SOFT3410 Week 0 Tutorial Linux Setup
This guide is for anyone who is concisdering switching over to using Linux. It is not a strict require- ment for this subject but you may find testing and development on linux easier and a better experience overall.
Installing Linux
Linux is a family of free1 and open source operating systems. You will require a Linux operating
system for this course.
Here we will cover a general overview of different ways to install Linux, or get access to a Linux environment on your own computer. Depending on what you chose to do here, this can take anywhere from a few minutes to several days worth of work.
Picking a Distribution
There are several hundred Linux distributions (or distros) out there, each with varying degrees of popularity. In general there is a trade-off between ease of use and flexibility between these distribu- tions which range from ‘working out of the box’ to ‘build from scratch yourself’. A few of the more common ones are listed here in order of their ease of use.
If you’re new, you may want to try Mint with Cinnamon (it’s something like a Windows 7 GUI with a Linux backend), Elementary OS (if you like the look and feel of a Mac) or Zorin (if you like the look and feel of Windows). All of these distros are derived from Ubuntu, and can share packages with it; when looking for help online the Ubuntu help will also apply to you.
• Mint A distribution heavily based on and compatible with Ubuntu, this is a rather popular modern distro that is suitable for both those new to Linux and longer term users. Currently the most popular Linux Distribution around. I is very windows 7-ish.
• Elementary OS Looks like a Mac and is based on Ubuntu.
• Zorin Looks like Windows 8 and 10 and is based on Ubuntu.
1Free as in both for free (gratis), and free as in free to modify or use with no restriction (libre). You are completely free to copy the entire base of the Linux source code and make your own operating system based on it, so long as you attribute the original authors.
1
• Ubuntu Now one of the older distributions and is based on Debian. It’s somewhat bloated these days and is only the third most popular distribution, fine for running natively, but might chug if used in a VM. Would suggest getting the ‘server version’ if you’re using a VM.
• Debian A rock solid distribution with well tested packages. Can be considered the spiritual development distribution for Ubuntu. Also the second most popular distribution.
• MX Linux A very new distro, but seems to be gaining popularity. Based on debian, tries to balance the stability of debian with a more modern UI. A merger between antiX and MEPIS.
• free version of Red Hat, well supported and maintained. Red Hat sees quite a lot of use in larger organisations as it is arguably the best Linux distro for supporting large numbers of different groups of users.
• openSUSEAratherolddistribution,butstilloneofthebettersupportedones,it’squitefriendly to both new users and to people who have been using Linux for a while.
• Manjaro An arch based distro with an easier installation. Comes with pre-installed window managers, audio and video software, (unlike arch).
• Arch A very flexible distribution that comes with nearly nothing but the bare bones out of the box. You will need to install your own window manager and other essential utilities (unless you like working in a raw tty environment). Very flexible and is supported by the most in depth Linux wiki around. Arch is famous for being something of a testing distro and receives package updates sometimes on the order of years before other distributions. This also means that there will be the occasional bug.
If you have some niche requirements, or just want to see some other distros here is (another) list of ones that might suit
• Ubuntu MATE Excellent compatibility for old hardware (in case you want to drop Linux onto an otherwise defunct computer).
• openBSD Incredibly secure operating system, once went a decade without needing a security patch. Also incredibly hard to actually do anything on.
• Gentoo Effectively ‘just the source code’ you need to compile the operating system yourself from the command line during installation. One of the best supported and most flexible Linux distributions, installing this for the first time may take a few days to a few weeks.
• LinuxFromScratchNotactuallyaLinuxdistribution,moreasetoftoolstoletyoubuildyour own Linux distribution.
• CentOS Good for servers, free, and compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), espe- cially as Red Hat isn’t itself free.
• Tails Edward Snowden’s operating system of choice. A debian based distro that routes all internet traffic via Tor.
• Alpine a tiny distro designed to run purely in RAM, great for use in docker images.
As said before, there are hundreds more of these and if you’re looking for something specific it’s
probably there.
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SOFT3410 Linux Setup
Window Managers and Desktop Environments
You may have seen above some discussion about ‘window managers’. This is basically what your desktop environment will look like. Some distros will give you different options when you go to get the iso so we should cover this briefly now. In general window managers take a “stacking” or a “tiling” approach. Stacking allows users to place windows on top of each other, tiling doesn’t but is more resource efficient. Unless otherwise stated all the window managers and environments take the “stacking” approach.
• GNOMEOneofthemostcommonwindowmanagers,highlycontentiouspostgnome-2,would probably recommend skipping it.
• KDE a reasonably flexible, but somewhat high performance window manager. Supports a range of visual effects.
