Version 1.0
Author: Falko Timme
Last edited 12/16/2008
This tutorial shows how you can set up a Linux Mint 6 (Felicia) desktop that is a full-fledged replacement for a Windows desktop, i.e. that has all the software that people need to do the things they do on their Windows desktops. The advantages are clear: you get a secure system without DRM restrictions that works even on old hardware, and the best thing is: all software comes free of charge. Linux Mint 6 is a Linux distribution based on Ubuntu 8.10 that has lots of packages in its repositories (like multimedia codecs, Adobe Flash, Adobe Reader, Skype, Google Earth, etc.) that are relatively hard to install on other distributions; it therefore provides a user-friendly desktop experience even for Linux newbies.
I want to say first that this is not the only way of setting up such a system. There are many ways of achieving this goal but this is the way I take. I do not issue any guarantee that this will work for you!
1 Preliminary Note
To fully replace a Windows desktop, I want the Linux Mint 6 desktop to have the following software installed:
Graphics:
- The GIMP - free software replacement for Adobe Photoshop
- F-Spot - full-featured personal photo management application for the GNOME desktop
- Google Picasa - application for organizing and editing digital photos
Internet:
- Firefox
- Opera
- Flash Player 10
- FileZilla - multithreaded FTP client
- Thunderbird - email and news client
- Evolution - combines e-mail, calendar, address book, and task list management functions
- aMule - P2P file sharing application
- Transmission BitTorrent Client - Bittorrent client
- Azureus/Vuze - Java Bittorrent client
- Pidgin - multi-platform instant messaging client
- Skype
- Google Earth
- Xchat IRC - IRC client
Office:
- OpenOffice Writer - replacement for Microsoft Word
- OpenOffice Calc - replacement for Microsoft Excel
- Adobe Reader
- GnuCash - double-entry book-keeping personal finance system, similar to Quicken
- Scribus - open source desktop publishing (DTP) application
Sound & Video:
- Amarok - audio player
- Audacity - free, open source, cross platform digital audio editor
- Banshee - audio player, can encode/decode various formats and synchronize music with Apple iPods
- MPlayer - media player (video/audio), supports WMA
- Rhythmbox Music Player - audio player, similar to Apple's iTunes, with support for iPods
- gtkPod - software similar to Apple's iTunes, supports iPod, iPod nano, iPod shuffle, iPod photo, and iPod mini
- XMMS - audio player similar to Winamp
- dvd::rip - full featured DVD copy program
- Kino - free digital video editor
- Sound Juicer CD Extractor - CD ripping tool, supports various audio codecs
- VLC Media Player - media player (video/audio)
- Helix Player - media player, similar to the Real Player
- Totem - media player (video/audio)
- Xine - media player, supports various formats; can play DVDs
- Brasero - CD/DVD burning program
- K3B - CD/DVD burning program
- Multimedia Codecs
Programming:
- KompoZer - WYSIWYG HTML editor, similar to Macromedia Dreamweaver, but not as feature-rich (yet)
- Bluefish - text editor, suitable for many programming and markup languages
- Quanta Plus - web development environment, including a WYSIWYG editor
Other:
- VMware Server - lets you run your old Windows desktop as a virtual machine under your Linux desktop, so you don't have to entirely abandon Windows
- TrueType fonts
- Java
- Read-/Write support for NTFS partitions
Lots of our desired applications are available in the Linux Mint repositories.
You might notice that I'm installing lots of similar applications here (e.g. two browsers and two email clients, multiple audio players, etc.) - this is just a choice. Of course you are free to install just the apps that you really need - just leave out the other ones.
I will use the username falko in this tutorial. Please replace it with your own username.
2 Installing The Base System
The installation of the base system is easy as 1-2-3 because the Linux Mint installer doesn't offer a lot of options to choose from, so you cannot go wrong.
Download the Linux Mint 6 iso image from http://www.linuxmint.com/download.php, burn it onto a CD, and boot your computer from it:
The system boots and starts a desktop that is run entirely in the RAM of your system (the Linux Mint installation CD is also a Live-CD) without changing anything on your hard disk. This has the advantage that you can test how Linux Mint works on your hardware before you finally install it.
This is how the Linux Mint desktop looks. Double-click the Install icon on the desktop to start the installation to the hard drive:
The installer starts. First, select your language:
Then choose your time zone:
Change the keyboard layout, if necessary:
Now we come to the partitioning of our hard disk. Usually Guided - use entire disk is a good choice, unless you need custom partitions and know what you're doing. Use entire disk will create one big / partition for us:
Type in your real name, your desired username along with a password, and click on Forward:
The next screen shows us a summary of the installation settings. Click on Install to start the installation:
The Linux Mint system is being installed. This can take a few minutes, so be patient:
After the installation is complete, we must reboot the system to use it. Click on Restart now:
The Live-CD desktop shuts down. At the end (when you see the black rectangle with green text at the bottom of this screen), the Linux Mint CD is ejected. Remove it from the CD drive and hit the
Your new Linux Mint system starts. Log in to the desktop with the username and password you provided during the installation:
Before you can use your desktop for the first time, Linux Mint needs to know some details to configure the system. Click on Forward:
If you want to give the root account a password, you can do this here. If you don't do this, you can still run all commands with root privileges using the sudo command (this is the default configuration on Ubuntu and all derived distributions):
If you'd like to see funny quotes in your terminal whenever you start it, you can configure this on the next screen. Click on Forward afterwards:
That's it for the initial configuration. Click on Apply...
