OpenSUSE 11.1 Review

OpenSUSE 11 was released to the early this year. This distribution was upgraded from 10.3 which was released last year. OpenSUSE project is sponsored by Novell. Novell, famous for it Netware OS started the free OpenSUSE project about 2 years back. It is also famous for its controversial deal with Microsoft which drew a lot of criticism from the Open Source and Free Software community. Harsh words apart, lets take a look at the features of OpenSUSE 11.

Installation

The OpenSUSE installation disc is a 4.2 GB DVD. According to your needs, you can download either a 32-bit image for your 32-bit PC or a 64-bit image for a 64-bit processor based PC. A word of caution thought. If you’re downloading the 64-bit version of the OS, then make sure that you have at-least 4 GB of RAM installed in your computer. The 64-bit bit operating system will not be installable on 32-bit system but the 32-bit OS can be installed on the 64-bit processors.

As soon as the system boots from the DVD, you will see a beautiful greenish installation screen. The installer first asks you to accept the agreement. If you agree to the agreement then you can proceed forward to the installation procedure. Now the next thing that the installer asks you to select is your time-zone. Select the time zone specific to your place. I’ve selected Kolkata as my preferred time zone as I reside here in India. The next screen will present you with choosing the preferred desktop environment. There are four options here :-

KDE 4.0 - The latest version of the popular KDE, new but not that stable.

GNOME - GNOME 2.20 based version. Rock stable

KDE 3.5 - Old version of KDE. Also more stable than KDE 4.0

Other - Desktop managers like XFCE, FWM etc.

The desktop environment selection is the matter of choice. Select whichever you like. Personally, I like GNOME over KDE. But KDE has been upgraded to KDE 4.1 which brings a whole lot of new features to the Linux arena. So select whichever you like. As soon as you’ve selected the preferred version you’ll be presented with the partitioning screen.

One major thing that you’ll notice in OpenSUSE 11.1 is that the EULA is removed now. There’s only the license agreement that you’ll need to agree in order to install it on your system.

Partitioning

Now this is the part where most of the users get confused. Now its very, very easy to understand. You just have to keep in mind these things :-

‘/’ - This is the partition where your system will get installed. Its like the ‘C’ drive of Windows. This partition should be formatted in ext3 or reiserfs file-systems.

swap - This is the partition which is reserved for the virtual memory or the swap space. This is same as the virtual memory of the Windows OS but its a dedicated towards the swap-space only. Its filesystem is same as its name, swap.

/home - The place where your documents and stuff will be saved. Can be partitioned in XFX, JFS or simply ext3.

Now if you’re unsure how to partition the hard-disk, then the best way would be to create a free-space of about 10GB in Windows and then allocate that space to Linux. As soon as the installation begins and the partitioning screen comes, the installer will ask that whether you’d like to use the largest continuous free space. Just select it and installer will take care of the rest. The last option is to enter the desired username and password. Enter the best that you like. You can also select to auto-login although this is not recommended.

For the expert users there are a lot of configuration that can be set during the installation time. I won’t be covering those topics here as an entire book can be written on them. Now review your selection, click on install, make a coffee, go for a walk, watch TV etc for 15-30 minutes until your installation is finished.

The Desktop

Regardless, what desktop environment you selected, the one word which I would like to use to address the desktop is, marvelous. Be it KDE 4.0, KDE 3.5 or GNOME, the desktop is intuitive. Now if you’ve selected the KDE environment, you’ll notice that the programs are neatly organized under the categories. I’d like to mention few of them. Here are the apps that are included in KDE environments

Application	Task
OpenOffice.Org	Office work, word-processing, spreadsheet, presentation etc.
Amarok	One marvelous audio player.
Kaffeine	A video player.
K3B	A fabulous disc burning utility.
Firefox	The wonderful web-browser.
Konqueror	A file manager and a web-browser. Apple’s Safari is based on this browser.
Kamera	A digital photo organizing utility.
The GIMP	A very, very powerful image manipulation tool.
Kmail	The E-mail client.
Kopete	Universal chat client, supports multiple protocols.

There are whole bunch of KDE applications which are shipped with the installation DVD of OpenSUSE 11. But I can’t mention all of them here. The next thing that I’m going to cover are the GNOME applications.

