Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Hosting Security and Technology : Hosting Security and Technology Tutorials : How-To Download-Install-Use Linux (easy) - SuSE Specific

[websterworld]

STEP 1: Choosing a distro

There are many diffrent flavors of linux.
There is no "best" distro, there is a distro that's best for you.

Some distros are good for running on slow or older PC's.

Some are for the more advanced.

And some are made to be as easy to use as possible.


I'm going to assume that you want an easy-to-use distro to use at home.

There is a full list of all the distro's HERE


I would suggest this two:

www.lindows.com
www.suse.com


STEP 2: Downloading the distro


Most distro's offer ISO files to be downloaded from FTP mirrors.

What is an ISO file?

An ISO file is a cd image.
Once you download an ISO file you use a cd burning application like Nero to burn the file to a cd.

Another good resource is: LinuxISO

Also, you can download some distro's from a BitTorrent site.* (more on this later)

Linux Magazines often come with free linux CD's.

However, the best way to get a distro is not to download it but to buy it.

Just go to the distro you choose site, and order it.

The advantages of doing this is that you get the CD's in a nice box, with a manual and support.

Not to mention that by buying a distro you help support the linux company/distro.


*Downloading a distro via BitTorrent:

What is Bittorrent?
BitTorrent is a way of sharing files online.

For more information visit:

official BitTorrent web site

Some distro's offer their ISO's via BitTorrent as well, since it saves them a lot of bandwith.

Get yourself a BitTorrent client (this how-to will not be covering BitTorrent Clients) and head over to:

http://suprnova.org/ >> Apps >> Linux

You will find several linux distro's there, including SuSE.




SuSE:

While most distro's offer linux ISO's, SuSE does not. To install SuSE you need to do an FTP install (this how-to will not be covering this) or download the ISO's from BitTorrent. (see above)

However, if you decide to download SuSE from BitTorrent do this at your own risk. Since the author of this guide is not sure how legal doing this will be.

The best way to get SuSE is to buy it.



The rest of this how-to is going to assume that you have got SuSE.

[websterworld]

STEP 3: Install

I will assume that you have obtained the SuSE cd's one way or another. (for instructions on how to do this see above)

Before installing linux you need to create some free-space for it.

Use a program like Partition Magic to resize your current partitions, so you will have at least 5GB of unpartitioned space for linux.

I suggest that you defragmant and clean up your hard-drives first.

Once you have free unpartitioned space your ready to install linux.

Installing linux in the past used to be hard, but now its as easy as installing windows.

The first thing you have to do is change the device boot order.


What is the device boot order?

When you turn your computer on you will see at some point a line such as this:

Looking for boot from floopy: found none

Your computer checks to see if you have a diskette in your floppy to boot from.

Since you want to boot from a CD you have to tell your computer to see if it can boot from the CD-ROM drive instead of the floppy drive at start up.




To do this you need to edit your BIOS.
Turn on your computer and start pressing the F8 and DEL keys at once.

This will bring you to your BIOS. The button you need to press might be diffrent but its usually F5 or Delete...

once your in the BIOS, find a thing called booting order.
It should be something like this:

First: floppy
Second: zip drives
Third: CD-Rom

Change the booting order, and make it CD-ROM first...
This will tell the computer to boot from the CD-ROM.

Save and reboot.

Make sure you got the CD in. if you have 2 CD-ROM's put it in the main one.

This time, when the CD is in, your computer will start SuSE install.


The SuSE install is quite easy.
All you need to do choose the languge and follow the instructions.

SuSE will detect your hardware and ask you where you want to install.

Choose: Install into Free space

This will install SuSE into the free unpartitioned space you cleared up before for it.

SuSE will copy the files to your hard-drive, and reboot.

During the SuSE install SuSE will detect your networking settings and ask you to test them by updating.

I suggest you download all the updates at this point.


At the reboot, you will see a change to your computer.

At the point that it would normally start to load windows you will see a list of options on a nice looking blue background.

This is the LiLO bootmanger.

The options you will see are:

Linux
Windows
Failsafe
'etc

Choose linux to boot into linux, choose windows to boot into windows.

Its as simple as that.