... and then on Close to finally start the desktop:
This is how your new desktop looks:
Now the base system is ready to be used.
3 Update The System
When you log in for the first time, you will most likely see an open lock icon in the lower right corner which means that updates for the installed software are available. To install the updates, go to Applications > Administration > mintUpdate:
Type in your password:
mintUpdate tells you which updates are available. Click on Install Updates to install them:
Confirm by clicking on Apply again:
The updates are being downloaded and installed (this can take a few minutes):
When the update is complete, click on Close and leave the mintUpdate window:
The lock icon should now be closed. The system is up-to-date.
4 Flash Player
Linux Mint 6 installs the Macromedia Flash Player by default. To see if the Flash plugin is working, start Firefox (Applications > Internet > Firefox Web Browser). Then type about:plugins in the address bar. Firefox will then list all installed plugins, and it should list the Flash Player (version 10.0r12) among them:
5 NVIDIA/ATI Drivers
If you have an NVIDIA or ATI graphics card and want to use 3D acceleration (e.g. for Compiz-Fusion), you must install the proprietary NVIDIA or ATI driver. To do this, use the Hardware Drivers Manager (Applications > Administration > Hardware Drivers):
6 Inventory Of What We Have So Far
Now let's browse all menus under Applications to see which of our needed applications are already installed:
You should find the following situation ([x] marks an application that is already installed, where [ ] is an application that is missing):
Graphics:
[x] The GIMP
[ ] F-Spot
[ ] Picasa
Internet:
[x] Firefox
[ ] Opera
[x] Flash Player
[ ] FileZilla
[x] Thunderbird
[ ] Evolution
[ ] aMule
[x] Transmission BitTorrent Client
[ ] Azureus/Vuze
[x] Pidgin
[ ] Skype
[ ] Google Earth
[x] Xchat IRC
Office:
[x] OpenOffice Writer
[x] OpenOffice Calc
[ ] Adobe Reader
[ ] GnuCash
[ ] Scribus
Sound & Video:
[ ] Amarok
[ ] Audacity
[ ] Banshee
[x] MPlayer
[x] Rhythmbox Music Player
[ ] gtkPod
[ ] XMMS
[ ] dvd::rip
[ ] Kino
[ ] Sound Juicer CD Extractor
[ ] VLC Media Player
[ ] Helix Player
[x] Totem
[ ] Xine
[x] Brasero
[ ] K3B
[ ] Multimedia-Codecs
Programming:
[ ] KompoZer
[ ] Bluefish
[ ] Quanta Plus
Other:
[ ] VMware Server
[ ] TrueType fonts
[ ] Java
[x] Read/Write support for NTFS partitions
So some applications are already on the system. NTFS read-/write support is enabled by default on Linux Mint 6.
7 Install Additional Software
To install additional applications, open the Synaptic Package Manager (Applications > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager):
Type in your password:
In the Synaptic Package Manager, we can install additional software. You can use the Quick search field to find packages:
Select the following packages for installation (* is a wildcard; e.g. gstreamer0.10* means all packages that start with gstreamer0.10):
- f-spot
- picasa
- opera
- filezilla
- evolution
- amule
- azureus
- skype
- googleearth
- acroread
- acroread-escript
- acroread-plugins
- mozilla-acroread
- gnucash
- scribus
- amarok
- audacity
- banshee
- sound-juicer
- gtkpod-aac
- xmms2*
- dvdrip
- kino
- vlc*
- mozilla-plugin-vlc
- helix-player
- mozilla-helix-player
- xine-ui
- xine-plugin
- k3b
- normalize-audio
- sox
- vcdimager
- non-free-codecs
- gstreamer0.10*
- kompozer
- bluefish
- quanta
- msttcorefonts
- sun-java6* (except sun-java6-doc)
There are also lots of other applications available that you can install as well if you like.
To select a package for installation, click on the checkbox in front of it and select Mark for Installation from the menu that comes up:
If a package has a dependency that needs to be satisfied, a window will pop up. Accept the dependencies by clicking on Mark:
After you've selected the desired packages, click on the Apply button:
Confirm your selection by clicking on Apply:
The packages are now being downloaded from the repositories and installed. This can take a few minutes, so please be patient:
Some packages require that you accept their licenses (for example googleearth):
The installation continues:
After all packages have been installed, click on Close:
You can leave the Synaptic Package Manager afterwards.
