pclinuxos 2010 kde installation guide

Installation Guide:A Walkthrough

(Written for PCLinuxOS 2010 KDE)

By V. Timothy (Tommylee567)

Ver. 0.2, 8 May 2010 (Second release)

Contents1 Introduction 2

2 Minimum Hardware 22.1 Requirements before installing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

3 The Walkthrough 3

4 Configuring Your PCLinuxOS 19

5 The Beauty Desktops 20

6 Credits 21

List of Figures1 PCLinuxOS 2010 Live CD. Initial screen. . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Booting the system. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Keyboard layout selection. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 PCLinuxOS Live CD Desktop. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 Type the root account’s password. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 Beginning your installation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 Step 1 of the partitioning process. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 Step 2 of the partitioning process. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 Step 3 of the partitioning process. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 910 Step 4 of the partitioning process. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1011 Step 5 of the partitioning process. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1012 Step 6 of the partitioning process. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1113 Creating your swap partition. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1114 Creating your /home partition. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

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PCLinuxOS 2010 Installation Guide

15 Inspecting your partitions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1216 Confirm partitions before writing to disk. . . . . . . . . . . . . 1317 Installation begins after your hard drive is partitioned. . . . . 1418 Installation in progress. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1419 Step 1 of the bootloader configuration. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1520 Confirming your bootloader configuration. . . . . . . . . . . . . 1521 Installing the bootloader. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1622 Your installation is complete. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1723 Reboot your PC. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1724 Rebooting, step 2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1825 Rebooting, step 3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1826 Restarting the system. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2227 Remove your CD from the tray and press Enter. . . . . . . . . 2328 Boot your new PCLinuxOS system. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2329 Setting the root account’s password. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2430 Create your user account. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2431 The login screen. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2532 PCLinuxOS splash screen. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2533 Congratulations! Your new desktop. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

1 IntroductionDear PCLinuxOS 2010 User,

I’m glad that you chose to install and use PCLinuxOS. This particularLinux is special (and is easy to understand for beginners). That is why Ichose to use it. Hopefully, one day, you will switch from your other OS toPCLinuxOS.

This guide is a simple walkthrough intended to help you run or installthe OS on a HDD.

Are you ready? Let’s start.There are some basic requirements for running PCLinuxOS.

2 Minimum Hardware• Intel or AMD CPU, 1.8 GHz or higher

• A monitor capable of 800 x 600 Resolution (with 64 MB of video RAM)

• 512 MB RAM

• 10 GB of Hard Disk space

• A CD / DVD-ROM Drive

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2.1 Requirements before installingIf you are already using Microsoft Windows, please reserve some space us-ing utilities that will partition and leave 10 GB unformatted. (You can leavemore room if you want to do something big—that is up to you).

You need to configure the BIOS to boot from your CD-ROM drive. Thatvaries from computer to computer’s motherboard, which I can’t explainhere. Refer to your motherboard’s instruction manual for more informa-tion.

Pop your CD inside the drive and start from the disc.You will be welcomed by a list of commands.

3 The Walkthrough1. Press Enter to select LiveCD, as shown in Figure 1.1 Please note that

nothing will happen to your files until you install this OS. You willonly boot (or Load). If you experience problems booting the Live CD,try Safe Boot.

2. A bar will indicate your status of loading the system (Figure 2). Ifyou’d like to see what is happening you can press Esc or F2.

3. Press Enter to use default keyboard US Keyboard (Or whatever isshown default). See Figure 3.

4. You will be logged on to the default desktop called “KDE” (shown inFigure 4). (Also, there are eight desktops available, each with a dif-ferent flavour — see Section 5 for details).

Everything on the desktop is “single click.”

5. Click Install PCLinuxOS.

You have two types of users: normal and administrator. Without Admin-istrator, you can’t change a single option on the system. In Linux, this iscalled “root” user, meaning it gives administrator privileges to accomplishanything you wish.

6. Type Password “root” (without quotes), as illustrated in Figure 5.

7. This is your installer. Press Next. (See Figure 6).1Thanks (see Section 6) to Sebastian Rahtz’s hyperref package for pdflatex, all refer-

ences to figures in this how-to are hyperlinked (highlighted in blue). For optimal viewing ofthe screenshots, you may want to increase your PDF reader’s zoom percentage to 175%.

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Figure 1: PCLinuxOS 2010 Live CD. Initial screen.

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Figure 2: Booting the system.

Figure 3: Keyboard layout selection.

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Figure 4: PCLinuxOS Live CD Desktop.

Figure 5: Type the root account’s password.

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Figure 6: Beginning your installation.

