Tips for new lightweight linux users

Intro

If you're new to lightweight linux distro's, or even linux in general, you might still need to make a live linux distro CD. This page is intented to help you a along with this.

First off, make sure you first have a bootable GParted cd made. That way, if you fail to install Linux, you can at least boot up this cd to wipe it clean again in the file system of your choosing. Remember that the only certain file system that will work for both windows as linux is FAT32. Most Linux distro's tend to use ext2, or ext3.

Making your live cd or live usb stick

Basically, there are 2 ways to run your live linux distro: from a USB stick or from cd. Lightweight linux distro's tend to be less than 650-700MB, so will fit on a cd. DVD's or larger media is best not used, since cd's are small enough (and less costly), and almost any PC has a cd reader, but don't always have a DVD reader, so regardless on where you use it, it will work. Also, even if your PC does have a DVD reader, chances are that you don't own a DVD writer (to write the live dvd), but you might all ready own a cd writer. USB sticks can also be used, and with the capacity of USB sticks being several GB's, it will always fit. However, writing your live linux distro on a USB stick can be more complicated, and your computer's BIOS also might not be able to boot from USB stick (whereas any BIOS is able to boot from cd).

To make a live linux cd, simply download the live linux version of the lightweight linux distribution of your choice. Then, simply burn to cd using a cd writing program that is able to write .iso's (which will be the file format of the live linux cd you downloaded). An example of a writing program for windows is imgBurn. In linux, there are many writing programs for this, the one to chose will depend on your distro's window manager.

For making a live USB, you need a special program like YUMI, UNetbootin, Rufus, ... See here. If you select a live USB stick creation program that runs on Windows and want to use in in Linux, use Wine.

Next, to run the cd, reboot your PC and hit the key to enter the BIOS (which can be F1, F2, DEL, ...). Then look for the line detailing your first boot drive, and change it to USB (if you're using a USB stick) or CDROM (if you're using a cd). Then, save and reboot.

Next, open your cd-rom drive and insert your cd, and close the tray (if you're using a cd) or or insert your USB stick (if you're using a USB stick). Now, you might of been too late to do this before your computer read the first boot device (USB stick or CDROM) and continued to your other boot devices (including harddisk), found your old operating system on that harddisk and booted this instead. So, reboot again. It will now find your live linux on your USB stick or CDROM and start it.

Once in the live linux operating system, you'll have the option of installing the linux distro to harddisk (even frugally if it's a good lightweight distro). If you want to keep using it without installing it, then simply don't install, and just insert the live linux cd in the CDROM tray when you need it. This is a good option, for example if you're unsure whether installing the Linux distro might mess up another operating system all ready on the harddisk and which you also still need -and can thus not be removed-. Note that the latter is a serious possibility, even with the latest Linux distro's, especially if you have little to no experience with boot loaders (like GRUB, ...) and are thus unable to modify this manually.

Using our scripts with your lightweight linux distro

The LES_internet_speed_increase scripts all ready provide some speed increases for your browser by blocking unnecessary connections. However to keep Pale Moon/Icecat working at full speed (especially startup speed), we nevertheless advise to delete all old data every once and a while. This eliminates useless hard disk space as well (over time, it starts to pile up considerably). Just go to history->clear recent history to do this.

Besides using our LES_internet_speed_increase scripts, we also advise to start using a separate USB stick (or an external hard disk drive) which you can reserve to only store your personal data on. At the very least, we advise to use Google Takeout to create a backup of all your e-mails and put it on your USB stick. This way, you are no longer dependant on your google account to hold all your e-mails (assuming you're currently using this). The danger here is that if you lose your password, or the account gets hacked, you also lose all e-mails you sent. You can also still continue using your Google Mail account, just make sure you make a backup once and a while of your Google Mail account. The same goes for Google Drive btw. Backing up data is important in the interest of increasing your efficiency, because if you lose data (old messages, contacts, ...), it might severely set you back in getting your office work done.

Notes

To save your personal data on, an external hard disk drive can be much cheaper than a USB stick, as you might all ready have a huge amount of e-mails, ... and thus need a lot of capacity (USB sticks tend to have less capacity than harddisks). To reduce costs, you can use old PATA harddisks and connect them with a PATA-to-USB adapter to your PC; alternatively, you can use a regular USB1/USB2 or Firewire harddisk. SATA can in theory also be used, but in practice, it's often much less convenient to use. You can use an adapter here as well though to convert these to USB2 or USB3.