What is Linux? I learned that Linux is an open source operating system that is freely available all across the internet. I discovered that Linux comes in many different shapes and sizes, distributions they're called, or more commonly distros. I found that there were at least ten times as many opinions on distros as there were distros. The opinions covered a wide range of content, from which installation is the best for low end computers, to which distro has the best bells and whistles. I was venturing into uncharted territory, and I was relying on Google to get me safely through.
Where do I get a linux distro? My first search netted me a discussion about lightweight distros which are good for low-end computers and laptops. Names such as Elementary_Os, Arch Linux, LXLE to name a few were discussed, and I wanted to try them all. However before I downloaded one I tried another Google search, this time I hit the honey pot. Low and behold I found a link to Distrowatch. All the distros I could want, discussed and reviewed in this amazing website.
The next phase of my introduction with Linux came in the form of How to install it. The method suggested in class was via virtual box. My attempts to make this work failed utterly, apparently virtual box didn't want to load any of the 64bit versions of Linux I downloaded, and I didn't want to run 32bit on my 64bit machine. My step-son's dad and I had a brief discussion about distros and he mentioned booting from a thumb drive. So after virtual box and I parted ways I sought more information on booting from a thumb drive. Turns out there are two ways to do this.
- Live CD install: A live install to my understanding is a simple install that makes the distro work and do all the stuff that it is supposed to do, however you are limited in what it can save. Some distros I tried could not save any changes whatsoever. Other distros would allow for a persistent install that would allow up to 4GB of free space to be used for saving changes.
- Full install: This is what it sounds like, a full install of the Linux operating system to a thumb drive.
I opted for the full install since I had a pretty sweet 32GB thumb drive that I wanted to take full advantage of. So... how does this work? The next part of my journey was the longest and most involved.
Turns out much to my ignorance of all things Linux, that it does not come as an exe... ready to be installed as easy as you please. No, the downloads I had were iso files. Which meant they needed to be mounted. What does that mean? Yeah that was my question then. Apparently you need a special program (of which there are many) to mount the operating system onto the thumb drive. This is not performing a full install mind you, but rather installing the live CD/USB version. The software I used for this was RMPrepUSB from http://www.rmprepusb.com. I had encountered discussions and suggestions for using it from several different sites. This program is amazing and performed all of the functions I would need in order to make a Live CD/USB as well as setting up my other thumb drive for the full install that it would receive.
As I rebooted my computer I selected the option to boot from a USB, and I waited gleefully for my first real experience with Linux. BTW, the distro I chose first was Elementary_OS. It loaded, quickly, faster than my windows by far, and it was beautiful. I clumsily clicked through the menus and icons trying make sense of what I was seeing. It all seemed pretty Greek to me.
I should at this point mention that my Live CD/USB was installed to an 8GB thumb drive. I had learned through a quick tutorial that one way to do this is to install the live CD/USB to one drive and perform a full install from that thumb drive to another thumb drive, my 32GB in this case. However, doom was looming a head of me, and I was not prepared for my utter failure to come. During the installation process, I had made a swap file for my thumb drive as suggested by the distro. I set up a partition on the thumb drive for the distro to be installed, but I had not selected the thumb drive. To my dismay I had accidentally left my hard drive with my Windows partition selected. I lost everything. I found a few suggestions on how to undo what I had done but none of them worked for me. Begrudgingly I re-installed Windows knowing I had lost two years of data because I don't back anything up, or didn't, I will from now on (lesson learned).
I didn't let my failure stop me, instead I pressed on with a heightened zeal to accomplish my goal of getting a bootable Linux OS from my thumb drive. I installed several different distros, looking through them, seeing which ones identified my devices without issue, gazing in awe at the multitude of choices like a kid in a candy store. Finally I settled on netrunner. It quickly and easily identified my hardware. It was also very nice and shiny, in its display. I really liked the look and feel.
So in conclusion here I am with Windows re-installed along side my installation of netrunner. I find myself spending more and more time in Linux though, and eventually I imagine I'll probably be spending my time split evenly between Windows and Linux.
Thank you for reading.
