Just like any person who has had enough with the virus bugging windows, I was also interested to work in linux. But it was not until when I came to IIT, I really had the chance to work in linux and install it in my own computer. As the title says, I am new to linux. Hence an installation guide written by me should be fairly a good material for any new users.
Before trying to install linux by themselves, I would suggest new comers to use linux for sometime, get some feel about the directory (folder) structures and get used to running some basic programs like media players, audio players, firefox etc. I found that to be very very useful for me.
For those, who cant wait to get the feel or who dont have pals who can install it for them in their computers, I would give a brief explanation about what you need to know if you wanna install linux on your own.
What you need to know: (for a very very new user who does not know anything about linux)
1. Windows is an operating system that helps you to store, organise, view, use and operate data/files in your hard disk. Similarly there are many other operating systems available. Some are commercial (u need to pay for the operating system) and some are free (freely available on the internet for download and install)
2.(a)Structure of hard disk as you see in windows operating system:
If you are using windows, you might be familiar with the way the hard disk has been partitioned. To open your hard disk you open My computer. Inside which you find some drives like C, D, E etc. You generally install windows in C drive which is called the primary drive, and normally use the other drives to store data. Let us call this the structure of hardisk as given by the operating system (windows). These drives C, D, E etc can be assumed like individual books where you can write and all are kept inside a box called My computer. Since it is only a box you cannot write anything in My computer.
If you have used the command prompt in windows, you would have noticed that the location of a folder is represented in a single line like this.
D:/Videos/movies/
This says that there is a folder called Videos in D drive and inside that folder there is another folder called movies. In the command line if you type cd .. you go back to the previous folder Videos and once again typing the same will take you to D drive. Typing cd .. from D drive will not take you to My computer as you cannot save anything in it. (Remember, its just a box and not a book)
2.(b)Structure of hard disk as you see in linux operating system:
Similarly linux has also a structure. In your linux-desktop, you will be seeing two shortcuts – Computer and User’s home. Double clicking Computer opens an explorer window in which you will see something called Filesystem and your other external drives like dvd/cd-drive. If you open this Filesystem you will actually open the root folder. It is represented by / (a back-slash). Unlike windows, you will not be having many drives/partitions in this file system. You may still have partitions, but every thing should be inside this root folder.
So this is like, inside the box (Computer) you have only one single book (filesystem) which is actually multiple books clubbed together as single one, something like a multisubject notebook.
If you open a similar command prompt (called as Terminal) here, the root folder will be like this.
/
Folders inside the root folder are represented like this.
/home/palani
It says that inside the root folder / there is a folder called home and inside this folder there is another folder called palani. This palani folder is called as the home folder for the user palani. A similar folder will be created for every user in linux in the user’s username. That is /home/lakshmi will be the home folder for the user lakshmi, and similarly /home/veera will be the home folder for the user veera.
This home folder is where we generally store our files and use it. Now, while installing linux, we have 2 choices:
(a) Set the entire disk space available to the root folder. (This will make the home folder a part of the root folder partition. So if you format the root folder, all the contents in the root folder will also be gone)
(b) Set some space to home folder alone, apart from setting remaining to home folder. (This will make the home folder a seperate partition attached to root folder partition. So, if you format the root folder your home folder contents will not be formatted and vice versa.)
Note: I will write separately in another blog about the hard disk partition settings while explaining the installation procedure. You don’t have to worry about it now.
3. Just as there are media players like winamp, windows media player, real player and applications like internet explorer, MS Office, etc., there are players in Linux too. Most of the linux users use vlc player and real player for video, amarok for audio, firefox for browsing. There are document processing softwares like, Open office which has word processor, spreadsheet and presenter similar to word, excel and powerpoint. There is another software called Latex (pronunced as latech) which is extensively used by many students in IIT for generation of documents and Latex-Beamer for presentations. (Hey! I am also using the same for typing my thesis..!) This Latex is an installable program which you can use in Windows too.
Note: You need not know to work in Latex so that you can work in Linux. Latex is just another documentation software.
Thats it! I hope this amount of knowledge will be sufficient for getting started. I’ll keep posted in another blog in a while about installing linux (preferably ubuntu, as it will be easier to work with who has worked in windows). In the meantime, if I find anyother thing that is needed for you to get started I will update in this same blog.
Cheers,
pal..!
because the Imperial Roman war chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back end of two war horses. 
. She asked her what is the matter.
