Introduction to Linux
In August 1991, in Finland, the country of Thousand Lakes, a young man named Linus Torvalds released a Unix-like operating system to the public and named it Linux, and placed it on the largest ftp site in Finland. At this point, a miracle happened! Since Linux has been a free software that follows GPL from the beginning, it has good openness, its simple functions and open structure quickly attracted the attention of people, especially students and researchers from colleges and universities. They have used it as the object of study and research, and have begun to conduct in-depth analysis and transformation, taking its essence, removing its cypress, and constantly adding new functions to it. Coupled with the popularity of the Internet, Linux has grown rapidly in just a few years and has become an operating system with huge users, stable performance and complete functions!
Based on the deb package structure, the collected software is very complete.
I would like to say here that there are a large number of Linux versions made by domestic companies recently. Generally these versions are good, especially Lenovo's happylinux. The interface of this version when installed is simply the standard interface of Windows, which is worth using. Another thing is that there is a Linux version called Winlinux2000. This software is a Linux combined with Windows. Its installation is like installing an ordinary Windows program, and the same is true for running. Just click on the icon of the Windows desktop, which is a Linux under Windows. If you just want to try Linux, you can try this thing. It is included in the second issue of "Computer Report Supporting CD" in 2000.
Linux installation
OK, after choosing a linux version, it's time to start installing. At this time, you must first back up your important information just in case. Before installing, you must prepare these software first. Although it is OK without them, I suggest you still use them to help you install them, which can save you a lot of effort.
They are: Pqmagic5.0, PowerQuest BootMagic. The previous software is a magician of the hard disk partition. You can divide it whatever you want with it. The latter is a multi-system boot program, which allows you to manage your Windows and Linux boot work very conveniently. As for the specific usage of these two software, please refer to the relevant articles of "Computer News".
As for the preparation of hard disk space, generally speaking, if you want to enjoy the full performance of Linux, you should at least divide 1.5G of hard disk space for Linux to be the main partition. Linux also needs a swap partition, which is equivalent to the Windows file, mainly used for virtual memory. The size of this swap partition depends on the memory size of each person. Generally, if there is 32m memory, it is recommended that the swap partition is 64m. If there is 64m memory, then the swap partition is 60 or 70 megabytes. If your memory is greater than 64m, it is not recommended that you use hard disk space greater than 100m as the swap partition, unless you are a professional graphics worker. As long as you are an ordinary user, you can take out a maximum of 100m hard disk as a swap partition.
Because if a system occupies more than 100m of hard disks for virtual memory, then there is no performance in that system at that time, and it may no longer have any response capabilities! In addition, before installing, you can collect information about your own graphics card, monitor, sound card, etc., which may be used during installation.
All Linux distributions now support CD-ROM booting, so please enter the CMOS settings of your machine and set the CDROM at the front in Boot Sequence to check your motherboard manual to change the startup sequence. If you are using CDROM that supports CD-ROM booting, you can also boot with SCSI. You may need to set up the SCSI controller first.
Okay, everything is ready, and now I will start installing it. Here I will follow Lenovo's happylinux installation, and the rest of the versions are similar. By the way, since Linux installation does not have a "cancel" button like Windows installation, if you encounter unsolvable problems during installation, you can only restart the computer and exit the installation.
After starting from CD-ROM, you will enter a Chinese "Welcome to install HappyLinux" interface. Pressing the "Enter" key will start the installation process of HappyLinux. Pressing the "Delete" key will enter the uninstallation process of HappyLinux.
Installation process
The installation process of HappyLinux is composed of a series of simple and convenient Chinese dialog interfaces, and comes with online help, which helps users to install step by step. The entire process is divided into three stages: the first stage of installation, the second stage of installation, and the system configuration stage.
The following will explain step by step how to install HappyLinux on your system.
Installation phase 1
1. Welcome screen
The installer will display a welcome screen, you just need to press Enter to skip it.
2. Set up keyboard mapping
The user sets the keyboard layout here, selects the keyboard mapping method, and the settings selected will be automatically added to the system settings. If the user wants to change the settings, please use the /usr/sbin/kbdconfig command to set it after installing HappyLinux. Ordinary users generally choose to set it to US keyboard.
