Im curious as to what people's opinions are on how much someone should know about linux to be able to install it. I've been running fedora core 2 since beginning of the summer. I understand about partitioning, and about swap partitions and swapfiles, i understand about editing fstab to mount drives. But i want to know what information/concepts i should absolutely understand completely before attempting to install a distro. Like what other config files should i learn and whatnot.

Depends on which distro, I think you can just try with most. But with some, for example gentoo, you'll have to follow the documentation. It's not that hard, people who were completely new to linux get it installed as well.

i'm going to break the cardinal rule of internet etiquitte and type the rest of this response in caps to get my point accross.


BACK-UP ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING THAT IS NEAR AND DEAR TO YOU BEFORE YOU TRY INSTALLING A NEW DISTRO!!! IF YOU HAVE NO WAY, GET CREATIVE AND DO SOMETHING LIKE USING YOUR WEB E-MAIL ACCOUNT AS AN ONLINE DRIVE!!!

To add to Zuggy, read the install notes for the distro thoroughly so you know what you're up against. You'll take yourself so far ahead by devoting the 1-2 hours required to do that small task (print it out, if you can, so you canrefer to it as you install), as it reveals all the "little secrets" about why that distro is special


BTW, I only recommended reading the install notes. If you want to self-discover beyond that point, I'm all for it.

there is no precious data i have in fc2 that i would care if it got lost. Im mainly concerned that i wouldn't be able to boot it up or go online. Is there a way to back up the whole partition on a drive? or at the very least backup all the configures so if i had to reinstall i could just set the settings back to what they were?

woohoo
I had really no idea what I was doing when I first loaded linux ( Mandrake 9.0 ) and I was setting up a dual boot with win 98 as well. That was 2 years ago now and I've been hooked on powermanga and maelstrom ever since. The disks were on the front of a computer mag, I was sick of microsoft, there was some brief instructions in the mag and voila ...
Mind you mandrake is pretty easy to set up
cool

floppy

Well, I am still trying to get the thing fully functioning. I started with a new computer made up of a combination of budget and second hand bits. The installation (of Fedora 3 and RedHat10) was a breeze (although when I tried Ubuntu it collapsed in a heap at the Grub loader, and I don't know enough to explain how or why). I am having a lot of problems learning how to find and install drivers to get networking and graphics functioning properly, but I'm pretty sure that if you knew what you were doing or had access to a friend who did it would be simple.

My advice would be to have all the drivers you need downloaded and ready to go before starting, and understand the instructions on how to install them. Beyond that I'm just not sure, but don't count on having internet access on that computer if you needed to ask a question.

Linux is proof that ignorance is bliss. When I first installed Fedora Core 2, I knew Jack Squat about Linux. Now that I know so much more I look back and think about how lucky I got nothing went wrong.

Now when I'm installing a dual-boot system I get very paranoid that something is going to go wrong.

Back up your user's /home directory and /etc. You should be fine with that. Most config files are in /etc and any user-specific config files (and any data worth keeping) will be in your normal user account's /home.

In my experience, learn the basic use of a console-based text editor. vi seems to come with just about every distro so that would be a practical start.

Pick a bootloader (my preference is GRUB) and learn how it works and how to modify it.

Knowing how to install the kernel source and the nvidia drivers and set up X from the command line is pretty much essential if you have an nvidia card.