Following instructions; avoiding assumptions (part 3): booting, using, and installing the live Linux system

TL;DR: this post is about installing Linux on your computer when you want to keep Windows, which most people will, and you only have the one hard disk. If you're installing Linux and you're happy to overwrite everything, then it's practically a three or four click process from the Live environment for most mainstream distros. I've written this as a guide for people I know who can then ask me questions having decided they want to take this (most difficult) route. 

You've downloaded the .iso, and you've written the .iso to a USB drive. Let's revisit our mission statement again:

Linux Mint is a popular Ubuntu-based distribution that we're going to download as an .iso file; we're then going to write the .iso to a USB thumb drive and boot into the live environment. This will allow you to explore Linux without making any changes to your computer. If we're happy with the live environment, we're going to take the next step and install it on our computer. 

Now we have our bootable USB, we're going to boot into the live environment and, in the first instance,  use it as an operating system. Only when we're happy are we going to take the big step of installing it on our system. Booting into the live environment poses no threat to your current setup; but if all of this is completely new to you, you might want to consider booting on an old machine, though I will be exploring ways to make the "install" part of this as safe as possible. 

I'm going to assume that you currently only have Windows on your computer. If you have Linux or Linux and Windows (in other words, you've dual booted before), then this process won't be quite so mysterious to you. It's perfectly possible to set up your system where your offered four or five OSes to boot from at startup if you're so inclined (and some of us are). 

Step one. Insert your USB drive into a USB port and reboot your computer. Almost certainly, nothing will happen -- by nothing I mean you're likely to boot into Windows as usual. This means you have to go into the BIOS and change the boot order, or perhaps you have a boot order menu that can be activated with one of the F keys while your computer starts up. This will be different on different computers, so I can't be certain what you're configuration will be. Below is a screenshot of my computer booting:

Yours, of course, might be different, and very probably is. Whether via the BIOS or the boot order menu or both (when I boot into my BIOS, I'm told to press F8 for the boot menu), you should see your USB drive detected and be able to select it. All being well, you will boot into a live version of Linux Mint. 

If you do not successfully boot into the live environment after you've located the USB drive, it's worth giving it another go, but it's vital you see the live environment working and can use it -- for browsing and creating a file in the office suite, as two examples -- before moving on to the install step. Below is a screenshot of the system booting into a live environment:

And below, having successfully booted (Note: I changed the wallpaper): 

Click on the icon (start menu) in the bottom left-hand corner, and a menu will appear, from where you can browse and launch the applications.

The system is perfectly usable. You can use Firefox to browse the web, LibreOffice to produce documents, you can configure the system to your liking, move the task bar, change the wallpaper, but if you reboot the system all will be lost, though of course you could have saved any files you worked on to an external disk or uploaded them to the cloud. The point is the live environment is a fully functioning operating system you are free to use. You don't have to install it if you don't want to. Explore for a while and decide whether or not you want to install. 

I'm going to assume you do. But here are some questions. 

Do you have just the one disk with Windows on it? If that's the case, you will need to shrink Windows to make room for Linux (this is called partitioning) and install Linux in the newly created space. The installer will do that for you, and you will end up with a setup in which you boot into a Grub menu and choose either Linux or Windows at startup. Linux will be the default. This used to be how it was done, and it can still be done this way today. 

However. Do you have a spare hard disk. The best approach these days -- what with BIOS booting and all -- is to install Linux and its boot-loader on an entirely separate hard disk. This is by far the safest option. A super safe option is to actually disconnect your Windows disk while installing Linux. If not subsequently being able to boot your Windows partition is a nightmare scenario for you, you might want to consider one of the safer options. 

Option 1 (partitioning your existing disk, the riskiest option): 

There is, as you can imagine, more than one way of doing this. This is how I would do it. In the live enviornment, start the program GParted (this is a partitioning program). It will look something like this... ... 

... though if all you have is the Windows installation that came with your computer, you will probably see three or four partitions, all Windows related and maybe one to do with the manufacturer of the computer, who also want a lookin in your life.  The point is you have to shrink the biggest partition (which will be your main Windows partition) to make room for Linux. To do this, right-click and choose Resize/Move and then drag the partition in, thus:

Note: if your Windows partition is quite full you will not be able to shrink it very much, and you might be better with one of the alternative approaches. Now click on Resize/Move and your partition will look like this: 

Apply the changes, and GParted will shrink your partition and create your free space. This may take some time. Quite a lot of time, indeed.  In the free space, you will be creating a partition, on which you will install Linux. 