3. Select the installation method
"Local CD-ROM" installation is the most commonly used installation method. The installer will let you confirm that you insert the HappyLinux installation disc. After inserting the disc, press Enter to enter to enter the second stage of installation. If you have an IDE/ATAPI or SCSI CD-ROM drive and all hardware devices work properly, the installer will automatically find the HappyLinux CD and start the second phase of the installation. If something goes wrong, or you have a special CDROM drive, the installer will remind you to give the type of your CDROM drive and after selecting the correct drive type, go to the second stage of installation.
Installation phase 2
Continue after selecting "Install" in the "Install HappyLinux" interface.
4. SCSI detection
If you use the "Local CDROM" method to install, you must first enter the "SCSI Configuration" dialog box.
If you use the SCSI adapter in the machine and know exactly its type, please answer "Yes", and specify the module you want to load in the "Load Module" dialog box that pops up later. After pressing "OK", the "Module Selection" dialog box appears. Here you can enter additional parameters when loading the module. If you are not aware or are not sure, you can select the "Auto Detection" option. However, in fact, most SCSI devices can be automatically detected by the system. It is recommended to select "No" when the first dialog box pops up and enter the "Disk Settings" dialog box directly after it is displayed.
If you have a SCSI device installed on your system but don't have any SCSI devices connected, you will see a warning message.
5. Hard disk partition
If you do not have a linux primary partition (ext2) or a linux swap partition (swap) on your hard drive, the installer will ask you whether to choose automatic partitioning. If you choose to use automatic partition, you also need to choose whether you need to divide a FAT32 partition. If you select "Yes", your entire hard disk will be divided into a 128M linux swap partition and one of the same sized Linux primary partition and FAT32 partition; if you select "No", your entire hard disk will be divided into a 128M linux swap partition and a linux primary partition. After the automatic partition is completed, the "Current Disk Partition" window will be entered. If you choose not to use automatic partitioning, you must use fdisk or Disk Druid tools to partition manually yourself.
If you already have linux primary partitions and linux switch partitions on your hard drive, the installer will tell you that these partitions have been found, and you can use them directly. If you want to use these partitions directly, please select partition tools fdisk or Disk Druid in the "Select Tools" interface, and then click the "End" button in the "Divid Disk Partition" interface to enter the "Current Disk Partition" window. If you do not want to use these partitions directly and want to repartition, please select the partition tool in the "Select Tools" interface, and then click the "Edit" button in the "Disk Partition" interface to repartition. It is recommended that you use pqmagic to separate the Linux partition to the hard disk before installing it again.
Here are some commands of fdisk:
Pressing the d key and entering the partition number will delete the corresponding partition.
If there is already a Dos partition in the hard disk, you need to create your Linux partition. Here is the sequence of commands you need to enter. Assuming your hard disk configuration matches the following figure:
n (Create a new partition)
p (create the main partition)
2 (Second Partition)
Now the program will ask you for the start sector of the partition and give a range, please enter the number of sectors that are smaller in that range.
Now you will be asked about the number of sectors you ended with, enter +64M to create a 64M partition (if you need a larger SWAP partition, enter another value).
t (change partition type)
2 (change the second partition)
Now set the partition ID to 82, the swap partition for Linux.
Now please repeat the steps above to create partition 3, but please enter the maximum possible value when entering the end sector number. And it doesn't need to change its default ID 83 (Linux partition), this is the root partition you need.
Now you can press the p key to display the current partition settings, the output is as follows:
Disk /dev/hda： 64 heads， 63 sectors， 975 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 4032 * 512 bytes
Device
Boot
Begin
Start
End
Blocks
Id
System
/dev/hda1
*
1
1
487
981760+
6
DOS 16-bit =32M
/dev/hda2
488
488
520
66528
82
Linux swap
/dev/hda3
521
521
975
917280
83
Linux native
If there is no error in the above display, press the w key to write the partition table to the hard disk and exit. You will then enter the Current Disk Partition window.