8. Please note that this is a place you have to be very, very careful —otherwise, if you have other Operating Systems, you will end up de-stroying your data.If you are installing on a new HDD, you can happily select Use ExistingPartitions. But if you have your data on other partitions, you haveto select Custom Disk Partitioning. Click Next. Figure 7 willgive you an idea of how this process looks.(I prefer the last option because you will know to which partition youwill be installing).

9. Partition Instructions

(a) Your HDDs (if you have more than one) will be displayed as hda,hdb, hdc (OR on some PCs as sda, sdb, sdc) and so on. Pleaseselect the corresponding drive that has the blank partition. Clickon the empty box. (You will have info regarding partition size,label, etc.)

(b) Click on the empty partition and click Create (Figure 8).(c) A new screen opens up. Select the size of the main system parti-

tion. Preferably, set it to 6–7 GB. Move the slider to that size and

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Figure 7: Step 1 of the partitioning process.


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keep the default filesystem type as “journalised FS: ext4.” Selectyour “mount point” (the place the system will install its OS). Thatshould be “ / ”. Click OK, as illustrated in Figures 9 and 10.


(d) Back on the partition screen, you will notice that one part of theblock is blank. Click on that and select Create. These steps areshown in Figures 11 and 12.

(e) This time you will be given Linux Swap. (It is the equivalent ofWindows’ Virtual or Pagefile — virtual memory). If you have alow amount of memory, you can set a size like 500 MB or 1 GB.Select OK (Figure 13).

(f) Select the third partition. Click Create. Use the remaining sizeas your /home partition. Keep the default filesystem type as“journalised FS: ext4.” (The Home partition is where your config-uration files are stored for each program you run on Linux. Thispartition is useful if you have to reinstall the OS, and your docu-ments and settings will be stored safely here). For mount point,select /home and press OK. A screenshot of this step is shown inFigure 14.

(g) You will have three partitions, including the Swap (Virtual Mem-ory). If you are satisfied with the partitions, press Done (Fig-ure 15).

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Figure 13: Creating your swap partition.

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Figure 14: Creating your /home partition.

Figure 15: Inspecting your partitions.

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(h) Press OK, as shown in Figure 16.

Figure 16: Confirm partitions before writing to disk.

10. Now it will format the three partitions and continue to copy the wholesystem on to the Hard Disk. The time to completion will vary accord-ing to your PC’s specifications. On an old PC it can take an hour toinstall, while a fast PC will take about 10–15 minutes (or less).Figures 17 and 18 are screenshots of the installation stage.

11. Now, you come to a crucial part: the Bootloader. You don’t need tochange anything. Click Next. [OR if you wish, you can do advancedmodifying]. Figure 19 illustrates the first step in configuring yourBootloader (known as GRUB, the GRand Unified Bootloader).

12. When you boot your PC, you will get a list for booting into your OS.You have to choose Windows or PCLinuxOS. If you want Windows tobe the default, click on the Windows (in the list) and click Modify.Then tick Default and press OK. And you can move the order of thelist. If you are OK with the settings, press Finish.Figure 20 shows the confirmation screen for your bootloader configu-ration.

13. Now it will take some time to install and come to the last screen (il-lustrated in Figure 21).

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Figure 17: Installation begins after your hard drive is partitioned.

Figure 18: Installation in progress.

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Figure 19: Step 1 of the bootloader configuration.

Figure 20: Confirming your bootloader configuration.

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Figure 21: Installing the bootloader.

14. Congratulations! Your Linux is Installed! Now, press Finish (asshown in Figure 22).

15. Now, you have to reboot. Go to the Start bar on the bottom of thescreen and click on the “PC” logo, as shown in Figure 23.

16. A menu will pop up. Now, point to Leave then select Restart.

17. Click Restart. Figures 24 and 25 illustrate these two steps.

18. The CD will be ejected automatically and you can take the media out.Then, press Enter (as shown in Figure 26).The screenshot in Figure 27 shows the request for removing the LiveCD.

19. Again, as when you ran from the CD, you will get a menu list display-ing the OS options that are available. Highlight using the “up” “down”(↑ ↓) arrows. Select Boot PCLinuxOS 2010 and press Enter. Please,don’t use the Safe Mode option (unless you have good knowledge ofusing that), as this will bring you to a command prompt and not tothe graphical desktop. (See Figure 28 for a screenshot).

20. After booting into PCLinuxOS for the first time, you are asked to in-put your user info. As a general rule, you have to provide a root

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Figure 22: Your installation is complete.

Figure 23: Reboot your PC.

