Installation of a Linux distribution is fairly easy when you choose one of the newbie distros like Mandriva, openSUSE, Ubuntu or Fedora. Still, you should read these installation tips just to avoid unnecessary problems you may (but probably will not) encounter during the process.

What you need to know before installing Linux

1. If you have a Live-CD version of your system (most of the modern distros have it), download it and run it before installing the system on your hard driveThis may help you identify possible problems with your hardware (some of it may be unsupported under Linux) and just have an impression about the general usability of the selected distro without the need of installing it on your disk and without losing any data
2. You have to know that Linux requires a free partition on your disk to be installed properly. If you have Windows installed and have only one system partition (just the C: drive), then you can either resize your partition or completety remove Windows.Some installers support Windows partitions resizing, but not all. If you wish to install a distro which doesn’t support it, you have to do it manually before the installation. There are many tools for changing the partition size. One of the most popular is a commercial app called Partition Magic. You don’t have to use it though, because most Linux Live-CDs include a partitioning program (qtparted or GParted) capable of resizing Windows partitions. A nice howto concerning partitioning this issue is available on our portal.
3. Be warned that in many installers, the default value for partitioning is to completely format your hard drive removing all your data (if any) and create the Linux partitions on the clean space. This is not the desired behavior if you have another system or some important data on your disk. In this case you should not agree to clean the disk, but choose either the option “Use the free space” or “format manually”. Once again - if you read the installer tips carefully, nothing bad will happen.
4. Some distros (the minority) do not have any partitioning program (they can only install on already existing partitions). In this case you also have to partition your hard drive manually beforehands.
5. Once upon a time, the installer may crash or refuse to continue working properly. This may be due to a badly burned CD-ROM or due to some installer bug. It may be also that some uncommon piece of hardware is causing the installer to behave in an unstable way. There may be many reasons for crashing. It happens pretty rarely nowadays on the desktop machines, more often on laptops. In case you’re installing on a mobile computer, you can read the laptop tips which may help you to diagnose the problem and install Linux on your machine.