Before You Install...

...GNU/Linux or any other operating system, there are important issues for you to consider.

  1. What to buy: Laptop or desktop?
  2. Applications: What do you plan to do with the computer?
  3. Backups: How do you plan to keep from losing your data?
  4. Security: Theft and hackers/crackers. Network Topology.
  5. Defenestration: How to replace Microsoft Windows.
  6. Reliability: Will the install work? Will all of your hardware be recognized?

Laptop or Desktop

Laptop computers obviously are more convenient than desktops. Your laptop can be used anywhere in the house that you want, and it can be taken out of your house and used at work, at schools and in bars, coffee shops and laundromats.

Don't rule out desktop computers. Your desktop stays in a secure room in your house or apartment, where it is very much more difficult to steal. Few laptops match the ergonomics of a good separate keyboard, mouse and monitor. Most laptops are difficult for you to take apart and repair. Desktop computer cases have improved dramatically over the last twenty years. Access to the motherboards and components has improved, and the connection points are labelled clearly. Computers are not that hard to debug. If you can do your own repairs and upgrades, your computer and your valuable data need not ever leave your home.

If you bring your GNU/Linux box to a repair shop, do you really want to give them your personal password, your root password and your hard drive encryption key?

I have a desktop and a laptop. My desktop is more comfortable to work on, it has two large monitors, and I back my data up systematically. My secure stuff stays on my desktop. I can transfer working data to my laptop so that I can use it in my kitchen, on my front porch, or out of my house. My laptop is encrypted, and it has a strong firewall.

Applications

Most GNU/Linux distributions come with browsers, email, and an office suite. A lot of people just want to surf the net, communicate with friends, and prepare documents. The browser, email and office suite is all they need. Ubuntu and Fedora provide these by default. Mozilla's Firebox is a good web browser. Mozilla's Thunderbird is a good email tool. LibreOffice is not as powerful as Microsoft Office, but it is very capable.

I have played a little with Calligra Office suite, and AbiWord and with Gnumeric. Gnumeric is a small, but capable Excel clone. I found Calligra and AbiWord to not work particularly well. Stick with LibreOffice.

You can go to Google and download Google-Chrome. This does not run on older 32 bit machines. Google-Chrome gives the GNU/Linux user full access to internet multi-media, including Netflix. If you give Google-Chrome your Google password, it will store this and your other personal data up on the cloud. As you move from machine to machine at home, at school and at work, you can run Google-Chrome and access the same internet environment. However convenient this is, it is not necessarily a Good Thing. Do you really want your credit card information and bank passwords up on the cloud? I recommend Firefox for secure browsing. Use Google-Chrome for YouTube and Netflix.

Opera, Vivaldi, and Brave Browser are available for GNU/Linux. GNU's Free Software web browser is IceCat, based on Mozilla's gecko rendering engine.

Your as-installed GNU/Linux distribution can download photos from your cellphone or digital camera, and correct most exposure problems. I do not understand why GIMP is not installed automatically by Ubuntu and Fedora.

Use one of GNU/Linux's email programs to download off the internet using POP mail. Your email should be stored on your local hard drive, where it is secure, and backed up. Anything coming in through your email should land in a sandbox, where it can be scanned for security problems. Thunderbird and Evolution are full, multi-media email programs. Multi-media can be over-rated. Everybody can read your plain-text emails. Not everyone will (want to) appreciate your missives in 24pt Comic Sans Cerulean blue font.

Most email programs have a send-later feature. This was intended for reading and processing email offline. Back in the day, I would sit at laundromats, read emails, write replies and hit send-later. When I got home and re-connected to the internet, I would hit the Send button, and everything would go out. Nowadays, WiFi is everywhere, and you generally don't work unconnected. I have, on occasion, written emails and hit send-later. A day or so later, I have re-read them, and in many cases, edited them, or have decided to not send them.

Backups

There are three nasty, destructive things that happen when you compute.

You modify or delete something you should not have.
This is easily fixed if you automatically back up your primary drive every night. This is the primary cause of my backup recoveries.
Your hard drive with all your valuable data dies.
You need a new hard drive. Recover your data from the backup you do every evening. You lose less than a day's stuff.
Your computer blows up completely...
...taking your backup drive with it. You need a backup stored away from your computer. Maybe you don't do this every night. A backup stored elsewhere in your home or in a bank security deposit box, is ready to get you back up and computing if you have a house fire or burglary. You lose a week's data, not your life's work.

