Ubuntu 5.04 Live CD's for the Newbie

Hi again,

If these instructions scare you off, just invite one of us to come "ride shotgun" while you try out things. Really, though this is a bit long, your part in it is very simple... mostly waiting, and not being too concerned about what happens on the screen during the boot. This message is meant more as a narrative of what to expect.

First, I didn't test the CD's. They were shipped for free from overseas, and may have gotten beaten up in the process. If you find that the ones you have don't work at all, try gently cleaning them and reinserting. If that fails, contact me and I can dig up (or burn) another one, though it may not look as pretty.

Sometimes, the CD will fail mid-boot. If that happens, and retrying doesn't work, choose "Abort the install," pop the CD, clean it and try again. (Note: Because this is done by volunteers, it can sometimes be a bit rough around the edges. In particular some of the error messages make claims about aborting an "install" or other references to installing, when in fact it's not installing anything. The error messages were just copied from the install CD.)

Read the liner notes, including the notes behind the CD's.

IMPORTANT: Make sure you're using the Live CD NOT the Install CD (unless you want to erase Windows or Mac OS X, plus all of your work).

You need to make sure that your computer is set to boot from the Live CD. If you insert the CD after you have booted your computer, you will find a few Free/Open Source programs for Windows (or Mac OS X), which you can install, but you won't be running Linux at that point. (If your computer refuses to boot from the CD, there's a split second during the boot-up where you can typically change that behavior. Since it varies from machine to machine, I won't attempt to explain how to do that. Ask if you get stuck.)

Once started, it will come up with the Ubuntu logo, and identify itself as the Live CD. There will be a prompt at the bottom of the screen saying "boot:" (It also says to press F1 for Help or advanced options. Don't. The help there is probably not going to be very helpful. And the advanced options are generally only useful if you have some really weird hardware and understand it well.) Pressing the ENTER key should start it rolling.

I recommend setting aside time when you can leave the system running Linux for an entire day or preferably a weekend. Linux is designed to be left running for long periods of time, and reboots are very rare for actual running systems. (Not only is Linux very stable, but generally speaking, most upgrades can be performed without rebooting.) However, the rebooting of a machine is not particularly speedy. Be patient. Also, because you're not actually installing, but running everything off a CD, booting can be painfully slower. Be REALLY patient. Fully installed Linux systems generally perform better. The Live CD is merely designed to give you a taste for how Linux behaves these days, and to demonstrate that you won't get too lost playing around with something outside your ken.

So, after you press ENTER, the screen will go blank, and lots of meaningless text will scroll by for a minute or two. (This stuff is helpful in diagnosing problems if any should arise, as well as giving the techies some sense of what's happening during a boot-up.) Then it calms down and gives you a blue screen with some questions.

Linux is an international operating system. Since the Live CD does not touch your hard disk, it cannot remember settings from one boot up to the next. So, each time you boot the Live CD, it will ask you about your preferred language, and your keyboard layout. It defaults to English and US, but feel free to choose something else. (I'm trying to learn Esperanto... Unfortunately Esperanto isn't one of the choices offered during the booting, but it can be installed later.)

Once you've answered these questions, it will "probe" your hardware, to try determining what your machine is capable of, and which brands of drivers it needs to choose in order to take advantage of that. You'll see a progress meter as it scans for various hardware. It does several of these probes and loading of various components. If you're on the network when you try it, Linux will attempt to register itself with the campus network (and generally succeed).

Eventually, the screen goes from blue, to black again, as it starts various background tasks running. Several lines of

will go by. Eventually, the screen clears, stays dark for a minute or so, and finishes up.

When you finally see a brownish screen with what looks like a starburst in the center and the word "Ubuntu", you're finally running Linux.

Experiment. Fool around with the pull-down menus, try right clicking, left clicking, and holding both buttons down simultaneously (or using your wheel in the middle of the mouse).

IMPORTANT: Since the Live CD is protecting your hard disk, you cannot save your work while running the Live CD, because that would require altering your hard disk. You can however, save to other media (floppies, USB keys, etc).

When you tire of it, or have become an overnight Linux expert ;-) go to the pulldown menu and choose "System" then "Log out". It will come up with a window asking if you want to log out, shutdown or reboot. Choose either shutdown or reboot, as logging out of a Live CD is sort of meaningless.

Once again the screen will go black, and this time messages like:

will scroll by. When it finishes, it will tell you to remove the CD, and will open the CD drive door for you. Remove the CD and press ENTER as instructed. If you were doing a reboot, you should see your old familiar operating system pop up.