Installing SuSe Linux 8.1 Professional
This is my first tutorial here so go easy on me ok?
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Installing SuSe Linux 8.1 Professional.
SuSe Linux is my personal favorite distro. I have been using it for a while now and also a lot of others are using it too. Before you install any Linux distro, you should check the website of the distro you are installing to be sure everything in your computer will work.
For SuSe Linux, go to http://www.suse.com and look around. If you need to check to be sure of your hardware, please visit http://hardwaredb.suse.de/index.php?LANG=en_UK and check your hardware. If it’s listed here more than likely you will be fine. If it’s not, don’t worry, try it out and it may work anyway.
A lot of people don’t like SuSe because of its GUI. It is very GUI based but to me that helps people coming over from Windows or MAC OS learn a bit easier. Now the fun part.
After you buy SuSe Linux (yes buy because that makes things a whole lot easier.) Take out the nice looking package type thing and open it. If you can boot from DVD (most new machines with a DVD drive can, otherwise just use the install Cds.) Pop the DVD into the drive and reboot your machine. If you didn’t make any partitions don’t worry, most 9X Windows installs will be found and it will automatically give you the option to resize Windows and make partitions for Linux.
Step 1.
When you boot from the DVD or Cds, you see a nice looking GUI asking what you’d like to do, after a certain time period it begins loading. After it loads it checks your computer for hardware and begins loading things up for use. Select which language you speak, whatever you select here will be used as the default keyboard layout, which you can change in the next step if you for some reason want too.
Step 2.
SuSe Linux scans all of your hardware and scans for any previously installed OSs. After this step you go to another screen where it shows you what it found and what it plans on doing.
You see your language at the top, your time zone, Keyboard, Mouse, Partitioning, mode, booting, and software it will install. Now is your chance to make any last minute changes, if you need to change your language for example, click on the word language, as you can see, things at the top are in bold, they are links you can click on to change something about the install.
If Linux found your Windows partition it lists it and shows it plans on resizing it and adding partitions for Linux. If it did not find your partitions don’t worry, click on partitioning and you see a screen asking you a question, if you are good at partitioning and know what your doing you don’t need to be reading this, if not, click on “base partitions on what is already on there” or something similar (I cant remember exactly what it says right now but its something like that.)
You can tell it to leave your partitions the way they are, or base them on what it already wants to do. If it did not find Windows and you want to keep Windows on your system you should FIRST make a back up of everything on your system, if you didn’t do this its NOT too late, just click on abort installation on the bottom middle of the screen and you’ll see a screen making sure you remove boot media before you boot the machine.
If you already backed everything up then select our partitions making sure you have space for Windows and Linux. After you are done you go back to the screen you were at before. You see booting on the list. If you have partition magic and or another boot loader, you may want to look into this. I had a box with Windows 98 SE and boot magic and Linux with GRUB on it. Now when I would boot id see the boot magic, if I tried booting Windows I got an error, but when id boot Linux, GRUB would load and ask to boot Windows or Linux, Windows and Linux both worked fine from the grub menu and I suggest using that. It’s not like the old grub; it’s very nice and graphical.
Where you see “Software” This is what will be loaded onto your system. The default works out fine and you can always add more after you become more familiar with Linux, so if your short on HD space, go ahead and let it be, but if you have a lot of space, go ahead and click on it and you’ll be able to select more software to be loaded up. This option is entirely up to you. If you do add more software or click on it you will be brought to a screen where you can select more software. Also note hat at the top it’s showing a drop down menu, if you click the other option in the menu (NOT the search function but the other one not selected) you can select MORE things than the grouped category allows you to. After you finish with this you are back to the same screen you started at but with different options if you selected any. If you didn’t you just spent about 5 minutes reading this wasting time.
Step 3. The installation.
After you are happy with the settings you have selected, click on “Accept”.
This starts the install with whatever you have selected. Start the install by clicking “Yes” in the green window. Depending on computer speed and what you have selected this can take anywhere from 15 - 30 minutes, It all depends on what you are installing.
I know what you Red Hat people are thinking, “Hey I didn’t set a root password.”
Well in SuSe Linux that comes after what we just went over. Set your root password and then any other options you may want, Then make another user for yourself, logging in as root all the time is a bad idea security wise. After you have created another user for yourself, make one for anyone else who will be using Linux. You should NEVER log in as root unless you are changing system setting, accidental rm -rf / can ruin you and only root can do that. Now you have SuSe Linux installed on your system, enjoy and check back as I will more than likely add to this tutorial as I get free time.