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Figure 24: Rebooting, step 2.

Figure 25: Rebooting, step 3.

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password, so only you can change settings and / or install / uninstallsoftware. Please, keep it different, because it isn’t to be used for thenormal user at the login screen. (See Figure 29 for details).

21. After the root (or administrator) password, you have to input the nor-mal user name and password for logging into the desktop. Also, pleasekeep the login name in lower-case letters (not CAPITALS). Enter yourdesired password. If you don’t like typing passwords, leave it blank.But if your data is confidential, use a password. (This screen is shownin Figure 30).

22. Press Next.

23. The login screen: You can enter your Username or click your nameon the list, provide the password (if you had entered one) and pressEnter. (Also, note you can Restart, Shutdown, or change desktops).The login screen is illustrated in Figure 31.

24. You have successfully completed the installation, as shown in Fig-ures 32 and 33.

4 Configuring Your PCLinuxOSAfter installation,

1. Go to the PC menu.

2. Go to the menu’s Software Center.

3. Click on Synaptic Package Manager.

4. Type password.

Make sure you have an active Internet connection. Then go to Settings> Repositories. These links are servers which you will download pro-grams to your PC.

• Now you can select a server. [Tick only one].

• Then press OK.

• Now press Refresh.

• It will download the base (or the package list).

• Click on Mark All Upgrades and click Apply.

• Wait until the download finishes, then reboot. Do wait patiently.

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Now that you have successfully completed the installation, you mightwant to change the settings to your liking. We are going to to change thedisplay resolution. Then, you can do other things for yourself.

Please, also note that you don’t need any drivers for any peripherals youconnect to this OS. (Exception: certain peripherals requiring proprietarydrivers).

For a good view, first take a look at your main “Control Panel”.Use either the icon you clicked earlier, or use the menu (Not the “Control

Center”) – More Applications > Configuration > Configure YourComputer.

Enter the root password, then take a look inside the panel. In theHardware section, select Set Up The Graphical Server.

Note your monitor’s maximum resolution, then click on the monitortab. Select your monitor’s maximum resolution, go to the resolution taband again select the resolution that you wish to use. Press Quit, then Yesto make changes. It will prompt you to log out and log in again. That’s allyou need to do.

5 The Beauty DesktopsYou can always install these from the repository (using Synaptic PackageManager). The main desktops’ intros are given here.

The first one is the one you are currently using.

1. KDE [K Desktop Environment] (requires good graphics card, But haslot of MS Windows-ish look and feel, so you will adapt very easily –also, all the software that comes with it has a “K” in the beginning ofthe program’s name).

2. GNOME (Same as KDE, also has a variety of software)

3. E17 or Enlightenment (Gives the best looks, but you need to have theskills to learn this environment).

4. LXDE [Lightweight X Desktop Environment] (Also designed for lowend, but provides decent looks).

5. XFCE4 (A pretty desktop which keeps everything simple).

6. IceWM (Again like WindowMaker).

7. FluxBox (Same as above).

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8. WindowMaker (Best for low end graphics, it provides very minimumgraphics on screen, so it runs fast on old machines).

The applications are always there, but the looks and the menus arethings that change a lot.

Each has its own ups and downs. So if you end up with one type ofdesktop that is easy for you, stick on with it.

So, take your new OS out for a spin. Happy surfing.

If you want Help documentation, to continue to learn about thewhole OS, press F1.

6 CreditsDocument written for PCLinuxOS Forum users.Original content created using OpenOffice.org 3.2.0. This version typesetwith LATEX and the graphicx, shadow, fancyhdr and hyperref packages.

Assisted by:kalwisti (for the LATEX version) and more correction.russell.eberhardt (for the extra tip to add things to do after installa-tion).wayne1932 for spotting the hdd partition type.

Thanks to PCLOS Mods & Admins for the upload.

If you have anything to report, please do so by Private Messaging on PCLOSForums, to Username Tommylee567.You are free to edit and correct any problems here. But request permissionfrom the author beforehand.Thank you and thanks for your comments and advice.

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Figure 26: Restarting the system.

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Figure 27: Remove your CD from the tray and press Enter.

Figure 28: Boot your new PCLinuxOS system.

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Figure 29: Setting the root account’s password.

Figure 30: Create your user account.

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Figure 31: The login screen.

Figure 32: PCLinuxOS splash screen.

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Figure 33: Congratulations! Your new desktop.

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pclinuxos 2010 kde installation guide

Documents

installation guide figure

system figure

new pclinuxos system

partitioning process

introduction dear pclinuxos

root user

custom disk partitioning

root accounts password