Backups, a dissertation on how to back up your Linux box.

If the stuff on your hard drive is valuable, you want a backup copy of it somewhere, somehow. Start by acquiring and installing backup hardware.

Extra hard drives
Install a second (or third?) hard drive to work exclusively as a backup. This is easy to do on a desktop. My backup drive is 4TB. If you are on a tight budget, you can find a reasonably large hard drive second-hand.
External hard drives (USB?)
If you back up your data up to an external SATA or USB drive, you can recover it to any available machine. The external hard drives have capacities up to 4TB. USB sticks are good for up to 64GB. Very cheap sticks can do 4GB, and this may be adequate if you have just bought your first computer. You can buy 2TB USB sticks, but there is a lot of nasty stuff on the internet on them. Research before you buy.
Blu-Ray disc burners
DVDs are disappearing off of new computers. I am not sure Blu-rays ever caught on. I am using double-density Blu-ray discs for my backups. These allow 50GB of storage on read-only media. Read-only suits my backup plans perfectly. 100GB Blu-ray burners and discs now are available. They may not be available in the stores. I had to order my current set of 50GB discs over the internet.
Tape Drives
These are what industry uses. They have huge capacity, and they and their tapes are expensive.

I archive my digital photos to DVD. I store the DVDs in a cool, dry, dark place. I don't do serious CAD at home. My uncompressed backups now are 40 to 45GB. It has taken me twenty five years to accomplish this. If you have just bought your first computer, it will take you a while to accumulate giga-bytes of data, making your backup that much easier.

In a family computing environment, it does not hurt to to point out to users that the delete (rm) command is not reliable, when there is a working backup.

Security

I am assuming that you are a home computer user. If you are responsible for National Security, you ought to know more about security than I do.

You will have all sorts of personal information and other secure stuff on your computer. You need to keep it there, and nowhere else. A secondary issue is that you do not want your machine used to break into other machines, or to generate bitcoin (other than yours). Think hard about what you use your computer for. If you do e-commerce as a vendor or customer, if you run a business or a club, if you chat with your family and store photographs, you collect data you really ought to keep to yourself or to authorized people.

If the data is sensitive, consider not storing it.

What can go wrong?

You need a firewall.

A firewall restricts the outside world's access to your computer. Always, you should work behind a firewall. A firewall can be software running on your computer. A firewall can run on a network router, with your machine connected to the protected side. There are three fairly simple ways to do this.

Install, configure and run the firewall on your computer
This is absolutely necessary for any laptop computer that will be used anywhere outside your home. If your one and only computer is a desktop, there is no point getting a router. Just run the firewall.
Use the firewall on a commercial router
Buy a wireless router and plug it into your internet. Connect your home computers to the router. When you configure your router, make sure the firewall is turned on.
Install, configure and run the firewall on your WiFi desktop
Install a wireless card in your desktop. Plug your desktop directly to the internet. Configure and test your firewall. You now have a wireless router!

The new sudo command is taking over from the old root passwords. If you have a root password, be careful who you share it with. If you don't have a root password, be careful about providing sudo access. This is one of the options you will see when you create new user accounts. Only trusted users should be able to install software and re-configure your computer.

Network Topology

What sort of computer stuff you have, and how your network is laid out affects your security and your firewall.

Topology Modem and Desktop

A simple desktop installation

The network above consists of a cable or DSL modem, a computer desktop, and a printer. The modem is the little box at the bottom left, connected to the internet. This is a minimal, internet capable computer system. The printer is connected to a USB port on the computer. You can get a WiFi card for the computer. You can replace the desktop with a WiFi laptop. Make sure it has an RJ45 connector for the modem. Not all new laptops do anymore. Most printers today are wireless, and can be connected to WiFi devices. WiFi should work with your cellphone.

In the wired desktop setup shown, there is no capability to add stuff to the network. You will need a router, or some sort of network card in the desktop.

