relevant options to install Mint alongside Windows or to erase the disk and install only Mint: the installer will automatically handle things and its suggestions will be good enough and you can continue on to the next step. Tech types may want to read this next section to optimize their hard drive.
Partitioning
Partitioning is a way of compartmentalizing your hard drive. Think about when you shared a college dorm room. At some point you got fed up with the messes of both you and your roommate and cleaned the place up. You drew a line down the middle of the room and said “Don't drop your dirty clothes around on my side and I won't leave empty Coke cans and candy wrappers on your side.” You partitioned the room and each person kept his own partition the way he liked.
So it is with hard drives. We might divide a disk into two partitions, one each for Linux and Windows, so they don't interfere with each other's files and folders. Or we could create many partitions for very specific purposes and uses.
If you use Windows and want to keep it for dual boot, you may want to use its disk management tool to shrink the Window partition (probably the only partition on your hard drive) before starting the Mint installation, so you can be sure of plenty of space to make Linux partitions. The Mint installer can try to do this but I think it's best to let Windows itself give it a go first. Type “partition” in the menu search box and start the Disk Management program and follow the steps there to shrink it to the desired size.
Dual boot installation with the newer UEFI (as opposed to legacy BIOS) boot system can be tricky. If you have problems, Google can show you some very precise and detailed guides for setting things up.
Mint's installer has a built-in partitioning tool. If you click the “Something else” option in step 4, you will be able to create partitions manually.
/dev/sda is the first hard disk and /sda1, /sda2, etc are the partitions on it
In the partition tool, you may see one or more existing partitions that say NTFS in the Type column. Those are likely your Windows partition(s) and you probably want to leave them alone (unless you're going to delete Windows this way and install only Linux).
Note the existing partitions for Windows (ntfs) and UEFI booting (efi) — allocate your new partitions in free space from the free space shown at the end of the list
With some or all of the available space on the hard drive you can create Linux partitions. Depending on your hardware and any existing partitioning, you may be using the legacy MBR partitioning scheme or the newer GPT type. With MBR, you will need to set at least one of these partitions as "logical" since it supports only four primary partitions; GPT does not have that limitation. Here is my suggested scheme for five partitions:
- boot – 400 MB to use for the bootloader files. Set it to “beginning” location and the Ext4 file system. Select “/boot” as the mount point from the dropdown list. If you are dual booting, there is probably already a bootloader partition (often with "efi" as the type) and you don't need to create this partition. Just be sure to keep /dev/sda as the boot loader device.
- root – 15 GB (15360 MB) to use for Linux Mint files and installed programs. Also set to “beginning” and Ext4. Select “/” as the mount point.
- home – 10 GB (10240 MB) to use as your personal folder as well as the personal folders of other user accounts you may add. Again, “beginning” and Ext4 and choose "/home" as the mount point. If you ever install a different distro or version of Linux, you can preserve your home partition and thus all of your personal files, settings, and preferences, and just install the Linux files to the root partition, as previously described.
- swap – This is like a Windows swap file, for the OS to temporarily store things from memory to disk. Use 1.5 times the amount of RAM in your PC (multiply the GB by 1024 to get the amount in MB). Set it to “end” so it will put the partition after all of the others at the end of the disk space and select “Swap” as the file type.
- data – use the rest of the available space for this partition. Set it to “beginning” and Ext4 if you are only using Linux; if you dual boot, you can choose FAT32 or NTFS and you can share this partition with Windows so you have access to its files from both operating systems.
Note that partition sizes are specified in MB, not GB
You will need to manually type in a mount point, so type something like “/mydata” or “/mystuff”. Later you can use TrueCrypt or another cross-platform encryption program to encrypt the entire partition or, as I prefer, create a massive encrypted volume that occupies the whole partition. Use your home folder just for temporary storage (like downloaded files) and the various program settings and such, but put all of your personal files in the encrypted volume/partition. You can still turn over your PC to a tech for repairs, even providing your password (or that of another account) for administrative access, but your encrypted volume/partition will remain private.
Click to Continue and go to the next step when partitioning finishes.