Application	Task
OpenOffice.Org	A complete office suite containing word-processor, spreadsheet, presentation, database and drawing.
Banshee	A wonderful audio player.
Totem	A video player.
Brasero	A new, disc burning app for GNOME
Firefox	A famous web-browser.
Evolution	An e-mail client with inbuilt calendering and address book.
F-Spot	A digital photo enhancement and organizing tool.
The GIMP	A very, very powerful image manipulation program.
Pidgin	A multi-protocol instant messenger.

Although these applications are made for the respective environments but they can also be installed on either desktop environments. There’s no compatibility problems in doing so.

The User Experience

No matter what desktop environment you’re working on, OpenSUSE is a dream come true for a normal user. The first thing that you’ll see is the new look and feel of the desktop. The KDE 4.0 desktop has been overhauled to a new look and feel. The new theme is called Oxygen. The GNOME interface, on the other hand, remains unchanged from the previous versions. But you can clearly see the difference between the GNOME desktop of OpenSUSE 11 as compared to the other GNOME desktops. The GNOME menu, also known as SLAB menu, is heavily revamped. The applications are neatly arranged under their respective categories.

Now the odds. The very first thing that you’ll notice when you’ll boot in the system is the unavailability of Microsoft fonts. This is a general issue with all Linux distros. But in other distros, notably Ubuntu, these fonts can be installed easily via the Synaptic Package Manager. But you’ll have to get around this problem in OpenSUSE. The second thing is that, you’ll have to configure the repositories via visiting www.community-opensuse.org site. Here you can explore the various 1-click installation packages available. You can install multimedia support, graphic drivers etc just by clicking on it. One more benefit is of doing this is that the repositories are automatically added to your computer. So the next time when you want to install something, you can install it by add-remove programs. You can also install non-free apps like Opera and Adobe Reader on OpenSUSE.

Administration

YaST or Yet Another Setup Tool is the most powerful tool available on any platform across any operating system on the planet. This is even better than Microsoft Windows’ Control Panel or Mac OS X’s System Preferences. There are a whole lot of things that you can do with the help of YaST. You can setup networking, add-remove programs, configure modems (even mobile phones are detected as modems), configure a home-server, a Samba server for Windows’ networks, an FTP server etc. All these things are configured in a very simple and elegant manner. The security and stability of OpenSUSE is also very, very powerful. I never, ever encountered a system crash in my 3 years experience with OpenSUSE.

Summing it Up

In my opinion, OpenSUSE is one of the crowning jewels of FOSS community. However, there are many areas in which OpenSUSE has to improve itself. Hardware detection is still not up-to-the-mark. Fedora rules here. Secondly, the problem of adding repositories and setting them up is still around. This should be upgraded to something like Synaptic Package Manager of Ubuntu and other Debian based distributions. On the other hand, it has the most powerful tool, YaST, which can be used to tinker around with the system. The beauty of this tool is that it even runs from the command line interface. So you don’t need to depend on graphical environment to use YaST. This is a must try for every Linux user.

Rating :- 9.2

Pros :- Vast software library on DVD, YaST, beautiful desktops.

Cons :- Hardware detection, setting up repositories.

OpenSolaris Review

OpenSolaris

OpenSolaris was started by SUN Microsystem to create an Open Source version of its Solaris 10 Operating system. It is freely downloadable from the Internet. It is released under CDDL license which is based upon Mozilla Public License. So lets take a look at the some of the features of OpenSolaris.

Technical Specifications:-

Operating System Family	Solaris
Latest Stable Release	2008.05
Platforms Supported	X86, X86_64, PowerPC & SPARC
Default GUI	GNOME
Kernel Type	Monolithic Kernel
License	CDDL

Office Applications:-

The OpenSolaris distribution is crippled when it comes to Office software. It is a big irony that OpenOffice.Org which is based on SUN's Star Office's source code, isn't shipped with the OpenSolaris distribution. The only thing which you'll get in the name of Office is Evince PDF reader.

Internet Applications:-

Now this field, the Internet applications, is good in OpenSolaris. First of all you'll find the magnificient Mozilla Firefox browser in this section. Although the latest release of Mozilla Firefox is 3.0.1 but 2.0.0.12 is shipped with this version. Then the next thing is another beautiful application from the Mozilla's stables, the Mozilla Thunderbird e-mail client. Pidgin, the multi-protocol instant messenger is also available at your stake.

Multimedia :-

Multimedia apps in OpenSolaris contain Rhythmbox music player, Totem Movie Player, a CD ripper and a disc burning utility. As soon as you try to play a file in OpenSolaris which it doesn't understands, it asks that whether you'd like to download the required codec form the Internet. If you answer yes, it asks for your administrator password and downloads the required codecs from the Internet, installs them and your file is automatically playable. That's what I call interactive desktop.