6. Select the root partition to hang the decoration point and set the file system
In the Current Disk Partition window, you will see all the partitions that linux can recognize on the hard disk, you must select and can only select one linux primary partition as your root partition (which will be mounted as /). If you only have one Linux primary partition, you can choose 'OK' to continue to the next step.
In this step, you can also set up the file system. This allows you to set all partitions containing file systems that HappyLinux recognizes, including MS-DOS or Windows partitions, to different parts of the HappyLinux file system. The partition you assigned will be automatically mounted when the Happylinux system starts. Select the partition you want to set and press Enter to enter the decoration points for these partitions. For example, if /dev/hda1 is a DOS/Windows FAT partition, enter /dosc, so that after the installation is complete, your system will automatically mount /dev/hda1 to the /dosc directory.
In this step, you can also add the NFS file volume and press the Add NFS key. If you have not configured the network, the installer will ask you whether you want to configure it now. It is recommended that you cancel and configure the network later. Now you will want to enter the NFS server name, the path of the NFS file volume, the loading point of this NFS volume, and whether you want to automatically mount as writable or read-only at startup (default is read-only).
After completing the setup, select 'OK' to proceed to the next installation process.
7. Activate the swap partition
The above window allows you to choose which swap partition will be activated in order to install HappyLinux, and requires formatting of swap partitions. At this time, the system does not check for bad blocks by default, and users can generally use the default value. If your hard drive has bad channels, please select the function of checking for bad blocks. It will take a long time to select this function. During the formatting process, there will be a progress bar indicating the progress. Please wait patiently.
8. Search for installation files
The installer will spend a certain amount of time searching for installation files at this stage, please be patient.
9. Format partition
You can now select the Linux primary partition you want to format, you must format the root (/) partition, as well as the /user and /var partitions (if you have multiple partitions), especially when upgrading to old Linux systems, if not formatted, there may be a version conflict.
Checking for bad blocks while formatting will be safer, but it will take a lot of time.
If you choose OK, your system will start to be formatted, which takes some time, depending on what you partition and your system speed.
10. Select to install the software package
There are three options for selecting the package "Typic", "All" and "Custom". The first two methods are simple to use and do not require the user to choose the software package themselves, while the "customization" method is highly flexible. It is best for ordinary home users to choose the default value "Typical". Because this method is very simple, the user does not need to choose the software package by themselves. Compared with "minimum", it includes a rich application software and takes up a smaller hard disk compared with "all". If you are familiar with Linux, you can also choose "customization", in which you can get the most flexibility during the installation process.
After you have selected the packages to be installed, the installer checks the dependencies of these packages. If the required package is not selected, the program lists these unresolved dependencies, giving you a chance to resolve them. In the figure below, if the "Install software packages to satisfy dependencies" option is selected, the program will automatically add the required packages to the selected package. After you have finished selecting, press OK to continue and the installer will automatically check the size of the package you need to install and a warning will be given if you do not have enough space left in your hard drive.
11. Record installation information
Now the installer will remind you that you will output all installation records to the file /tmp/, which you can view after the installation is complete.
12. Install the software package
After the package is selected, the installer starts installing the Happylinux system, which will take a certain amount of time, depending on the hard disk speed, optical drive rate, and CPU frequency of your system. The "typical" installation generally takes 20-30 minutes. So you can now start reading this manual so that you can start using your Happylinux system right after the installation is complete.
13. Configure the network
This process configures the network.
If you are a LAN user and have not selected the NFS installation method, you will now need to configure the network. Otherwise you just need to maintain the current network configuration, or reconfigure the network. When configuring the network, you generally need to manually enter IP information: IP address, network mask, default route, DNS name server. Then select "OK". The system will now query the node name and domain name of your machine via DNS. If you don't have a DNS server or don't have a registered domain name, then you just need to wait for the DNS query to return failed and then manually enter the domain name and node name.
