Optimally you should spare an extra disk for your new Linux system installation. If you can't afford that, we are going to use a part of your existing hard drive(create a partition, that is). In order to successfully accomplish this you might need to defrag your Windows system, using the built-in MS tools, otherwise you may encounter some obstacles. Oh! You could also backup your existing Windows files, if you're feeling that insecure. Anyway, personally I never do, I like living on the edge.
Insert the newly burnt DVD into your DVD drive. Restart your PC and hit "DEL" on your keyboard until you get into the BIOS settings screen. There you must somehow set your DVD/CDROM drive as the first-booting device. It's not that hard, search thoroughly all the menus available. On a laptop, most probably you don't have to do this. It is going to boot from
CD/DVD-ROM anyway.
Software
When the DVD boots you are prompted with a blue screen full of choices; press the "New installation" option. Wait until it detects your hardware and loads the installation system. Now
there are two tabs. Change to the expert tab. Select the software option to alter some of the defaults. Select the KDE choice(yes Gnome sucks really bad and eats baby seals for breakfast) and proceed to the next screen. From the top-left roll down button select "Search". On the text
input write "kerry" and hit enter. From the results right click on it and set it to "do not install".
Then search for "beagle" and do the same thing for every package that resulted from your query(1). Do the exact same thing for the strings "zmd" and "zen"(2). Then search for "gcc","python","kernel-source"(3),"find-utils" and "make" one at a time. From the first query("gcc") install the one that says "c compiler" or something like it. From the second query install the python programming language. From the third the one that says "linux kernel sources". From the fourth you should have only one result, so go on and install it. From the last
query install the one named "make". I'm writing from memory here, for those that didn't get it.
Hit accept/finish and be done with it.
Partitions
Now we head off to the partition formatting. For some reason I sense that you are cheapskates and you can't afford more than one hard disk. Also, to top that, there is the fact that you have already installed, in that hard drive, an obscure OS called... Windows. Shame on you! Anyway
go to the partition configuration and select the expert/custom way of defining your disks. Don't let SuSE propose you a configuration, start from scratch you lazy boy! Now you are confronted with a list of your disks and partitions, in a rather peculiar form(at least for a windows user).
Relax, take a breath and listen. FORGET the "C:","D:"..."Z:" way of naming hard disks and partitions. Apart from the fact that it is stupid for a number of reasons, what you are about to learn is not that hard. In linux the naming convention for the devices goes something like this:
hda ---> this is the first IDE device
hda1, hda2 ---> the first and second partitions on that particular disk
hdb ---> this is the second IDE device
hdb1, hdb2 ---> the first and second partitions on that particular disk
sda ---> the first SCSI or SATA device
sda1 ---> blah blah you get the point, right? The "a" and "b" or whatever in the hda/hdb/sda/sdb/hdc has to do with the cabling inside your motherboard. For example a hard disk named "hda" is going to change its name in "hdb" if we connect it to the second IDE cable. So, we do NOT switch cables in the middle of the night for no reason! Got that? It will make your system un-bootable(if there's such a word) and you will have to do dirty things to make it right.
For the sake of my/yours sanity I will demonstrate a simple example. I have(supposedly) a 40GB hard disk with Windows XP already installed. What I am about to see in the Partition manager of SuSE is this:
hda 40GB (or something like that)
hda1 40GB NTFS (or something like that)
hda1 40GB NTFS (or something like that)
What it's telling me is that "you have a hard disk named hda of 40GB and one partition(hda1) with a windows system that eats up all your disk space(40GB)". We quickly realize that this is unacceptable, so we select the "hda1" and hit the "resize" button. Now, you have to be a complete dimwit to not be able to understand what you have to do here. I had a pet monkey that could it. Just leave 10GB for the windows system and the rest is for your shiny linux system :)
Now the partition table looks like this:
hda 40GB (or something like that)
hda1 10GB NTFS (or something like that)
A whole 30GB left for OpenSuSE :-)
Select the "hda" and press the "create" new partition. On the dialog select "primary partition"
Choose from the list the "swap" option and check the "format partition" checkbox(if available).
On the right says something like "start block" and "end block". Leave the "start block " alone and in the "end block" you are going to give it a number twice the size of your RAM, but NOT more than 2GB. For example if you have 512MB ram you are going to write "+1GB". If you have
1GB of RAM you should write "+2GB"(without the quotes). But if you have RAM>=2GB you are still going to write "+2GB"(4). Got that? Good. Press accept/apply/ok(or whatever) to go back to the partition tables. Select again the "hda" and press the create new partition(primary) and now choose the "ext3" option. Leave the start-end block fields alone so it uses the rest of the disk. Below the end block field there is a "mount point" field. Just write(or choose from the list) "/" (without the quotes). This is your main filesystem partition, all your files are going to reside there. Press apply/finish/ok(or anything similar) . Now the last thing is to set a mount point for your windows. So select the hda1 and press the "edit" button. DO NOT FORMAT it, just set the mount point to "/windows/C". Then go to the expert/advanced(I dont remember exactly) tab and choose the option "Mountable by user". This means that when you boot your Linux system, you will be able to access all your windows files from the directory "/windows/C". Careful though, you will have only "read" access to your windows files within Linux. This means you will be able for example to listen to an mp3 that you have downloaded when you were on Windows, but you will not be capable of editing(the ID3 Tag e.g.) or deleting the particular file. You can open a word document from within windows partition, but you won't be able to save it.
Now the partition table looks a lot like this:
hda 40GB (or something like that)
hda1 10GB NTFS /windows/C (or something like that)
hda2 2GB Swap
hda3 28GB ext3 /
That's all I think, now do whatever is necessary to continue with the actual installation(hit next/accept/apply at any prompt). The installation starts and the sun is up by now. You have to get ready to take the kids to school and come home quick to continue with the post install configuration. Don't promise them that you will pick them up after school, we won't finish that quick. In the next article we are going to set up your Internet Connection, optimize the KDE environment and possibly learn how to make a Mac user cry his eyes out with our 3d desktop(XGL).
Have fun
P.S. There are surely mistakes in this article because everything was written down from memory. If there is a show stopper mistake, tell me and I will correct it.
1) beagle is a buggy piece of software that makes your computer crawl to death. It's a Desktop searching software similar to Google Desktop. Google for it if you want more info or download it with your own risk. There is a chance that, by now, it has improved and it isn't the piece of crap that used to be. Either way I don't really care.
2)Zen(doesn'tworks) is a shot in the foot by Novell. It is supposed to be a Computer Systems Management software that made angry all those happy SuSE Linux users that were so comfortable with the Yast tool, which incidentally worked fine, thankyouverymuch. Rumor has it that it is going to be dropped from the next opensuse release, and that, made SuSE linux users worldwide feast like crazed hippies for 2 days and nights.
3) This is the actual source of the Linux kernel. The only reason we include it here is that there is a safe bet sometime you are going to need it. For example you may need to compile a driver for your wireless card or your web camera. Anyway if there is "compiling" and "driver" in the same sentence you are going to need it. Better install it now than searching for that damned suse cd later.
4) This number comes from experts, not just me. Also something to note is that always is best to create the swap partition first. Preferably it should be the first partition on the disk, for faster access times. This comes from the book "Oracle Database 10G Administration for Linux".