Note: If all this seems like rather a daunting faff and is putting you off, then good. Far better that you're put off at this stage than rue the day you ever started with it when you can't boot Windows... because then you'll unfairly blame Linux. 

Once you've shrunk your partition, it's a good idea to come out of the live Linux environment and reboot your computer to check you can still boot into Windows. If you boot into Windows, you can continue; if not, you'll be doing a lot searching on your search engine of choice to clear up the mess and recover what you had before. 

Assuming you successfully booted into Windows, you still have a lot of treacherous terrain to navigate. Insert your USB key and boot back into the Linux live environment. Once there, reopen GParted and create a partition in the free space. I usually go for ext4:

GParted gives you lots of opportunities to back out (helpful when doing screenshots like this), so check your work before applying. With this done, close GParted and start the installation process. To do that, you can double-click on the icon on the desktop.

And this will open the installer: 

Choose your language and click Continue -- you will be taken to the next screen, where you should select your keyboard. Do so, and click Continue.

The next screen will ask you if you want to install multimedia codecs. You might as well do so, so tick the box and click Continue. You will be taken to the Installation Type page. This is the tricky bit. You need to select Something Else and then click Continue. 

This is where you have to choose the correct partition and it's vital you get this right. Otherwise you could damage/overwrite your Windows partition. When you click on it, you will have to choose a file system and a mount point. See below:

Click OK and you will get a warning about writing the changes to disk.

If you're comfortable, click Continue. The next screen will ask you where you want to install the boot loader. Since you only have the one disk and you already have an EFI partition, you should click Install Now and the installation will begin. 

If you have never installed an operating system, this will seem very daunting. This is how it used to be done before spare hard disks and BIOS booting, and a lot of lessons were definitely learned the hard way. Nowadays, you would want to leave Windows alone and install on a spare hard disk, ensuring that you also choose to install the boot-loader to that hard disk, too, and don't mistakenly install it to the one your Windows installation is on. This can happen because that's where the installer is likely to find the EFI boot partition. Christopher Barnatt of Explaining Computers even recommends temporarily disconnecting the Windows disk, so there is no risk of making a mistake. 

ShortWave

 

Love this application, available on Linux. I did check, but it does seem to be exclusive to Linux.

I came across it fortuitously while looking for radio-related applications in my software manager. There are literally 1000s of stations available for your listening pleasure, entirely justifying the excellent appellation.  

As a child, I whiled away many a happy hour oh so carefully turning a dial on an analogue short wave radio to bring in distant stations. And who can forget the mystery of the numbers stations, and the feeling that if you listened long enough the mystery would be revealed.

On a practical note, the BBC has decided you can't listen to its stations online unless you log in, and you don't with this (need to log in, that is). Just search for the station and click on the one you want to listen to. 

You can also choose to create library of stations you want. Here, I'm going to add BBC Radio 3 to my library. 

And, below, my limited library: 

 

Following instructions; avoiding assumptions (part 2): writing the ISO to a USB drive

The Linux Mint .iso image has been downloaded to your computer and is probably in your Downloads folder on your hard disk: 

linuxmint-22-cinnamon-64bit.iso

We now need to write it to our USB drive. A reminder of our mission statement:

Linux Mint is a popular Ubuntu-based distribution that we're going to download as an .iso file; we're then going to write the .iso to a USB thumb drive and boot into the live environment. This will allow you to explore Linux without making any changes to your computer. If we're happy with the live environment, we're going to take the next step and install it on our computer. 

We've done the first bit. To write the image to our USB drive we will need a tool like Rufus (on Windows) or Balena Etcher (available for Windows, Mac, and Linux). I'm going with Etcher, but other tools are available. Etcher is free for individual use and can be downloaded from here:

https://etcher.balena.io/

Scroll down and you will see the following: 

Choose "Download" next to the one that fits your operating system. With Etcher installed, open it. It will look like the following:

Choose to "Flash from file". This will open your file manager. Navigate to the .iso and select it. File will be selected, and you will move on to the next stage. 