14. Set the root password
The installer then asks you to set up a root password for your system with at least six characters. The password you entered will not be displayed on the screen. You must enter the password twice, and if the two times are inconsistent, the installer will ask you to re-enter. You should make the password easy to remember, but you can't make it easy for others to guess. The pinyin, phone number, birthday, password, root, and 123456 of your name are not good passwords. A good password includes numbers and uppercase and uppercase letters, and does not include common words in the dictionary: for example I4lTm2. Remember passwords are case sensitive. Write down this password and put it in a safe place.
15. Make a boot floppy disk
The boot disk you want to make is customized according to your system hardware. Can be used to boot your Happylinux system. If LILO is damaged in your system, which may cause Happylinux to fail to boot, or you do not want to install LILO in your system, you can boot the system with this customized boot disk. If you want to create a boot disk, select "Yes", and select "No" will skip the production process. The installer is set to "Yes" by default.
16. Install the boot loader LILO
LILO is a bootloader that can be used to select one of LINUX, Windows, or one of other operating systems when the system is started.
The next dialog box allows you to enter the information you need to pass to LILO at startup, usually using the default value. If you are using some SCSI drives, you also need to select the "Use linear modulus" mode unless you make it clear that you need this parameter, otherwise it is generally recommended that you do not need to select this option. The most important thing to note is that if your system has more than 64M memory, the Intel x86 series BIOS sometimes reports to the operating system that the maximum memory is only 64M. In this case, you need to notify the system core of your real memory size, otherwise Linux will only use 64M memory. For example, if your system has 128M memory, you need to enter the following parameters:
mem=127M
Why do we use 127M instead of 128M? Because some systems reserve a portion of the memory for BIOS or cache for displaying memory. So we keep 1M memory for the system. If you enter parameters that are larger than your real memory, it will cause some serious results, such as system crash. Now you choose "Continue".
Now you need to enter the partition you wish to boot, the boot identity of your Linux partition will be automatically configured as "linux". The boot identity of your first DOS or Win98's FAT32 partition will be automatically configured as "dos". After selecting a partition with the mouse or keyboard, select the "Edit" function to modify the boot identifier of the partition, and select the "Set as default" function to set the partition to be the partition launched by default. Now select "OK" to continue, the configuration will be written to the hard disk to complete the installation of LILO.
17. Configure the printer
You can now configure the printer, the default value is "No".
If you have a printer and select Yes, you will have the following selections to specify how your printer is connected to your computer.
Local - Your printer is directly connected to the computer. After selecting this option, you will also need to enter the port your printer is connected to.
Remote lpd - Connect to a printer on other UNIX machines, or directly connect to a printer server on the network. After selecting this option, you also need to enter the remote node name and the queue name of the remote printer.
SMB/Windows 95/NT - Printer shared by Microsoft Windows for Workgroups, Windows 95/98, or Windows NT servers, you need to enter the node name of the SAMBA printer, the IP address of the SAMBA printer, the name of the shared SAMBA printer, the user name used to log in to the SAMBA printer (the default is GUEST for the Windows server, and the default is nobody for the Samba server), and the password used to log in to the SAMBA printer, and the default is None.
Press OK to enter the "Standard Printer Options" interface.
Standard Printer Options - User generated print queue name, used to store the directory where the temporary files are printed.
Configure Printer - Select the type of printer you are using. Note that if your printer is a PS printer, you can choose "PostScript Printer".
Special Options - Depending on the type of printer you choose, different options will appear in this step for different printers. The common things are: the paper size supported by the printer, the resolution of the printer (DPI), if it is a color printer, enter the color depth. If it is an HP printer, you also need to enter "Fix Stair-Stepping of Text".
Check Printer Configuration - Check your settings, if incorrect, check "Previous" to reset, or select "OK" to continue.
18. Configure the X window system
At this time, the installer will ask you whether to configure X service. It is recommended that you choose Yes. Otherwise, if you choose to install X, the display mode of your graphical interface will be VGA16 after installation.
19. Select a graphics card
The installer shows a long column of graphics card types for you to choose from. Please look for your graphics card type. If not found, please select the last item: the graphics card type not listed.
20. Install additional software packages
If you select "Yes" in the previous step, some additional packages will be installed, otherwise the installer will skip this step.