8 Inventory (II)
Now let's check again what we have so far by browsing the menus again:
Our inventory should now look like this:
Graphics:
[x] The GIMP
[x] F-Spot
[x] Picasa
Internet:
[x] Firefox
[x] Opera
[x] Flash Player
[x] FileZilla
[x] Thunderbird
[x] Evolution
[x] aMule
[x] Transmission BitTorrent Client
[x] Azureus/Vuze
[x] Pidgin
[x] Skype
[x] Google Earth
[x] Xchat IRC
Office:
[x] OpenOffice Writer
[x] OpenOffice Calc
[x] Adobe Reader
[x] GnuCash
[x] Scribus
Sound & Video:
[x] Amarok
[x] Audacity
[x] Banshee
[x] MPlayer
[x] Rhythmbox Music Player
[x] gtkPod
[x] XMMS
[x] dvd::rip
[x] Kino
[x] Sound Juicer CD Extractor
[x] VLC Media Player
[x] Helix Player
[x] Totem
[x] Xine
[x] Brasero
[x] K3B
[x] Multimedia-Codecs
Programming:
[x] KompoZer
[x] Bluefish
[x] Quanta Plus
Other:
[ ] VMware Server
[x] TrueType fonts
[x] Java
[x] Read/Write support for NTFS partitions
Microsoft's TrueType fonts are now installed, you can check that for example by opening the OpenOffice Writer. Take a look at the available fonts, and you should find fonts such as Arial, Times New Roman, Verdana, etc.:
So everything is installed except for VMware Server...
9 VMware Server
With VMware Server you can let your old Windows desktop (that you previously converted into a VMware virtual machine with VMware Converter, as described in this tutorial: http://www.howtoforge.com/vmware_converter_windows_linux) run under your Linux Mint desktop. This can be useful if you depend on some applications that exist for Windows only, or if you want to switch to Linux slowly.
To download VMware Server, go to http://www.vmware.com/products/server/ and click on Download:
On the next page, log in with your existing VMware account or create a new one:
Follow the on-screen instructions. At the end, you should receive an email with a link to your download page. On the download page, you should see two license numbers, one for Windows and one for Linux. Write down or save the one for Linux and scroll down.
Then download the VMware Server for Linux TAR image (not the RPM image!) to your desktop (e.g. to /home/falko/Desktop):
Then open a terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal)...
... and run the following command to install some necessary packages:
sudo apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r` build-essential xinetd
Then go to the location where you saved the VMware Server .tar.gz file, e.g. /home/falko/Desktop (replace falko with your own username!):
cd /home/falko/Desktop
Unpack the VMware Server .tar.gz file and run the installer:
tar xvfz VMware-server-*.tar.gz
cd vmware-server-distrib
sudo ./vmware-install.pl
The installer will ask you a lot of questions. You can always accept the default values simply by hitting
When the installer asks you
In which directory do you want to keep your virtual machine files?
[/var/lib/vmware/Virtual Machines]
you can either accept the default value or specify a location that has enough free space to store your virtual machines.
At the end of the installation, you will be asked to enter a serial number:
Please enter your 20-character serial number.
Type XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX or 'Enter' to cancel:
Fill in your serial number for VMware Server.
After the successful installation, you can delete the VMware Server download file and the installation directory:
cd /home/falko/Desktop
rm -f VMware-server*
rm -fr vmware-server-distrib/
If you have accepted all default values during the installation, root is now the VMware Server login name. On Linux Mint, root has no password by default, therefore we create a password now:
sudo passwd root
VMware Server 2 does not have a desktop application for managing virtual machines - this is now done through a browser (e.g. Firefox). You can access the management interface over HTTPS (https://
If you're using Firefox 3 and use HTTPS, Firefox will complain about the self-signed certificate, therefore you must tell Firefox to accept the certificate - to do this, click on the Or you can add an exception... link:
Click on Add Exception...:
The Add Security Exception window opens. In that window, click on the Get Certificate button first and then on the Confirm Security Exception button:
Afterwards, you will see the VMware Server login form. Type in root and the password you've just created:
This is how the VMware Server web interface looks. The structure is similar to the old VMware Server 1 desktop application, so the usage of the web interface is pretty straightforward.
10 Inventory (III)
We have now all wanted applications installed:
Graphics:[x] The GIMP
[x] F-Spot
[x] Picasa
Internet:
[x] Firefox
[x] Opera
[x] Flash Player
[x] FileZilla
[x] Thunderbird
[x] Evolution
[x] aMule
[x] Transmission BitTorrent Client
[x] Azureus/Vuze
[x] Pidgin
[x] Skype
[x] Google Earth
[x] Xchat IRC
Office:
[x] OpenOffice Writer
[x] OpenOffice Calc
[x] Adobe Reader
[x] GnuCash
[x] Scribus
Sound & Video:
[x] Amarok
[x] Audacity
[x] Banshee
[x] MPlayer
[x] Rhythmbox Music Player
[x] gtkPod
[x] XMMS
[x] dvd::rip
[x] Kino
[x] Sound Juicer CD Extractor
[x] VLC Media Player
[x] Helix Player
[x] Totem
[x] Xine
[x] Brasero
[x] K3B
[x] Multimedia-Codecs
Programming:
[x] KompoZer
[x] Bluefish
[x] Quanta Plus
Other:
[x] VMware Server
[x] TrueType fonts
[x] Java
[x] Read/Write support for NTFS partitions
11 Links
- Linux Mint: http://www.linuxmint.com
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