• MATE Really just Gnome-2, there’s a reason that this has been forked and made its own desk- top environment
• Unity Ubuntu’s new default, there’s a reason that there are a range of different linux distros that are “Ubuntu but not with unity”
• XFCE Debian’s default desktop environment, also comes with MX Linux, mid range on per- formance but with a large number of features.
• ’s WM, very useable. Can be extended with for more fea- tures. Quite intuitive and Windows-y.
• Pantheon Elementary’s WM, looks like Mac works like a Mac, less resource intensive than a Mac.
• i3 or the more aesthetic i3-gaps is a virtually mouseless tiling window manager. Very fast, very low resource footprint, can noticeably increase battery life in laptops.
• dwm something of a hybrid between the “stacking” and “tiling” approaches. Slightly more resource intensive than a tiling window manager, but far less restrictive.
• xmonad Lightweight tiling approach, heavily editable.
You can install virtually any of these, or other window managers on whatever flavour of Linux you see fit if you want to test them out. But most will come with a couple of different defaults for you to pick between. Each of these (and there are many more), are themselves customisable and come with a range of options.
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Different ways to Install
Once you’ve picked your distro and what window manager you want to use, go and grab the relevant ISO file from the site. You may need either the UEFI installer for recent computers, or BIOS installer for older computers, most modern installers cover both, but be sure to check.
For this course, the recommended method of installation is either straight onto your computer (wiping the existing OS), or dual booting, which will split the computer between multiple operating systems and allow you to select between them at launch.
Straight onto the Computer (Option 1)
You might consider simply installing Linux on the machine directly. For this you will need a USB that will get wiped (so don’t leave anything important on there). Also your computer’s hard drive will be wiped, so again, clear anything you need off there first.
Depending on the distro this may range from a few hundred megabytes to a couple of gigabytes. Once you have your ISO you are going to want to map it to a USB, either the dd command or a utility such as Etcher can be used here to make your USB bootable.
A general word of warning, the following instructions worked when tested, but across different ma- chines or different versions things may have changed, if something is not working look it up, and if you still can’t manage it feel free to ask questions on Ed.
Windows
Next you’re going to need to boot your computer from the USB. This can be quite a chore on more modern windows and Mac computers. Pre-windows 8 simply restart your machine and press whatever button the vendor specifies to see your BIOS/UEFI menu (generally F2, F8, F10 or del, but look it up if you’re unsure).
For windows 8 and 10 you need to Settings, Update and Security, Recovery, Advanced Startup, Restart Now, Troubleshoot, Advanced Options, UEFI Firmware settings, Restart2. Your computer should reboot and you should be shown your UEFI firmware settings. If you’re not you should try disabling fastboot too. (Disabling fastboot is in general a good idea as you will be able to use a single key to enter the UEFI in the future rather than the whole menu approach).
For BIOS this is simple, change the boot order to boot from your USB device first. For UEFI you need to disable secure boot3, wipe the signed bootloader table and then boot from your USB device. Your computer should restart and you should now see a GRUB or similar menu with options to boot, install and other options such as debug or recovery modes.
2At this point you might get the impression that whoever designed these menus explicitly did not want you getting here.
3Microsoft decided to try to lock computers to only boot Windows by joining an ‘independant’ UEFI design panel and suggesting this as a security feature
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OSX
If you’re a Mac user who skipped the last few paragraphs then first we need to disable ‘secure boot’4, reboot your computer and hold command and R while doing so, this should open the Utilities window. From the menu, find utilities, startup security utility and enter your username and password. Select “no security” to disable secure boot, then restart your device.
Power it up again, this time while holding the option key and select EFI boot from the menu that appears. When you get to your grub menu, instead of selecting any of the options press ‘e’ and you should see a few lines of text. You’re going to need to edit the grub boot entry. One of the lines should start with “file=/”, append “nomodeset” to the very end of that line after “quiet splash” make sure there is a space. Then press F10 to boot.
Installation
From here it’s relatively straightforward to simply follow the installation prompts. If you’ve picked a distro such as Arch that does not have a graphical installation environment, then you are on your own from here on out.
Dual Booting (Option 2)
Sometimes you want to be able to boot your computer into either Linux or something else (such as a different flavour of Linux). If you want to have the option to boot into either your current OS or into follow the initial instructions to boot from a USB and get to the start of the installation. When you start installing Linux you should instead partition your current drive in two and only install Linux to the new partition. You will typically want at the very least 20GB for this partition, though you may find this amount of space a bit restrictive, 32GB or more is suggested.
With Mac you should also install rEFInd to manage booting.
When you reboot after installing you should see a grub menu with both Linux and your previous operating system listed. In the past there have been some compatibility issues here, though Ubuntu is reported to work with nearly everything. On a Mac you should instead find both Linux and Mac listed in your rEFInd menu.