You now have linux SuSE installed, congratulations.


The next part of this how-to will tell you about setting SuSE up and using it.

[websterworld]

STEP 4: Using

Boot into SuSE and login.

The first thing we are going to do is install apt-get.


Go here: ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/suse/apt...MS.suser-rbos/


And download the following rpms: apt, apt-libs, lua.

Open up a terminal window. (click on the tv like icon)

use the "cd" command and change to the dir' you download the files too...

if you download the files too: /home/john

then type:

cd /home/john

Once your in the dir' its time to install the rpm's. to install an rpm use the "rpm -i" command.

exp.

rpm -i apt-libs-0.5.5cnc6-rb6.i586.rpm

First install the apt-libs rpm.
Then install the lua rpm.
Then install the apt rpm.

Now browse to /etc/apt/ and open a file called sources.list with a text editor like Kedit.

Delete everthing you have there and write this instead:

#
# Repository created by: aptate (version 0.65.3)
# At: Wed Jan 21 08:14:26 MET 2004
# More info about aptate at: http://apt4rpm.sourceforge.net
#
rpm ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/suse/apt SuSE/9.0-x86_64 base update-prpm update suse-people suse-projects kde kde-unstable security-prpm security
#rpm-src ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/suse/apt SuSE/9.0-x86_64 base update-prpm update suse-people suse-projects kde kde-unstable security-prpm security

Save the file and exit. I suggest you backup the file before editing it.

Now go back to the terminal window and use the "su" command.

The su command lets you login as root.

su
password: ******

It will ask you for the root password, enter it.

Now write:

apt-get update

And wait for it to finish.

Then write:

apt-get install synaptic

And wait for it to finish.
After its done, close the terminal window.

You have now installed apt-get and Synaptic which is a GUI frontend for it.

Click on the green lizard, which is where the "start" button would have been in windows and pick: "run program" and choose synaptic from it.

You will get a list of programs that you can install, update, and un-install with one click.

There's no need for compiling things yourself anymore. not to the home user anyway.

The programs are devided into catagories.

So whatever you want just pick it and install, very easy.



You will notice that SuSE can read windows files, just right click on the desktop>>mount>>c: or d:

and it will show you the windows partition.

Copy whatever files you need from windows to the linux partitions.

If you want to run windows program copy the files from the windows partition to linux, open a terminal window and "cd" into the dir'.

Then write:

wine program.exe

program.exe being the exe files name of the program you want to run.

for games there is wineX which you can buy or download a free version of which works the same way.


Enjoy, linux.


Note: this is just a basic "how-to".
It did not cover 3D acceleration and other topics, for more help/info use sites like:

www.linuxquestions.org
www.google.com/linux

[Vox Hosting]

The best way to install SuSE and avoid lawsuits from using their proprietary software is to buy it or install it from their ftp server. Their YaST2 software is proprietary and may not be distributed freely under the GPL. However SuSE Pro is my fav distro for the PC. >)

[westcan]

Just another note: If you have a slow connection, or are otherwise lazy, you can get almost any distro on ebay for about $5 including shipping.

[Akash]

Thanks edited posts to remove sigs...also edited title to reflect that this howto is suse specfic

[Mdot]

Originally posted by Vox Hosting
The best way to install SuSE and avoid lawsuits from using their proprietary software is to buy it or install it from their ftp server. Their YaST2 software is proprietary and may not be distributed freely under the GPL. However SuSE Pro is my fav distro for the PC. >)

actually you can distribute their ISOs - I've contacted them on this and they said it is acceptable, however they kindly ask not to do so. I even had SuSE-9.0 Pro (just few days after it has been released) available to pub - server alone had 700 FTP concurrent connections, pushing 60-70mbps.

So it is really a question if you can afford putting these to public

regards,
M.

<edit>signature removed</edit>

[linux-tech]

Unfortunately, the SUSE download iso (the whopping 60m that it is) doesn't contain network drivers for everything, and in a distro that's primarily distributed over FTP, well, that's bad.

If you know where to get ISO's for these, I'd greatly appreciate you letting me know, because this is one distro that I wouldn't mind switching to and looking at