What if one wants to try Linux?

What if one wants to try Linux?

This is a short recipe but the steps are far too many.

1. Decide what one needs

List the utilities one needs

Web browsing using only a cloud utility

Anonymous web browsing

Needs a word processor free of copyright, for example LibreOfiice

Needs a photo editor

Video/Audio player +++++

2. Decide on the CD/DVD image (DVD is preferable) of the distribution

3. Download preferably a torrent file which checks the file integrity and checksum

4. Decide on the hardware Laptop (never use a secondhand laptop) PC or self assembled PC.

Old secondhand PC computers with updated RAM (minimum of 1 GIB is my recommendation) with a graphic card of 256 to 512 MB is a good choice especially if it is the spare computer one is going to use it as.

On board Ethernet card is mandatory.

If there is no spare computer to download or the download speed is slow like in the developing world one has few options.

I do not download or test distributions now to save my electricity bill.

If I can save one month's of electricity bill I can buy the Linux magazine for a whole year.

That is what I do now.

One can visit and browse the Linux Magazine site and buy old copies of the magazine with Linux DVDs in them.

If you do so and buy a magazine copy, go for the copy with Knoppix DVD (as an extra copy) and a another copy of your desired distribution.

My approach.

One has to decide on either 32 bits or 64 bits (can have more RAM) version.

I will have five to six distributions in one box, few for my use and others for testing.

1. Knoppix CD (not DVD)

2. Gparted CD.

3. Linux Mint KDE (15)

4. Peppermint 4

4. Kiwi Linux

6. SuSe Linux KDE

7. PCLinux LXDE

8. Tails

9. Kali Linx

10. Debian 7.0
11. Pinguy Linux and many more

STEP 1

I boot up the Knoppix 7.0 CD.

This is to check my hardware.

This is the best Live CD to check on my hardware and it never fails.

If you buy the Linux magazine one is able to read the articles (questions and answers mostly) written by Knoppix himself.

I use this CD to partition my hard disk using gparted.

It needs a rerserFS partition and a swap partition (onw has to use sufficient capacity for the DVD).

Then I install Knoppix CD version on the hard disk (follow the instruction while installing).

STEP 2

Then I boot Gparted Linux CD (Gnome Linux) and verify what was done and format all the partitions, (except where Knoppix is installed) for my need (read my articles on partitioning).

STEP 3

Then I install one by one all the distributions and see which one has the best GRUB utility.

Suse has the best configuration, partitioning and Grub file.

Peppermint comes close second but has very few utilities (cloud friendly Google based).

No word processors, torrent or disk burners.

Kiwi is pretty good alternative to Ubuntu

STEP 4

Redo the Step (three) 3 so that I get the best start up grub file that boots all the distributions.

I do this once a year and I have finished that cycle a few hours ago and I installed (downloaded) all the missing files of Peppermint except one that creates (it is not available in graphic form) an iso image of my final upgraded distribution.

Few comments worth mentioning.

1. use a router and not a telephone hookup.

2. Do not listen to guys/girls who test them on virtual machines.

There is a big difference in performance in actual hardware than in a virtual machine.

3. Do not install while connected to the Internet, it takes hell of a long time.

It is a waste of time.

4. Use Sata with at least 150 GiB not IDE of 80GIB.

5. Do not use more than 15 partitions (SuSe cannot detect more than that).

6. Have three partitions for your most used Linux distribution.

/root., /home and /var and the rest of the distributions can be installed in one or two partitions.

5. Have two users always, one for root or administrator and one for regular user with good passwords.

All my users name come from the primate family from chimp to bonobo to gorilla.

Ubuntu forums tells me that their password file is compromised and that means my account too.
So strong password is mandatory now with lot of hackers out there.

Once one is familiar with a distribution try to stick with it without upgrading if the system is running well.

6. Do the preparation in mid July and not in December when everybody is on leave.

We were on a long industrial action in 2012 and I had nothing to do except fiddling with Linux and that was a discovery I made quite fortuitously.

Before that I did it on December and found that I had to re-install some f them in April or May.

Linux distributions tend to mature by mid year, strangely enough!