Installing a Linux Distribution

In the previous chapter, we looked at preparing the hard disk for use. We worked with the fdisk and parted utilities, looked at the steps to create and remove a partition, saw how we could resize a partition, and then turned our focus to formatting a partition for usage. In addition to this, we looked at the various filesystems available on today's Linux distributions. After that, we took a look at how to mount a partition to be able to start storing data. We then looked at unmounting a partition. Finally, we created entries in the /etc/fstab file to have our mount point(s) load upon system boot. In this chapter, our focus is now on the actual installation of a Linux distribution, the process involved with booting into a LiveCD, when installing Linux from scratch. Then we will focus on installing Linux side by side with a Windows OS. Finally, we will look at installing Linux side by side with another Linux distribution.

We will cover the following topics in this chapter:

• Understanding the use of a LiveCD
• Installing a Linux distribution as a fresh installation
• Installing a Linux distribution side by side with a Windows OS
• Installing a Linux distribution side by side with another version of Linux