the maldivian linux blog

I've been told by a friend that still there is people who need help on the basic. Well my answer was "Help is all over, just google for em". Guess his answer was logical, most don't like to "Read". Then I thought about making some basic help documents. Will that help, if they don't read? Guess not ey! But still I decided that I'd do some research and put up some documents. Hope they are of help.

So to start off, lets talk about pre-installation conditions. Which basically means what you need to think about or do before you start to install Linux on a box.

Certain things or aspects of the system can't be changed or leads to difficulties once you install and setup a system. It will be very good if you think about certain things before you just insert the CD and start to install.

Following is some points to consider.

• Is the hardware compatible with Linux? Meaning try to do some look into the hardware you own. Like if you have any special hardware. There might be a chance that it might not work. Example some usb modems, etc. So if you have doubts if always good to look into them before you install and then get frustrated after. Good news is most standard hardware does support, well almost everything now.
  
• Will the system require dual booting? If the system will boot to more then one OS, then attention should be given to what boot loader is used, and to configure the boot loader to boot to the desired OS. Example if you wish to run Windows and Linux on same box.
• What partitioning scheme will be used? Software RAID and LVM are easier to configure at installation time (especially for the root file system). If traditional partitions are to be used, then it is best to select appropriate initial sizes; modifying partition sizes later can be both more difficult and more dangerous.
  
• What file system type(s) will be used? There are different file systems that you can use. Each of them have their own advantages and disadvantages. Its good decide on one, based on the usage of the system. Example will the system be used as a web server or a DB server, etc. Talking about them is best kept for another post.
• What is the expected role of the system? Its good to decide on this and choose the packages that you will install on your system. From experience I know even though its easy to add and remove packages, often we don't do that and neglect to remove unneeded software packages after the initial installation. Always remember that every software package installed on the system can be a potential security threat or venerability. One of the very important thing in securing a system is to ensure that its not running any services that are absolutely not required. Even when I say this, I have often made this mistake.
  

Hope this is good for a start. Mostly this applies when you want to setup a server, on desktops most of the default installations would do fine. But its always good if you keep in mind somethings, which will put you into an advantage. For the posts that will follow I will try to look into more details to each of the points.