The time has never been better to try Linux. With improved hardware compatibility, excellent software applications, and superior stability and security, there's really nothing holding you back from giving Linux a try.

But where do you start? How do you keep your existing data? Which applications will work for me? Linux author Dee-Ann LeBlanc takes on all of these questions and many more in this complete guide to installing Linux for home users.

How Can All of These be Linux?

Every operating system (Linux, OS X, Windows, etc.) has at its core, a kernel. This kernel is the operating system itself, and everything around it that allows us to easily interact with it is a program on top of that operating system. So, in order to be considered Linux, you have to be looking at the Linux kernel with other programs around it. A grouping of the Linux kernel, the software, and a handy installer is called a distribution.

We recommend a few things that will greatly help you narrow down which distribution (version of Linux) you want to use. For one thing, as you would discover if you dug through DistroWatch for a while, is that many Linux distributions are specialized. Some are built to run servers, some desktops, some for tiny devices like cell phones, some for system rescue and repair, and there's lots more. So, if you focus on just the desktop-oriented releases, you can eliminate a lot of options.

The second tactic we recommend for beginners is to choose something popular. We know, if you really wanted popular you'd have stuck with Windows, but the larger a distribution's user base, the larger the community of people you'll have available to you for providing documentation and answers to your questions.

Third, you have to ask yourself what you want to do. Try observing yourself for a week and making notes of the types of things you do at home on your computer. What programs do you often run? What files do you typically need to open? What Web sites do you most frequently visit? Someone who uses their computer mostly for just email has very different needs from someone who likes to edit their own home movies.

Distribution Families

Before we get into the individual distributions, let us introduce you to the three major families they fall into:

• Debian - Debian is one of the venerable elders of the Linux space, with a philosophy of making its open source project freely available. While Debian is often considered an advanced distribution, it has spawned a number of easier to use desktop distributions that have become quite popular. 
• Red Hat - Red Hat is another old-timer in the Linux world. The product they offer for sale today is Red Hat Enterprise Linux, or RHEL for short. While Red Hat offers commercial products, the company is also heavily involved in open source, sponsoring an open source project and spawning many more. 
• Novell SUSE - While Novell is a relative newcomer to the Linux scene, SUSE is not, and Novell is certainly not a newcomer to computing. As with Red Hat, Novell has a commercial offering and also sponsors an open source project.

The Major Desktop Distributions

Which distributions do we recommend you consider for your home desktop? Table 1 lists our recommended distributions, which families they belong to, where to find them, and whether they're free or commercial.

The Fedora project is sponsored by Red Hat, and is the bleeding edge (everything at its newest) proving ground for what will eventually go into Red Hat Enterprise Linux. While Mandriva is not sponsored or related to Red Hat any longer, this distribution grew out of what was originally the Red Hat code base, and so how it is put together can be familiar to anyone who has worked with the other members of the Red Hat family.

Ubuntu and Kubuntu are both nearly identical children of Debian. The main difference between the two is in the look and feel. In Linux, you have a choice of what Graphical User Interface (GUI) you want to use, and then you can select themes, desktop images, and so on to customize it. The two major GUIs in Linux are GNOME and KDE, with Ubuntu offering GNOME and Kubuntu offering KDE. Many distributions come with both of these environments, allowing you to swap between them.

openSUSE is the community version of Novell's SUSE Enterprise product. Consider it Novell's equivalent to Red Hat's Fedora project, and just as user-friendly.

Getting Linux Distributions

Non-commercial Linux distributions are perfectly legal to download, copy, or share. You typically get a Linux distribution by one of these methods:

• Visit our Download Linux section to find fast links to download your preferred distribution.
• Download it from the distribution's site and burn the file onto a CD or DVD, as appropriate.
• Purchase a book that happens to include a CD or DVD with the distribution.
• Get the project to mail you a disk (Kubuntu and Ubuntu will both do this).
• Purchase a pre-burned disk from one of the vendors listed on the project's site.
• Visit a Linux User Group (or LUG) meeting in your area and see if someone can make you a copy.
• Borrow a friend's.

