| Installing operating systems the safe way |
by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols (Jun. 13, 2006)
So, you want to try out a new operating system. Good for you! But, before you pop in that CD or DVD, there are a couple of things you need to know. Some of these may sound like an unnecessary pain. Trust me.
There may be some people out there who've installed more different kinds of operating systems on most computers than yours truly, but I haven't met them.
First, back up your data. OK, everyone tells you that. Let me take it one step further: Make certain you can restore your data.
While it's not as big a problem as it used to be for PCs, when backups usually meant tape rather than CDs or DVDs, it's still a heck of a mess when you try to restore your system and you find that your backup disk contains unreadable garbage.
If you're making a big change, say Windows to Linux, and you think you may want to go back again, you should move up from a simple backup program to a system restore program.
These programs essentially take a photograph, an image, of your hard drive. With them, you can restore your entire system even if the new operating system doesn't leave a trace of your old system. For Windows users, the programs I recommend are Acronis True Image 9.0 Home and Norton Ghost 10. For Linux, I like Ghost for Linux.
The Linux option isn't as easy to use as the Windows-based tools, but Sanjay Majumder has written a handy guide to using Ghost for Linux. With it at hand, you shouldn't have any problem mirroring your system.
Oh, and make sure that mirror and the software that comes with it works, as well. It's far better to find out whether everything works properly for a restore before you cross the Rubicon of replacing your old operating system with a new one.
With that in hand, you should check to see how to set your computer so that it will boot from one of your optical drives. If you have a choice, get your operating system onto a DVD and set your PC to boot from that drive. You can always install an operating system from CDs, but shuffling CDs for a full-sized Linux distribution can get to be a real nuisance. (Novell/OpenSUSE just saw the light and released its first such live DVD a few days ago. Their five-CD installations are unwieldy.)
Next up, get your hardware manuals near by, so you'll know exactly what's inside that gray box of yours. You may find yourself needing to know exactly what your graphics card is, for example, to solve any problems along the way.
If at all possible, do not actually install the new operating system until you're reasonably certain it will run on your hardware. You can read the documentation, and see how other users have done in online forums, blogs, and the like, but the best thing you can do is use a live CD or live DVD to test out the actual OS on your hardware.
Fortunately, these days, many of the most popular varieties of Linux will let you run them on your computer from a CD, DVD, or even a USB memory stick without having to actually install them. These include Knoppix, MEPIS Linux and SUSE Linux.
Once you have the live CD/DVD version of the OS running, test out as much of your hardware as possible. In particular, check out your networking equipment. Many operating systems -- and not just Linux -- can have trouble with WiFi gear.
If you find that your particular combination of OS and hardware don't work, check to see if there's a solution. For example, there are many ways around WiFi problems in Linux. But, if your particular hardware and distribution can't get along no matter what you do, it's better to know that before you actually install the system.
Next, be sure you have the time to oversee the installation. Installing an operating system usually isn't that hard anymore, but you should plan on spending at least an hour keeping an eye on the process and answering questions.
If you're installing a preview operating system -- one with a time limit, like the Windows Vista betas and many other betas -- you should also be certain that you know when the system will turn itself off. For example, Windows Vista Beta 2 turns into a pumpkin on June 1, 2007.
Even I think Vista will be finalized by then. Well, probably!
Speaking of Vista -- and with almost 2 million downloads, clearly a lot of people are -- you should also be aware that it doesn't give you any way to roll the installation back, even if you are using XP. You did make that mirror and test restoring it, right? You'd better have, because that's the only way you're getting a system back once it's been in Vista's grips.
I'll also note that Microsoft isn't making any guarantees that you'll be able to upgrade Vista Beta 2 to the final version. It may very well turn out that you'll need to install Vista final as a "new operating system," come the day it finally ships.
Once your new system is installed, I recommend that you beat on it for a few hours. Try everything you'd normally do, to make sure that it actually works. I usually leave systems on overnight, and then beat on them some more, to make sure that no odd little memory leaks have eaten up the system's memory overnight or any other errors have popped up.
If all has gone well, you'll have a new operating system to call your own. If not, well, that's why I recommended backing up your system at the beginning, and that's why I'm ending up mentioning it again at my tale's end.
-- Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
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