If you like, you can even prep the hard drive ahead of time with tools like Gparted, which is easy to use and lets you make a bootable DVD to use it. You can set the sizes, labels, file systems, boot attribute for the first partition, and so on of all the partitions, and then simply select the appropriate mount points in the Mint partitioning tool during installation.
Remember, this is a general guide for partitioning, which is a complex subject. If you have any doubts or problems, I strongly suggest reading some online guides and tutorials rather than relying on my basic instruction here.
With UEFI and dual booting, you may need to alter the UEFI settings in your BIOS to tell the computer to use the Linux (GRUB) bootloader because the one installed by Windows may ignore the option to boot to Linux. Enter your UEFI/BIOS settings and look around for something related to boot options. If you see an option to use the OS boot manager, select it and choose the non-Windows manager (it will probably say linux, grub, or ubuntu in the name).
Step 5
Type the first few letters of your city and in a moment or two Mint will display matching city names. Select the correct one and Mint will know which time zone you are in and whether/when to adjust for daylight savings. If no match is found, you may live in a podunk hamlet like I do, so you can type in part of the name of the nearest larger town.
Step 6
Mint supports keyboard layouts for many languages. Select the right one for you or click the button to detect the layout; Mint will ask you to press certain keys and it will figure out which is the right layout for your keyboard.
Step 7
You create names for yourself (your login account name) and your computer in this step. Note that this information is not reported to Mint or any other company.
Your name can be your real name or you can type Superman or Teddy Roosevelt, if you wish. The name you enter will be displayed occasionally, such as the login screen when Linux Mint starts up. As you type it, the third box will automatically fill in with a version of it, reduced to lowercase letters and no spaces.
Give your computer a name. It will be used to identify the computer if it is hooked into a network.
Your username, prefilled as described above, can be accepted as is or you can change it. It doesn't need to coincide with your “real name” above at all. For example, you could have Queen Elizabeth as your real name and betty as your username. It must be lowercase and not use spaces, punctuation, or other symbols. You will use this to log in to the computer and for other purposes at times.
Enter a good password (Mint will tell you if it's weak or strong) and enter it again to be sure it matches. Remember your password; there's no way to retrieve it if you forget (and you will be locked out of your own PC).
Be smart, don't select the option to log in automatically—anyone can access your PC that way just be starting it up.
Don't encrypt your home folder. There's a better way to secure your files which we briefly discussed above (in Partitioning) and perhaps will address in detail in a future article.
Step 8
When you click Continue, installation will begin. Mint will copy, download, and configure files for 10 or 15 minutes. You can get a cup of coffee or watch the “tip” panels that display some helpful info about using Mint. When installation is complete, Mint will let you keep using the live demo or reboot your computer. If you reboot, remove the USB stick so that the computer will boot from the hard drive. If you selected a dual boot option above, you will get a menu to choose to load Windows or Mint; otherwise your PC should automatically bring you to the Mint login screen.
Wait, we missed something. During installation, you didn't supply your personal info (address, phone number, demographic data, etc), nor did you enter your 17-digit Mint product key for verification, nor did you read and agree to the 23-page EULA (End User License Agreement).
Never mind, I forgot. We're in the Magical Land of Tux where no one believes in those disturbing fairy tales filled with invasions of privacy, miserly hoarding of software, and absurd contracts that no can understand. In the Linux world, your only obligation is to use your computer however you think best.
Pat yourself on the back
Ladies and gentlemen, congratulations. As newly pledged members of the Geeky Order of Linux Propellerheads, I hereby present you with your official pocket protectors. Wear them proudly and wear them well.
Live long and prosper.
[Note: propeller beanie hat not included, you may purchase one in the Order's gift shop as you exit.]
In our next adventure-filled episode, Tux wants me to explain to you some of the things that will seem quirky or perplexing when using Linux ("what the heck is sudo?") and tell you about some handy ways of doing things. Tux and I will also share some of our favorite Linux programs that you may enjoy.
Thursday, May 12, 2016 · 2:54:29 AM +00:00 · Krotor
Well, according to the poll results so far, one person successfully installed Linux today and earned his/her pocket protector. I am so proud, we have a new junior nerd … [sniffle] … I'm all verklempt, where's my kleenex?
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