When it comes to downloading, this is not an experience that finishes quickly. A Linux distribution may require a CD-ROM, five of them, or an entire DVD-ROM. That's a lot of data to download. If your only option is dial-up, you may want to consider asking a friend with broadband to download the files for you. Or, see the other options, as downloading that much data through dial-up might mean you're in the old age home before you're done.

Those who have broadband may find that their best option is BitTorrent. It might break your brain to see someone officially recommend this P2P filesharing tool, but on each of the distributions' sites you'll find that they offer information on where to get their software through BitTorrent. Usually you can download large amounts of information faster this way, though not always.

No matter how you get the files, once you're done you will see there is one file per CD-ROM or DVD-ROM that needs to be burned. These files are ISO images, as you can tell by cleverly looking to see that their names end in .iso. ISO images are kind of like ZIP files, in that they're basically a single file containing a snapshot of what should be on the CD-ROM or DVD-ROM.

The most important thing to know about burning these files to a disk is that you have to use software that knows how to uncompress the ISO onto the disk. If you end up with a disk that just contains one large .iso file then you goofed and need to start over. Depending on which operating system you're using:

• If you have access to a Linux computer, it can correctly burn a disk from ISO out of the box. Just right-click it in the GUI.
• If you're using Microsoft Windows before Windows 7, try ISO Recorder.
• If you're using Windows 7, it can burn ISOs out of the box.
• If you're using OS X, try SimplyBurns.

Be sure to label your disks clearly.

Once you've gotten your disks, you can check out Part 2 of the Linux Migration Guide for Home Users, "Linux Installation Tips," will help prep your system for installation.

If you still have no idea of which distribution you want, Part 3, "Give Linux a Try," will demonstrate how to try different distributions without having to install a thing.

Dee-Ann LeBlanc

 

Comments (9)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

Show/hide comments

Pardus
written by Emre Erenoglu, June 12, 2009

I strongly recommend "Pardus" to people who would like to try a different approach to the mainstream distributions mentioned above. Pretty simple to use out-of-the-box.

• 
• +1
• 
• 

...
written by Last_Dino, June 12, 2009

It seems a bit bold to state that there are "three major families" of distributions. What about Gentoo and its numerous offshoots? Slackware? Arch?I understand that this article is written for Linux beginners, and I certainly wouldn't recommend any of those as someone's introduction to Linux. It seems far worse, however, to offer disinformation in an introduction to Linux.

A truer statement might be, "these are the three major families of the distributions discussed here," or something along those lines. Someone beginning to explore the world of Linux might be confused if they saw a youtube video featuring Sabayon (Gentoo-based), or read a forum post about Puppy (based on Slackware).

Otherwise, this is a complete, concise, and well-written guide to begin a Linux experience, with sound recommendations. New users should keep in mind that with a little bit of care and research, switching between Linux distros (distributions) can be a painless process, so don't feel like you're tied into the first distro you choose. Anyone with further questions about ISOs should check out CDFreaks forums for all the information you could want.

• 
• +0
• 
• 

Did I miss something?
written by Kaatje R, June 14, 2009

In the last two paragraphs of your article, you referred to Parts 2 and 3, but the references aren't hyperlinked, and I haven't been successful in finding the material elsewhere on the linux.com site. Perhaps you could clarify. Thx.

• 
• +1
• 
• 

Kubuntu ewwww!!!
written by Daniel Devine, June 14, 2009

Kubuntu should really not be recommended. It is a horrible hack. Fedora, Debian and even OpenSUSE have far better KDE implementations.

Also, Kubuntu is just a spin - perhaps a section describing spins would have been useful. There is a Fedora KDE (live) spin for example.

