Installing Linux

A week or so ago I said I'd write a short tutorial on installing a couple of Linux distros on your computer and I've decided I'd just show you the various ways for Ubuntu, because the other distros are very similar to install and there's tons of tutorials out there.
Anyway on with the how-to. There are a couple of ways to install Ubuntu:

1. Live CD from Canonical (or the manufacturer of your chosen distro. This option uses a Live CD made by Canonical, the makers of Ubuntu. This is by far the easiest way to install a distro.
2. Live CD created by you. Slightly more difficult than option 1, with more room for error but not that hard.
3. USB drive containing distro. This means creating a flash disk with the distro for installation on it. (Will be covered in next post)
4. USB drive containing download trigger. Option 4 means making a USB with a file on it that will trigger the download of the whole OS. Worst option, very time consuming and not reliable. (Will be covered in next post)

Option 1 is by the easiest of them all. You just send off for a disk from Canonical (for Ubuntu), shove it in your CD drive on your computer/laptop, boot up and some options will come up. But before the options come up you must press F-, one of the F- keys along the top of your keyboard. This will depend on your machine, mine if F9. The computer will say, usually in the left hand bottom corner, something like 'Boot options F5' and you press that key, select the boot device (the CD) and away you go. You can choose to install the distro straight to your hard drive, or, and this is a very nifty, little idea, you can 'try before you buy'. This involves booting up the disk and checking out the distro to make sure that everything works with your machine and that sort of stuff.

Option 2 is marginally harder than the above. What you will need is a blank CD, a CD creator drive, a CD burner program and of course the distro ISO. An ISO is basically the file that contains everything needed to run the OS on your computer. It is called an image and is usually around 650MB. You can find it by typing the distributions name into Google, bringing up their site and clicking on download. Right on to the creation. Start you CD burner program, such as Nero and click 'create CD-ROM ISO' or something along these lines. Then browse through to where you you saved the .iso file, for example Computer>Documents>Downloads, select it and click create. This will burn the disk and you just do the same as in option 1. It also gives you the option to test before you install it.
I will cover options 3 and 4 in a later post in a couple of days time.
DistroWatch
Live CD Info

Part 2 of the tutorial
Disclaimer: I accept no responsibility for any damage done to your computer, be it hardware or software related, caused as a result of following this tutorial. You do this at YOUR OWN RISK!