What are the necessary steps to install and use Linux
 

Folks,

I believe my Dell laptop at home is sucko full of viruses and malware....been cleaned and recleaned multiple times but seems to just come back.

I'd like to start over fresh. I'm thinking I should reformat and wipe the disk clean, and do a fresh Linux install.

Thoughts? opinions? welcome....

Now the biggy....
I have decent computer skills, but wondering if someone could share the basic steps with me....ie

1. if necessary, reformat and partition hard drive.
2. load linux os cd
3. load/install linux windows gui.
4. suggested tools/apps for basic computer use like browser for surfing, office type tools like Word, or Excel, power point. etc.

thanks a TON! lookin forward to using and contributing here....

g

I would start by downloading a linux live CD like Linux Mint, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, etc. You can search for live CD's on distrowatch.com. Anyway, just use your CD burning software to "Burn disc from *.iso image" (usually under the File menu of most CD burning software). Then just pop it in the drive and play with it. If you want to wipe your drive first, most live CD's come with GParted (a nice gui partitioning tool). Most live CD's have an "install" option that you can run through and tell it to use the whole drive. Live CD's should come with a gui and several apps by default.

As for more apps, you can check out this and/or search through your package manager for things like "office software" or "web browser" and it should show up some others.

Off the top of my head, browsers are firefox, opera, chromium, konqueror. Office suites are libreOffice, Koffice/Calligra (they recently switched names), and gnome office (gnumeric spreadsheet, abiword word processing).

Choosing a Linux distribution is always an arbitrary subject.
For a beginner with decent computer skills I find Ubuntu still the nicest choice.
If your laptop has one harddisk you can leave the partitioning job to the installer. If you want to do the partitioning manually, create a / (root) partition of 8GB, and a swap partition that is approx. the size of your memory. The remaining space can be used as /home, the home partition.
No need to install a windows gui, everything is ready for working in a very attractive desktop environment.
Also standard is OpenOffice with a word processor and all the necessary office tools.

Great start! thanks so much.
May I ask.....when you say "live cd"....I went to distrowatch.com and clicked on the right hand column where I saw LinuxCD and clicked on Ubuntu 10.10 under that. It took me to a page Linuxcd.org where I could purchase a cd for $1.75.

I also simply clicked on the download linux link on this page and downloaded a file named ubuntu-10.04.2-desktop-1386.iso ( I recongise an earlier version but) is this the same process as the "livecd" you described?

thank you

You can download the live CD at
http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/get-ubuntu/download

Kind regards

On the subject of software, the wiki at this site has a section on equivalents to various Windows programs.

As has been said, manual partioning is a good idea, creating
1. 10GB partition mount point '/'
2. swap partition, rather larger than your RAM
3. partition mounted as '/home', for the rest of the disk.
For some reason, automatic partitioning by the installer hardly ever gives you a home partition. If you have one, you can re-install a new version of your distribution (or change distros) without over-writing your data. Also, Linux stores program configuration there, so a re-install will always work like the old one.

One difference to Windows is that Linux does not have a built-in GUI, so you get a choice. I'd suggest you look at live CDs of Mint and PCLinuxOS. They use different desktops (GUIs), Gnome and KDE respectively, so you can see which you prefer. They are both very user-friendly distros.

A "Live CD" is one where you can boot a "live" version of the Linux Distribution. "Live" means that it runs completely in memory without damaging whatever you have already installed on your hard drive. Very usefull for reviewing various Distributions till you find one you like, then you can hit the install button. Either doing a complete install using your whole hard disk or you can install to a seperate partition, leaving your original OS allowing you to "Dual boot" between them.

Hope that improves your understanding.

Play Bonny! :hattip:

absolutely helpful!! thank you.

Dual boot is a wonderful thing. However given the current windows xp installation is infected,and scans indicate some corrupt cab files, would it be better for me to wipe it out, and start with a fresh install? or, assuming I choose to "add" the linux OS to the existing hardware, is it possible the Linux side of the dual boot setup would be affected by the sad condition of the XP OS....or will they be completely seperate from each other.
thanks/g

They're completely separate (Though if you have your complete music, video and picture folders inaccessible due to the viruses, :( you can mount the XP drive from the Live CD and copy them to, say, an external USB drive and rescue them. :) )

With XP stuffed you could then just blow it away completely. However... If you were thinking of Dual booting Linux with a fresh XP install, it's better to install XP first, THEN Linux.

Play Bonny! :hattip:

continuing on with my install.

Seems I (mistakenly) threw a dvd-r into my burner here at work, and of course the "livecd" fit on that.....however the install seemed to hang and I never got the "remove cd from the tray and restart" message to complete the install.

This morning, I am attempting to burn a cd and roxio is telling me that the blank disc does not have enough disk space, and is asking me to insert a 693MB disc. Hmmm.....thought these cd's were 700mb. Maybe I need to format the blank disc or try another brand blank cd.....

thoughts?, should I just pass on the cd thing and save to USB jump drive? is that an option?

update*** apparently not all brands of cd-r's are alike....threw in a memorex 700mb cd-r and the burn seems to be working. fingers crossed!