GNOME:-

Another crowning jewel of OpenSolaris is GNOME. The GNOME UI is heavily modded in this version. It has some very beautiful compositions. The default UI of GNOME is replaces by a nicely modified Orange type feel. The windows of apps are also modified and you'll love the modern look and feel of the default user interface in OpenSolaris.

Desktop Responsive:-

The desktop response on this distro of SUN is quite good. I tested this on my AMD 4400+ X2, 2 GB RAM, GeForce 8800 GT and WD 250 GB SATA II HDD. This distro was really flying in this system. I even enabled the Compiz Fusion desktop effects on this distro and it didn't break a sweat. One thing that I'd like to mention is that it detected my graphics card without even installing the drivers. This was really great.

Summing it Up

OpenSolaris is a great move by SUN. Solaris 10 is actually a quite heavy operating system. It is not meant for home users, seriously. On the other hand, OpenSolaris is meant for home users. This is a very good operating system, nice community support. Installing softwares on OpenSolaris is a breeze. You just click on Package Manager, enter the software type you want to install, select it, enter your password and it gets installed. Its same like most of the Linux distros. This OpenSolaris CD is worth a try. And I forgot to mention that it has full support for the mighty ZFS (Zettabyte File System).

Pros :- Solaris, GNOME, Stability, good hardware detection, ZFS

Cons :- No OpenOffice.Org is available by default.

Open Source Codecs

Now, that we've laid our hands on the Operating System and the Office Suite, what's the next major thing in our lives? You bet its music. You all must be familier with the MP3 codec. This codec was developed by Fraunhoffer IIS. It is a lossy codec, which means that it eliminates some of the higher frequencies for the sake of the file size. This codec was free until 1998, when Fraunhoffer ecided to charge a licensing fee for the codec. At that time, two new Open Source codecs were born. Ogg Vorbis is a lossy audio codec whereas FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) is a lossless codec. Another Open Source video codec, Ogg Theora is also available. Lets take a look at each of these codecs.

Ogg Vorbis

Ogg Vorbis is a lossy codec that was developed by Xiph.org. It was created as a reply to MP3, AAC & WMA. Actually Ogg is a container and Vorbis is the encoding algorithm. It is completely free. That means you can use it without paying royalty to Xiph.org. Fraunhoffer IIS sued Microsoft for using MP3 in Windows for $2 Million. Had Microsoft used Ogg Vorbis, they would have saved cash. Ogg Vorbis gives better sound quality than MP3. A 128 KBps Ogg file sounds better than 192 KBps MP3 file! The bitrates of Ogg file can vary from 32 KBps to 500 KBps! Most of the players support Ogg files; some of them are Media Monkey, Jet Audio and VLC Player. Windows Media Player supports it after installing a codec pack. So next time you want to rip your CD's, try encoding it with Ogg at 192 Kbps, and see the difference.

FLAC

FLAC is short for Free Lossless Audio Codec. As the name states, it is a lossless codec. It encodes audio CD tracks without compromising on quality. Its proprietary counterparts are Apple Lossless (ALAC) & WMA Lossless. One advantage of using FLAC is that the encoding and decoding process are quite fast because FLAC is like zipping a WAV file. FLAC is really good for audiophiles those who don't want to compromise on quality. The quality is completely CD like. Another advantage is that if we use FLAC files to burn an audio CD, its quality will also be crystal clear. So if you're one of the audiophiles, then try FLAC, otherwise stick to Ogg Vorbis.

Speex

Speex codec is used for encoding speech. As in vocal form, there aren't any musical instruments required, so it is pointless to use high bitrates in encoding. So Speex is the best option if you want to encode spoken words.

Ogg Theora

Ogg Theora is one of the most advanced codecs available of the planet. It is completely Open Source. The default extension of Ogg Theora files are .ogm. These files are completely compatible with all kind of Open Source players. Try it. You can get a hand on this codec by downloading ffmpeg2theora a small utility from the internet.

Players

 

So, now that we've seen and learnt about the codecs, there should be a player to play them. Although you can play them through Windows Media Player, but a dedicated Open Source player is a good deal. So, let's take a look the player.

VLC Player

 

This is the best media player that is available for any platform, be it Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, BSD, Solaris etc. It supports all the formats that are currently available. It plays Ogg, FLAC, WMA, AAC, and MP4 etc. In the video department it plays, WMV, MP4, MOV and Ogg (that's right Ogg has a video codec too, we'll cover it later). It is currently in the development stage and is heading towards its full-fledged version. Its latest version is 0.8.6. You can download it from http://www.videolan.org.

