1.Boot the Knoppix CD. When the boot prompt comes up, you can choose your language. Hitting the F2 key will show you more options.
boot: knoppix lang=us 2
and hit ENTER. The 2 option is passed so that X will not load, and you will have more memory for the installation. However, this assumes that you've tried to boot Knoppix at least once and you were satisfied with the entire "package" off the CD.
2.You will now be at a root console. The application you want to run is knx-hdinstall (which is located in /usr/local/bin, and already in your PATH).
3.Now, follow the guided installation: You will be faced with cfdisk to create Linux partitions. Suggest one of at least 2.5GB to be mounted as / (type 83 - this is the "linux" filesystem) You will need a swap partition, of at least 256MB (type 82 - this is the "linux swap" filesystem) Creating other partitions are at free will, if needed, but if you have no experience with Linux, it might be best to not create any more partitions and just stick to the above. When it comes to choose what you're going to use for your / filesystem, you're given the option of ext2, ext3, ReiserFS or even XFS. Personally, I went with ext3 as a filesystem.
ext3 is well supported with Linux, and is based on ext2, just that the ext3 filesystem is journalled. SGI's XFS is a somewhat popular choice, as is ReiserFS with some. Each filesystem seems to have its own range of advantages, and here again is the great choice we have with GNU/Linux.
It is now meant to take up to 10-40 minutes to copy files automatically - it took me a good 1/2 an hour. Now, come the networking questions:
smail - mail server of choice (I selected No)
smail is a Mail Transfer Agent (MTA). To do normal POP/IMAP mail, a MTA isn't required. If you check your mail via webmail, again you only require a browser and not an MTA. If the need to install an MTA does arise, the usage of the apt-get tool will come in handy (this applies to installing all that I select No for actually).
SSH - provides secure remote access (I selected Yes)
samba - provides file sharing with Windows machines (I selected Yes)
cups - provides printing support (I selected No)
kdm - starts a graphical KDE login by default (I selected No)
Points to note are that cups and kdm might be something an average user would like to start, so that there's always a graphical feel to the Linux usage and that printing works!
Give your machine a hostname (I typed dobby)
Use DHCP to get an IP and Internet access? (I selected Yes)
Set up the passwords; one for root and one for the user knoppix
Set up the bootloader, LILO on the MBR. If you have a dual-boot setup, suggest that GRUB is used, and you read further documentation on how this is done.
Is a boot floppy necessary? You decide (I selected No).
Reboot
4.Once Knoppix is rebooted, you'll see the standard login prompt, showing that its a "Debian GNU/Linux testing/unstable" branch with a Knoppix (kernel 2.4.20-xfs) kernel. If you installed kdm, a graphical login screen will show.
5.You may now login as the root user. And for security reasons, remove the knoppix user account and create another one for yourself (by doing a adduser and following the on-screen instructions). Why delete a the knoppix user? If your system is wide-open on the Internet, an attacked already knowing a user would make it easier to try and crack into the machine; besides, would you rather run as your own username or as knoppix?
deluser knoppix - deletes the knoppix user from /etc/passwd
delgroup knoppix - deletes the knoppix group from /etc/group
WAIT! - It has been mentioned that newbies may not want to follow point 6.
6.Now with your new user account, login to the system and KDE will be brought up. Well, a customisation screen at least (what I recommend is stated, you're welcome to change it if your locale settings differ):
Bitte wahlen Sie ein Land aus: You can change this to Amerika, Nordiiches -> USA
Bitte wahlen Sie eine Sprache aus: And this to Sonstige -> Englisch(US)
Click Nachster
7.The entire customisation is now in English. It starts KDE with a Knoppix 3.3 logo instead of the regular KDE one (think of RedHat and how they've made Bluecurve a part of it).
8.Your keyboard will need a bit of remapping, or else the ":" or the "/" keys will not work. Click the KDE Control Center icon (big one at the bottom that looks like a colour monitor with a card in front of it) or get there via the Menu. There, go to Regional & Accessibility -> Keyboard Layout and change it to US English (from the default of German).
Note: The changes you make here are only for the said user, and do not apply globally. If you create another user, the above steps of "localisation" will need to be repeated.
9.You now have a fully installed, English GNU/Linux desktop system, with Mozilla, OpenOffice.org, KDE, and many other interesting utilities. If this is your first Debian system, go to the website and read some documents. Google as always is your best friend, and your LUGs will be willing to help you. But let's get started on a few important things first:
. apt-get update will get the list of the latest available packages for you that are available (assuming you have an Internet connection) in your sources list.
. You may want to edit the /etc/apt/sources.list file and implement some local sources, instead of one's in Germany (notice the ".de" stuff?).
. deb http://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/debian/ unstable main non-free contrib
. deb-src http://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/debian/ unstable main non-free contrib
. deb http://ftp.au.debian.org/pub/debian/ unstable main non-free contrib
. deb-src http://ftp.au.debian.org/pub/debian/ unstable main non-free contrib
. Installing packages are easy as! Just do an apt-cache search <packagename> and then once you've found what you want, perform a apt-get install <packagename>.
. If you got your hands on the 7 Debian 3.0 CDs (Woody), you can apt-cdrom add each and every one of them into your sources.list file. This would save you downloads from the Internet, unless a package has been updated.
Manu