Click on "Select target". A select target box will open with a list of available drives. This is what it looks like on Linux. Here it's sensibly showing only the USB I've plugged in, and NOT the hard disks in my computer. 

However, it could display other disks. The point is you need to be sure of your target BECAUSE everything on the target will be overwritten, and that would make for a very bad day if you get it wrong. So plug in your USB drive, identify it, and choose that as the target when running Etcher.

Once the file and target have been selected, simply click Flash and the process will begin. Be patient and wait for Etcher to tell you the process has completed. 

Close everything down, remove the USB thumb drive, and back away from the computer. Nothing has changed except that you now have an operating system on the USB drive that can be booted, used, and ultimately installed on any number of computers. For free. Legally. 

I wondered if I should end this by booting triumphantly into the live environment, but decided it would be a better fit for the start of "(part 3)". In "(part 3)", we'll be booting to the USB drive, using the system for a while without making changes to our computer, and ultimately then taking the big step of actually installing the system on to our computer. 

Following instructions; avoiding assumptions (part 1): downloading the ISO

For the sake of this exercise, I'm going to ask you to do something simple. In this particular case, the downloading of an .iso of the latest Linux Mint to your computer's hard disk.  

There are quite a few assumptions here: that you know what's meant by download; that you know what Linux MInt is and that you know what an .iso image is. 

Often, it helps to have a statement of what we want to achieve and why we're doing it. So...

Linux Mint is a popular Ubuntu-based distribution that we're going to download as an .iso file; we're then going to write the .iso to a USB thumb drive and boot into the live environment. This will allow you to explore Linux without making any changes to your computer. If we're happy with the live environment, we're going to take the next step and install it on our computer. 

Well, okay, you're reading my channel, so I'm entitled to a few assumptions. For example, you know how to open a browser and navigate the world wide web. If given an URL, I'm assuming you'll be able to get there. So please go here:

https://linuxmint.com/  -- you will be taken to the Linux Mint home page. 

The Download button is right there on the front page, so click on it. You might expect the download to start here, but it doesn't because there are choices to make, always a complicating factor. When you click on the Download button, you're taken here: https://linuxmint.com/download.php ... 

... where you have to decide what version of Linux Mint you want to download. We're going to download the flagship Cinnamon edition. 

Click the Download button. Again, the download doesn't start. You have to make more decisions and more choices. We're on a page where we have to choose a mirror (download location) from a list. Most will work, but there's no point downloading from a UK download mirror if you're in Australia. Also, there's this scary message, which most of us ignore, including almost every tutorial on downloading and installing Linux Mint (but it's about checking you have a genuine .iso): 

Scroll through the list of mirrors until you find one that takes your fancy. I'm in the UK, but there's nothing to stop me going German or Danish (adding a cup of coffee as it downloads).

                                                      

Click on the link and the download will either start or your file manager will open inviting you to save it somewhere. The file name will look like this:

If the latter, navigate to where you want to save the file and click Save. The download will begin and all you have to do is wait. 

After all of the above -- avoiding assumptions isn't easy -- all we've done is download the file. We haven't done anything with it. The more complicated bit is still to come. 

I think I'll add "(part 1)" to the title, and pick it up in "(part 2)"

Ubuntu-based

"DistroX is a Ubuntu-based distro that provides a sleek desktop experience while being light on resources..."

"DistroY is a Ubuntu-based distro optimised for..."

"DistroZ is a Ubuntu-based distro designed to provide an easy transition for Windows users..."

I could go on. There are, in short, a lot of Ubuntu-based distros. Among my favourites are: 

• Linux Mint
• Linux Lite
• Pop! OS (which has taken a sabbatical to essentially rewrite Gnome in Rust)
• Zorin OS
• Tuxedo OS (for KDE)

All the above are Ubuntu-based, but are independent distros in their own right, as distinct from the official flavours of Ubuntu, like Kubuntu and Xubuntu.

There's a chap called Titus on Youtube, who gets quite sniffy about all this forking. He avers that you only need three distros. Those are:

• Debian
• Fedora
• Arch

He mentions Opensuse, which I would include, but dismisses it as too niche. He doesn't mention Slackware at all. He also rather charmlessly suggests you could eliminate 90% of "all these forks and Linux distributions and no-one would blink an eye.." Despite the smug, elitist tone, he does have a point, particularly when it comes to understanding why there are so many distributions. 

