Debian GNU/Linux

As it would be impossible in this course to talk about and give installation instructions for all of the Linux distributions, we have chosen Debian GNU/Linux for an example install. Why have we chosen this distribution?

It is:

1. A solid, quality Linux distribution with a long history (in Linux terms)
2. Non-profit and non-commercial (which lets us off the hook on a lot of issues!)
3. Applicable to a wide range of uses and users, from newcomer to seasoned IT professional.
4. Easily obtained and updated.

About Debian

The Debian project was founded by Ian Murdock in 1993. Debian gets its name from the combination of Ian Murdoch and his wife Debra's name (Deb-Ian) One of the Linux community's most illustrious people has been a primary developer of Debian. I'm talking about Bruce Perens. He was one of the founders of Pixar, the company that created the Toy Story films, Monsters Inc. and Finding Nemo.

Debian has no company behind it. The Debian project is sponsored by Software in the Public Interest, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping produce open-source software and hardware. Despite its not-for-profit status, Debian is an extremely versatile distribution. It forms the base of many user-friendly distributions like Ubuntu, Linspire and Xandros. It can also be found running on thousands of mission critical servers that have to be up 24/7.

Though the installation procedure is not as easy as some commercial distributions, it cannot be described as difficult either. We will go over this in more detail shortly. The major advantage to Debian is that it can be updated easily via their much lauded apt-get system.

Getting Debian GNU/Linux

If you have a broadband connection (cable, xDSL or better), you can easily obtain this distribution and install it. There are two major ways to do this. The most popular is to burn the Debian ISO images to CDs and install. If you have a CD burner, this is an ideal option. The second is to obtain a minimal ISO image especially designed for an install over the Internet. With this option, the files are downloaded as the installer needs them. This can also be done by downloading floppy disk image files instead of CD images. More information on these methods can be found at http://www.debian.org/distrib/

If you don't happen to have a broadband connection, downloading Debian would be an extremely frustrating experience. You may want to consider contacting a local distributor of Debian CDs. Consult this page for further information about distributors in your area: http://www.debian.org/CD/vendors/

Installation from CD

This is probably going to be the most common way of installing Debian, so we go over installation using this method.

Preliminary considerations

You may be wondering if you can keep another operation system (ie. MS Windows - which other one is there?) on your computer. You can.

Are we going to explain how to do it? Not in great detail. Why? There are a couple of reasons:

• Lack of experience with the newer Microsoft products.
  The author must admit that he's installed a great number of Linux distributions side by side with Windows 9.x products. He hasn't done it with any of the more recent ones, so advice on doing it would be of dubious quality.
• There's very little you can do with Microsoft products that Linux won't let you do as well.
  Enough said there.
• We don't work for Microsoft
  We advocate alternatives to Microsoft products and not the continued use of them, even in a "second fiddle" role.

What we can say about dual-booting

If you happen to have MS Windows 9.x you must repartition your hard drive to make room for Linux. You can either erase the drive and repartition a blank drive or you can attempt to repartition a working hard drive. Ideally, what was done in the "old" days was to install Windows in C: and D: partitions. This is relatively easy to deal with. As a matter of fact, my first install of Slackware Linux was on the D: partition of my Windows workstation.

If you've got one partition with Windows on it, there are some supposedly non-destructive re-sizing tools. They always tell you to back up your data before proceeding, so I always figure - what's the use in re-sizing when you can start clean from scratch. You may decide you want to throw away Windows all together!

Summing up, I recommend Linux-only installations. Linux has become quite "mature" as an end-user operating system, so I find these stories about being "weaned" off Windows to be ridiculous (the exception, supposedly, being those who run the financial software 'Quicken'). If you've bought a new car, you don't have to be "weaned" off that. You just trade in the old one and start driving the new one. The graphic user interfaces available plus the ever-growing numbers of productivity applications (office suites, browsers, email applications, etc.) make it such that a MS Windows user could have his/her workstation switched with a Linux machine overnight and they would barely break a sweat getting used to it. Everything works very much in the same way.

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