Given you are playing around with partitions on your device, it is strongly recommended that you back up any files on the device before trying to set your computer up for dual booting.
Virtual Machines (Option 3)
If your computer has less than 6GB of RAM then you probably don’t want to do this, as Windows and OSX generally eat 2-4GB idle, and you then are looking for a second OS looking for up to 2GB. If you really want to do this on a lower end machine, look into running a server version of your distro (such as the server version of Ubuntu), this will mean that you have no GUI, but performance should be much better.
You’re going to want either virtualbox (free) or vmware (not-free) and the ISO. Create a new virtual machine, you will need enough virtual hard disc space for your operating system; 16-32GB is more than enough for this, you can go lower with some of the lighter-weight distributions. You will need to
4Apple also decided to try to lock their devices so that they can only boot OSX
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also set RAM, typically you will need to allocate enough RAM that guest OS can function normally while still leaving enough for the normal functions of the host OS.
Boot your virtual machine and follow the installation as normal.
Non-Persistent USB (Option 4)
You can use your bootable USB to boot and try the OS out rather than actually installing it. Then simply save your files to some location on your regular hard drive. The downsides of this method is that it significantly decreases the life of the USB, that you may not be able to install packages, and that it will be IO bound by your USB drive and consequently be slow (though probably still faster than a VM).
Persistent Live USB (Option 5)
You can also create and install a persistent usb version that you can boot your computer from. The entire operating system, and your user files will be sorted on the USB and treated as the hard drive when you boot from it.
Downside is that this very quickly burns through the life of the USB due to the large number of reads and writes. It’s strongly suggested to not have a swap partition if doing this. This also means that if you run out of RAM your computer will simply crash rather than slow down. Also reading and writing is IO bound on the USB, so will be slower than a real installation.
For this you should check your distros exact installation instructions for a persistent boot. This method can be extended to high speed portable SSDs, sometimes achieving near inbuilt disc speeds while still being portable. However the hardware for this does tend to be expensive and IO bounds can still be a limitation.
KVM (Option 6)
This presumes that you are already running Linux, but you can also set up a Kernel Virtual Machine with hardware passthrough and simply hand control of the hardware to your virtual machine. This eliminates the downside of VMs being slow, while adding the new complication that you cannot con- trol the hardware while the VM is. This requires two monitors and two graphics cards (the keyboard and mouse can be shared via synergy, which is open source and has its own git repo).
This can also run other operating systems, such as Windows from within Linux without too much of a slow-down.
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Text Editors
If you do not have a preferred text editor yet, feel free to consider the following.
• SublimetextorLimetext:Crossplatformtexteditor,hasitsowninternalpackagemanagerand can be configured into a full IDE for most languages, Limetext claims to be an API compatible FOSS equivalent, but may have significant issues running on Windows. Also developed in Sydney, so there’s that.
• Atom: Developed by github (who are now owned by Microsoft), also has an internal package manager and also can be configured into a full IDE for most languages. FOSS. Uses the electron framework (basically it’s a bunch of javascript and runs in its own browser), so it can consume quite a bit of RAM. There might be concerns for the long term support of Atom once Microsoft realises that they’re developing two different competing text editors, both using the electron framework (see the next entry). Atom is also pre-installed on the lab machines, so having a passing familiarity might be useful.
• Vscode: Developed by Windows (obvious owned by Microsoft), has its own internal package manager, can be configured into a full IDE for most languages. Mostly FOSS despite being developed by windows (some bits in some installations have odd black boxes built in). Also uses electron and so can be heavy on RAM.
• Vi/Vim, Emacs: Text editors with no mouse support, it is incredibly useful to know how to use at least one of these. The primary reason these editors have no mouse support is that they nearly predate the mouse. The arguments about the merits of Vi and Emacs pre-date the internet and have their own wikipedia page that may be considered suggested reading. In short emacs is considered more featured (having its own web browser, e-mail client and games and is often joked as being an operating system), while vim is more lightweight and is more ubiquitous. If learning vim, there is a dedicated vimtutor command that provides an in-vim, vim tutorial.
• Nano: Code for ‘I have not learnt how to use vim or emacs’, ok as a stopgap measure while you learn one of the above, but otherwise should not be something you use in the long term.
• IDEs: Integrated development environments, fancy text editors with GUIs and run buttons such as IDLE, Codeblocks, Eclipse and others. Generally when learning to program and how to work with a computer these tools tend to create an over-reliance on inbuilt features and are particularly detrimental for learning to use the command line. Useful to learn later down the track, explicitly prohibited for use in this course.
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