You and I could make our own distro. Let's call it John OS. So what do we want to base it on? Let's base it on Ubuntu in keeping with the title of the post (Ubuntu, itself, is based on Debian). So we take the Ubuntu base, and add an existing desktop -- say Cinnamon -- which we're going to customise to give it a unique look. Maybe move the bar to the top and set it to auto-hide, make it fatter or thinner, and install Plank at the bottom with our favourite selection of applications pinned. Let's go with Brave as the browser; Gnome Office (just to be different) as the office suite; Haruna as the media player. These choices will be described as "eccentric" if you're lucky enough to get reviews because there are more conventional choices: for example, Firefox is usually the first browser of choice. 

Distros come and go; there are lots of discontinued distros. Anyone remember Pinguy? But Titus's entirely valid point is that you could just have installed Debian or Ubuntu (to stick with the theme) and uninstalled and/or installed the things you needed to achieve the same effect. All the ingredients are out there; you can take the ingredients and bake the cake how you like. Distros are just ready made cakes in the patisserie window for you to choose from. 

Ubuntu

Ubuntu came, saw, and conquered -- in Linux terms, that is. And not monetarily, a fact that would lead to all the subsequent bad decisions, after the "How do we monetise this?" question had reared its ugly head and wouldn't leave the room. It was released in 2004 and used Gnome 2.6 as its desktop environment. 

Based on Debian, Ubuntu was amazing. Straightforward to install with a curated selection of software rather than just everything thrown in. It stood the biggest chance of making whatever year the year of Linux on the desktop was supposed to be. They took some criticism for handing out CDs of their free operating  system in a nice cardboard wallet without mentioning Linux at all. But I understand the rationale. Linux had -- and still has (entirely unjustifiably in my opinion) -- a reputation for being geeky, difficult, not for ordinary users. And too many well-meaning Linux channels are too ready to heave an understanding sigh and go along with this, which is just fine and dandy for Microsoft. They don't want an informed population who demand the right to install and use an OS of their choice on their computers. I'll address these issues in future posts. 

Ubuntu back then certainly stood out, though I also remember Mepis as being easy to use and PCLinuxOS, but Ubuntu gained huge popularity and its creator had been to space. Fancy. Then came Unity and HUD. If memory serves, they also had a cloud storage facility like Dropbox, which they later abandoned due to cost. I can't quite remember the chronology, but they later abandoned Unity and went back to Gnome, but not before they'd cheesed off the Linux community with an unannounced kick-back arrangement with Amazon. I, too, have opinions about Amazon, sufficiently strong to stop me shopping there, but that's a subject for another post. Ubuntu then introduced and pushed Snaps and forbade their official community flavours -- Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Ubuntu Mate, et al -- from also shipping Flatpak. Other distros had caught up -- though, to be fair, quite a few were Ubuntu-based. But Ubuntu had fallen from its position of golden grace, and never got it back. And they probably don't care, having given up on the desktop as a revenue stream.  

A slight digression here on conjugating companies. Apparently, it should be singular, "The BBC is denying..."; "Canonical is the company behind Ubuntu..." But it feels odd to me, especially when using a pronoun. "The BBC has denied something or other. It stated that..." All this is by way of my explaining using the plural conjugation. Anyway, back to our tale of Ubuntu's tumble from the heights of Linux favour.

Arguably, a lot of the criticism of Ubuntu is a bit over-blown. Canonical is/are a corporation and therefore their raison d'etre is to make money. Any good they do or did is entirely incidental, and they did a lot of good in accelerating the usability of Linux on the desktop. To be clear, Ubuntu is still a good recommendation for new users; it's just that now there are so many alternatives -- Linux Mint, Fedora, MX Linux, Pop! OS (another story in the making) -- that don't come with the problematic baggage, even though said baggage can be rectified in a matter of minutes. Flatpak is easily installed; Snaps removed; Amazon purged. 

All this is, in many ways, too much knowledge and information. Why should you care? If you want to give Linux a go and someone offers to install Ubuntu for you, go for it. It often is -- and has historically been -- a newbie's first foray. And you're more than likely to have a good experience. There's certainly lots of support.