Installing Linux for the First Time

Darren

Darren

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My programming class requires that I code and compile using only a text editor and a console in a Linux environment. Finally time for me to install Linux on something and I don't really have much experience with it. I'll be doing it on my laptop, specs below.

Anything I should know going in? My HDD is 750GB and already partitioned into 2 partitions out of the box (OS and DATA). I'll be using Fedora.

As far as drivers are concerned what should I have to manually go looking for? WiFi and GPU are all I can really think of.

Any other general advice on using/installing Linux coming from a lifetime Windows user and no familiarity with OS X and a little with Fedora of what I've already used in the lab itself.
 
Fedora has a pretty good step by step setup once you boot into the installer. Assuming you're just deploying a VM then you can even accept all of the default settings and have a usable system
 
I spent a couple hours wrestling with virtual box and it just felt sluggish as well as having trouble with the resolution being tiny. I'm talking about a full installation of Fedora.
 
How many cores and how much RAM did you allocate the VM? Also, did you install the virtualbox tools? :cool:
 
Just boot to the install media and go through the prompt. It'll automatically install GRUB, etc. and you can choose the size of the partition you want.
 
Jumping a little late into this but yeah I agree I would use VMware over virtualbox. I have moved to Fedora recently, for me it was mainly how they are still focused on desktop and after watching some interviews with the community manager, Fedora is really starting to move into a direction away from Red Hat's test bed.

On that note when I was watching the community manager talk at a convention he said that the new Fedora Work Station is released for developers to build in. I am not a dev so I am not sure what to look for to justify that but Fedora 20 and 21 have been super rock solid and from what I hear 22 is suppose to be even better.

EDIT: The only issue I see is if you are wanting to install the proprietary nvidia drivers if you install on your laptop. There are open source drivers out of the box however seems like most people prefer the proprietary drivers. Follow this guide

http://rpmfusion.org/Howto/nVidia

One of the first things I would do though is install a program called Fedy
http://satya164.github.io/fedy/

This application will allow you to install a tone of the proprietary stuff that cannot be shipped in Fedora thanks to legal issues, but will bring a lot of functionality. I don't know what your level with Linux is but I will say this, in my opinion Linux is a far superior system to Windows. With that being said things are done differently so if you cannot get something work right away don't get frustrated and scrap, just post here or you are always welcome to PM me.
 
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I installed Ubuntu in VMware player on a dual core laptop. Works fine!

To bring up the terminal: Control + ALT + T.

To exit type Exit.

Just a note that I learned since I'm new to Linux as well. Read the readme file to know how to install a program. That could help!
 
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Got everything setup pretty easily. Took me a while to get into my BIOS. Laptop would skip right by it. Had to use Windows to force it to boot to the UEFI and then got it from there. Wireless worked out of the box, which surprised me. Even more so because my dorm wifi requires a login but it apparently didn't need one through Linux since it worked immediately. Had to install g++ and do some digging on how to sudo myself but otherwise not too difficult.
 
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