21. The second phase of installation is completed
Now the second phase of the installation process is completed and we will enter the system configuration stage!
System configuration stage
22. Detect the mouse
The installer will automatically detect the mouse on your system. If it detects a PS/2 mouse or Bus mouse, the corresponding options will be automatically highlighted. If your mouse cannot be detected, please manually select the mouse type. If you have a two-button mouse, you can select the button "Simulate Three Keys". Please make sure you have selected the correct mouse type and press Enter to continue.
This operating system does not support the scroll wheel of the USB mouse.
23. Configure the time zone
Select your time zone. If you are a Chinese user, you should generally choose the default "PRC" time zone.
24. Select Start Service
This program allows you to configure the system services/daemon that runs automatically when the system starts. First it will give a list of installed system services, some services have been configured to run automatically by default, and some services still need to be set. The selected service is configured to run automatically. Use the up and down keys or mouse to select the process, press the left-most box to select/remove the automatically running service. Highlight a service and click 'Description' to display a message box, displaying detailed information about the service. Normal users can use the default value and select "OK".
25. Verify settings
Select the default value in this process.
26. Monitor settings
The installer now lists a long display. If your monitor appears in the list, select it and press Enter. Or select the default setting. The default setting's screen refresh frequency is safer but the effect is also poor. Otherwise, select Custom. If you choose Custom, first you need to enter the manufacturer and model of your monitor (if you are not clear, you can not fill in), as well as the bandwidth, vertical and horizontal scanning frequency of your monitor. You can select a predefined setting, or enter it manually, which you can find in your monitor's manual.
Warning: It is not recommended to choose a monitor that is "similar" to your monitor unless you are sure that the monitor you choose will not exceed the capabilities of your actual monitor. If you do this, you may overclock your monitor and ruin it.
27. Screen preparation
You will be asked if you use automatic detection. If you select Yes, the installer will run the resolution list of X-probeonly. Please remove the display resolution you do not need and your XWindow will automatically use the maximum resolution you selected. If you want to configure the screen parameters yourself, select "No". After selecting "No", the user needs to select the resolution, line frequency and field frequency that the monitor can achieve.
28. Configure video memory
Configure how much memory your graphics card has.
29. Configure the clock
Select your graphics card clock. If you don’t know, please press Enter directly to select the default option.
30. Select the display mode
Now you need to select the color depth you want, the more colors the better the display effect. Of course, the color depth is limited by your video memory size. If you choose 16bpp color (16-bit color per point), the resolution is 1024x768, you need 1024x768 = 786432 points x 2 bytes/point = 1572864 byte that is 1.5M video memory.
Happylinux's KDE desktop environment requires a minimum color depth of 16bpp, otherwise the color will overflow, so if you don't have 2M video memory, you must choose another window manager. If your graphics card has 4M or more display memory, you can choose 16bpp or 24bpp for the best results.
31. Test X configuration
Now you can check if your X server is set up correctly before writing to your system configuration. XWindow will be started using the current configuration. If your configuration is correct, a small dialog box will appear asking you if it displays properly. If you selected No, you will be able to reconfigure your X. Generally, the default value "Yes" should be selected to continue. Now that your XWindow system is configured, the installer will write all configurations to your system. You can reconfigure your XWindow system by running Xconfigurator as root after installation. If your configuration is incorrect, you can run Xconfigurator after the installation is complete to reconfigure.
32. Select the login method
A small dialog box will appear, please select whether the system uses graphical login after Happylinux is started. HappyLinux has two login methods:
1) Login with standard console text
2) Log in through gdm
It is recommended that new users and inexperienced Linux users choose the default value "Yes" to use the graphical login method. After logging in, you can start using X desktop immediately. Experienced users are generally willing to use text to log in, which is very convenient for Happylinux users who are mainly used as servers and workstations.
33. Installation and configuration are all completed
Now that the installation and configuration work is complete, you can remove the disc from the optical drive and press Enter to restart Happylinux.
34. Start Linux
Now, please remove the Happy Linux installation disc from the optical drive, and the system will automatically boot from the hard drive.
At this point, all Linux has been installed.