Phase 0: how to get started with any Linux in 40 mins

Introduction

In series of post ´Phase 0´ I will outline how I´ḿ doing things so everybody can easily reproduce it on his own hardware. In this post I will tell you how I am setting up very fast, which is crucial for me as (1) I have not much spare time, (2) I am too impatience to wait until something is ready. In general if I cannot get a distro installation started in 10 minutes, this means the distro is doomed unless they improve installation procedure.

Firstly, my hardware:
I´m using Acer Aspire 5520, average laptop good enough for work

• WIFI: Atheros Communications Inc. AR242x 802.11abg Wireless PCI Express Adapter (rev 01)
• CPU: 1.8 GHz, AMD Athlon 64 X2 TK-55
• 2 GB RAM
• Video: NVIDIA GeForce 7000M

Because its CPU supports 64bit I will install appropriate distro version if available. As for average user 64bits sounds twice better than 32bits ;) In case a distro has no 64bits version - bad luck.

My second helper in this mission is UNetbootin, a tool for writing down ISO images to flash drive. Check here - http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/.
Of course you need some flash drive, bigger better. I have got some 4gb noname drive, which costs 80 Danish kroner (EUR 10, USD14), so I do not afraid of destroying it with some tools talking to it at low level.

Getting started with Unetbootin

If you are using Windows, you not going to have any problems of starting the tool. Just download it, and run. After that select a Linux distro and version you want to write down on flash drive. Alternatively, you can use an ISO image you might have downloaded earlier. Finally select the letter of your drive and wait until it´s done writing.



In case of Linux, I had some difficulties in getting it worked. And somehow I hadn't seen the package for Ubuntu, so I compiled it. However, you'd better use packages: 32bit 64bit

When you have flash drive ready boot your system using it, select right options and proceed with installation.


In next post I will outline criteria which I look in while evaluating some particular system, so this research will have at least some similarity to academic research ;)

First post - what for?

The idea of starting blog researching on Linux usage by normal people sparkled after I desperately tried to replace Vista on something else. The reason is not that I don´t like Microsoft, no. The problem is Windows itself.

I remember the times when I used to have Celeron 433Mhz with win98 on it. Now I´ve got double core AMD 2.0 Ghz. I feel no difference basicaly. Of course I can run cooler programs and stuff, but, for example, Explorer opens the same as it was on Celeron in good old days. Search is the same slow. System is unresponsive quite often. Not to say that it is quite ugly, when it comes to interface, though, it´s not my primary concern. My concern that the hardware is getting better and more powerfull everyday, but creators of Win loads those resources so I can feel no power surplus.

Note, I don´t not care about common belief that MS is evil (and Mac is white and fluffy) and Linux rules. No. Linux at the current stage still something that my mom wouldn´t be able to use. It is not user-friendly! MacOS is a great one, but restricted to hardware (long live hackintosh!). I wanna Linux be as fast as it can be, and is simple as Windows.

The only problem that computer guys thinks of other user as of dumb users who are just lazy to learn what are disk partitions, network interface, dhcp, pop3, smtp, ftp, http and other ***p. They wanna send photos, emails, listen to music, watch mouvies, connect to wifi withought finding out what drivers are.

In this blog I will try to share my experience of installing different Linuxes on my average laptop Acer 5522. And I will try to evaluate them from simple user point of view, which I believe I am still to some extent.

You are free to share your experiences and observations. Just be constructive. I´m not Linux evangelist. I´m am the Other system believer. Eventually I hope the info I will collect here will help to Linux distros developers understand what the priorities are.