Taking your first Linux baby steps

March 24, 3:27 AMNashville Technology ExaminerSusan Linton

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As I explained yesterday, Linux is a blanket term used to reference a family of operating systems built on the Linux kernel. Linux comes in a variety of flavors called distributions, or distros for short. There is a wide range of distros for just about every conceivable purpose. For our purposes today we'll look at a wonderful desktop distribution called Linux Mint.

This distribution is built to be very user friendly. It is designed with the new user in mind. It comes with great software for just about any task, codecs for multimedia enjoyments, and browser plugins for full Web participation. Linux Mint offers a lovely desktop environment for new and experienced users complete with easy-to-navigate menus and file managers. It comes with Firefox Web browser, Thunderbird Mail and News client, OpenOffice.org office suite, MPlayer movie player, The GIMP image manipulation suite, Pidgin multi-protocol instant messaging client, and so much more. Linux Mint even comes with lots of graphical administration programs and accessories. Let's take a quick look at some of them.

Meet Linux Mint

In the screenshot below you can see the Nautilus file manager. If you look closely you can see that by right-clicking on a file, you will get a menu chocked full of options and file operations. Cut, Copy, Paste, Delete, and Move to Trash is there of course, but also notice some of the more advanced operations such as Uploading to server, Sending as an email, Setting as a Wallpaper, or Opening with another application. All this without ever touching the commandline.

In the next image you can get a little taste of the Firefox Web browser and the OpenOffice.org word processor. Firefox comes with lots of handy plugins for your Web enjoyment of streaming video, Flash games, and such. OpenOffice.org is a very capable office suite that happens to be compatible with most Microsoft Office file formats.

Linux Mint comes with lots of accessories for doing those little everyday tasks as you can see in the following screenshot. Shown here is the Calculator, simple text editor, a note pad, a character map, and search tool.

Next you can see just a few of the multimedia applications. Here is the CD/DVD burning package, Totem movie Player, and Rhythmbox music player. There are more options in the menu as well, so be sure to check there.

Here we have just a few of the administration tools. Shown here is the graphical firewall configurator, the package manager set up to download and install thousands of applicatons, and the hardware drivers utility. As you can my test machine has an NVIDIA graphics card and the driver utility will install the proprietary 3D graphic drivers if I wish. It will do the same for ATI/AMD cards as well.

Take a look at the easy-to-navigate menu. Headings denote the corresponding purposes such as Places, System, or Applications. Clicking any of the locations under Places will open it in a file manager window. The System contains some quick links to popular system tools. Applications list the many included applications either by all or subheadings such as Graphics or Internet. You can even add your favorite applications to a Favorites menu for quicker access.

Download Linux Mint

Downloading Linux Mint can be as easy as clicking the Direct download link from Linux Mint's download page. I suggest using Firefox as I've heard Internet Explorer can corrupt ISO files. Alternatively, you can right click on the Direct download link, copy the address, and input it into your favorite download client.

Burning a Linux Mint CD

Windows XP can burn files to a CD or CD-RW, but it's not effective for writing ISOs (the file format of the Linux Mint download). If you have no other burning software installed, CDBurnerXP and InfraRecorder come highly recommended for this purpose. Either of these programs is very simple to use, just make sure you select "burn as an ISO image." To check the burn, click on your CD drive icon and make sure you see a bunch of files and folders rather than one ISO image file.

Booting Linux Mint

For most people this is as simple as placing the CD into your CD drive drawer and starting or restarting the computer. Some may have to go into the BIOS and set the boot order of their drives. To do this click "Delete" or whatever your bios uses to start the BIOS interface. For my American Megatrends BIOS, I enter into Advanced BIOS Features and arrow down to Boot Sequence. From there you can set which drives to boot first. It's always recommended to have the CD or DVD drive listed first for home desktop systems, but definitely for our purposes today. Once it is set, press F10 or whichever key or keys will save your new setup.

Once your computer restarts, hopefully you'll see the Linux Mint start screen. Press Enter and try the default boot routine. If the process halts or boots a black screen, restart your computer and hit the Arrow Down key to bring up the boot menu. Then arrow down to Start Linux Mint in compatibility mode. Trouble is rare, but possible with older computers. With luck you will soon be looking around your very own Linux desktop.

As you can see, one of the main advantages of using Linux over Windows is the vast amount of applications ready to use at install. Another is all the included hardware support. None of that disk changing to install all the various drivers is needed with Linux. Most internet connections are ready to use at boot as well. Since switching to Linux I've never looked back.

Be sure to keep an eye on this spot of the Web as I will be walking you through a hard drive installation and taking a closer look at some of the applications in the next few days. So, yaw come on back now, ya' hear?