If there is not a good firewall built into the modem, there must be a firewall installed in the computer. The firewall must be maximally restrictive. You want to pass the Shields Up True Stealth test on Steve Gibson's (no relation) website. The firewall setup is described in my GNU/Linux install instructions.

Topology Modem and Router

Desktop, laptop and router

This network has a cable or DSL modem, and a router. Standard home routers generally provide WiFi, and four RJ45 network connectors. The network connectors are shown connected to the desktop, the printer, and to the laptop's docking station. The printer could just as easily be connected to the router's WiFi. The docking station is nice, but not necessary, since laptops today all have WiFi. Bigger and older laptops have RJ45 connectors. The wired network still is faster than WiFi. WiFi should work with your cellphone.

I transfer working files between my desktop and laptop. This package currently is around 9GB. This is transferred fairly efficiently thorough my wired network. Through my regular WiFi, it is unacceptably slow. 5G WiFi is faster, but not fast enough. Movie streaming and everything else I do, works fine through my regular WiFi.

Home routers usually have the ability run a firewall, and you should activate this. The first RJ45 connector on the router is the connection from the modem. The remaining connectors are protected by the router's firewall. The printer, desktop, and laptop and docking station are protected, and hopefully, not visible to the internet outside.

It would be nice if the router passed Steve Gibson's True Stealth test. The worst case is that the router's firewall is not good enough. In that case, your desktop will have to be your firewall. Google RJ45 cards. If you only have a WiFi card, your printer, your cellphone, your Blu-ray player, and laptop will connect, they just won't be screamingly fast.

Defenestration

You have had it with Microsoft Windows, and you are determined to replace it with GNU/Linux. Probably, your ojectives are to...

As noted above, GNU/Linux has excellent support for programming, and very good support for web browsers and office suites. It has fairly good support for non-professional graphics. Support for CAD is marginal.

Definitely, Ubuntu and probably Fedora, are able to shrink down existing partitions so that you can make room for your new GNU/Linux install. You can set up your machine so that it dual boots Windows or Ubuntu/Fedora. Even if you do not dual boot, your old Windows documents are accessible to you. They will also be accessible to anyone else you give an account to. This may or may not be a good thing. If a machine with a secure GNU/Linux hard drive can be booted into Windows, the drive probably is not secure. The reverse definitely is true.

Consider having all of your users transfer their personal data to USB sticks, They can restore everything to your new, secure hard drive, after you wipe out and install. This sort of thing is way easier if you had a back-up strategy on your old Windows machine.

If you acquire a cheap, expendable hack machine, you can install GNU/Linux on that. If you decide that GNU/Linux was not a good idea, you have trashed no information.

If you are downloading your email and reading it with a local tool, consider using one of the Mozilla tools, like Thunderbird. These use the mbox email format, which is very popular in the UNIX world. You can continue running Thunderbird, or switch to some other mbox compatible tool.

Reliability

Before you blow away all your data, and otherwise, render your Windows machine a brick, you need to be confident the install will work.

I don't have enough experience with every possible permutation of hardware to make definitive statements about this. The big distributions like Ubuntu and Fedora work on every installation I have tried. I wonder how rigorously the smaller distributions have been tested. The GNU Foundation lists some strict Free Software GNU/Linux distributions. If you are determined to run Free Software, and these distributions work for you, all power to you! Your machine may have some proprietary hardware which will work or work better, if you install available available proprietary "blobs". Free Software people hate proprietary "blobs", but you want your computer to work. I have installed NVIDIA video drivers on my desktop so that I can run FlightGear. If I don't run FlightGear, the Free Software drivers work fine.

In my notes on installing my primary desktop Rev, I have notes on install disasters. This may be an interesting read.

Consider buying a second-hand hack computer and installing GNU/Linux on that. At best, you learn how to install GNU/Linux. At worst, you have done no harm.

Consider buying a new hard drive. Remove your existing hard drive and install the new one. Install GNU/Linux on that. When you get it working, add your old hard drive as a second device. Now you can get at all your old data.

Both Fedora and Ubuntu will will modify your hard drive partitions so that you can dual-boot Windows and GNU/Linux. Neither Fedora or Ubuntu write to your hard drive until you hit the Install button, so it is safe to search around the installation program. All of my installation notes have a section on MBR versus GPT formatted hard drive. If you have an older computer, read this.