And just a side note - Debian 5's installation (and general use) is just as friendly (and in some ways better!) than Ubuntu's though you can still claim that Debian is a distribution for more experienced users just because that is the attitude of the general community.

• 
• +0
• 
• 

Debian - automatic graphical installation
written by ღ Renata ☆, June 18, 2009

For lazy installers like me, for the beginners too: I recommend this one. Stability, friendly, nice and easy to use are its predicates.

• 
• +1
• 
• 

How do I choose a distribution?
written by linuxchallenger, June 20, 2009

I have not as yet switched to using Linux. One of the main reasons is trying to decide on which distribution to choose. What distro would you recommend for the following setup and user profile:
have a prehistoric desktop with 256MB RAM , love using Flash to watch music videos on Yahoo and play online games like chess, am a Windows XP user who loves installing and testing new software, need to do online banking and rely heavily on Javascript.

I have also found a website called http://www.toptenreviews.com They compare software features and rate them in table form. They did this very well for internet browsers. Is something similar available to compare Linux distros, and if not, can a table similar to this be made by one of the gurus on this site?

• 
• +0
• 
• 

In response to Last_Dino and linuxchallenger
written by kryptikos, July 16, 2009

I would have to agree with Last_Dino. I would be a bit careful about using the words "families". I would be willing to defend that their are a few dominant/primary distributions that are in the driver's seat, and from those distributions are offsets that folks are developing. Something I have to combat almost weekly is the confusion between Linux and distributions. I've had (too often unfortunately) application groups and developers tell me "well this would only work on RedHat" or "SUSE". That breeds confusion, especially among newbies. They begin to think RedHat is different than SUSE and what runs on RedHat couldn't run on SUSE. Distributions are just the packaging. I understand what you are trying to relay, but would just offer that you might consider making that distinction a bit more clear.

To lilnuxchallenger I scope www.distrowatch.com. That site tracks an enormous amount of data reference the distributions, news, reviews and such. As far as your comment about your prehistoric desktop (I still have a classic beige one!) and which distro....they will all do what you are looking to do. I prefer Ubuntu these days just because that team has done a superb job of hammering out the wrinkles and the platform just works. But opinions are like bellybuttons. Everyone has one...so it's just that...my opinion

Cheers - Kryptikos

• 
• +1
• 
• 

Why I am better off with Windows XP
written by linuxchallenger, August 13, 2009

Despite all the friendly advice I have been given here, I still feel that it is not worth my while to try Linux at this stage. I would simply like to ask the people who contributed to these posts, who seem to be pretty knowledgeable, why developers of a Linux distribution do not develop a similar concept to the exe. files in Windows. I still feel this is the only thing preventing Linux from being more popular. As a developer, being able to program applications or games without having to package them as part of a repository, and as a user, being able to download new applications or games as soon as the programs for them are posted on the Net, would be great. For those who want to customize the applications, command line and working directly from source could still be available options. The distribution that develops this will definitely be the distribution to beat. After all, Google OS is trying to do something like this, but not in a way I like.

• 
• -1
• 
• 

Why I am better off with Windows XP - your choice
written by kryptikos, August 13, 2009

Linux has those very things you are talking about. Instead of an "exe" Linux uses "rpm" or "bin". It's obvious you have not truly researched it. Without the willingness to try an alternative to XP then you will not discover how the Linux OS handles the very things you say you want.

Your comment

and as a user, being able to download new applications or games as soon as the programs for them are posted on the Net, would be great.

doesn't make sense as that is what Linux is about. That is fully available regardless of distribution. Unlike Windows applications that are placed on questionable sites where they simply attach malware or virus or other malicious code, the Linux repositories are closed watched and guarded to prevent those types of things.

But honestly, you can't come to the Linux community, request information and then turn around and start preaching how it doesn't have what XP has when you haven't even tried it. Shows a certain closed mindedness. If you truly believe you are better off with Windows XP then best of luck to you.

• 
• +1
• 
• 

Show/hide comment form