MPlayer

 

    It is also a very good and highly capable player. It is available for Linux, Windows & Mac OS X. It sports a very nice blue GUI. Like VLC, it can also play various formats. You can download it from http://www.mplayerhq.hu.

aTunes

 

    That's right, aTunes. This baby is so capable of handling audio files that you may fall in love with it. It has inbuilt tag editor, volume normalization, cross fading etc. Try this you'll certainly love it.

AmaroK

 

    This is big! AmaroK is a player that is available only for Linux. It ships with KDE. Now that KDE 4 is also available for Windows and Mac, you might be able to use it on other platforms. This is the default player of audio files on KDE environment. It can fetch you lyrics from the net, edit tag, finds album art, listen to radio streams and even submit your tracks to Last FM site. Try out this player if you know a friend who uses Linux. Warning: - It is so addictive and good that you might want to convert to Linux for using this player only.

 

OpenOffice.Org

OpenOffice.Org 

    OpenOffice.Org is one of the main stars of the Open Source Initiative. This is a full featured office suite. It is available for number of platforms including Windows, Mac OS X, Linux. It is also avaialble for BSD & Solaris. The default format in which OpenOffice stores its file is the Open Document Format (ODF). It is the first major electronic format that got and ISO certification. But it also supports the Microsoft Office's 2003 format. It doesn't fully supports the Microsoft's new OOXML format. OpenOffice is derived from the source code of SUN's StarOffice. OpenOffice is completely free software and it is available under GNU's LGPL license. We'll just take a look at the components of OpenOffice.Org's components.

Writer:-

 

OpenOffice.org Writer is the word processor component of the OpenOffice suite. Writer is a word processor similar to Microsoft Word. As with the entire OpenOffice.org suite, Writer can be used across a variety of platforms, including Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, BSD & Solaris. 

To learn more about Writer, head to Wikipedia

Now we'll look at the features of the spreadsheet software

Calc:-

 OpenOffice.org Calc is the spreadsheet component of the OpenOffice.Org software package.

Calc is similar to Microsoft Office, with a roughly equivalent range of features. Calc is capable of opening and saving spreadsheets in Microsoft Excel file format. It provides a number of features not present in Excel, including a system which automatically defines series for graphing based on the layout of the user's data. Calc is also capable of writing spreadsheets directly as PDF files. 

Learn more about Calc by clicking here 

If you clicked on the above link, you would've noticed that it has whole lot of features like Microsoft Excel. Try it, you won't feel the difference.

Now lets move on to the Presentation software. We all use Microsoft Office's Powerpoint software to make presentations. Here, in OpenOffice too, they've beautiful and powerful presentation software called Impress.  

Impress:-

 OpenOffice.org Impress, a part of the OpenOffice suite, is a presentation program similar to Microsoft Office's Powerpoint. In addition to being able to create PDF files from presentations, it is also able to export presentations to SWF files allowing them to be played on any computer with a Flash Player installed. It is able to view, edit and save files in several file formats, including the .ppt format, which is used by Microsoft Office.

Here, click on this link to learn more about Impress

Besides these programs, there are also three other components of OpenOffice suite

1. Base :- A program for database
   
2. Math :- Program for mathematical equations
   
3. Draw: - Program for drawing purposes.
   
   
   So, after all this you might want to give a try to OpenOffice. Try downloading it for your platform and in your language by clicking on the OpenOffice ad on my blog.
   
   
   
   

Mac Vs Windows Vs Linux

Apple

Apple Inc. is the company which is known worldwide for its innovations. We've seen many successful products such as iPod, iMac, Macbook, Macbook Pro and above all the Mac Pro. But what is that which makes Apple stand out among the league of other hardware manufacturers? You bet it's their design and innovations. The iMac computer surely rocks big-time. It is very beautiful, very powerful and very silent in the operations.

The iMac has very intuitive operating system which is known as Mac OS X Leopard. It is considered one of the most advanced systems on the planet. It was considered very secure until recently when a hacker hacked a Macbook Air running its OS in under 2 minutes. But nevertheless, it's very fast, secure and fun to use. There are no headaches about viruses also. So I'm going to illustrate the features of this iMac in the next page in a table with all its technical specifications and also the price.

Features of iMac

Component	Model
Processor	2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
Motherboard	Custom built for Apple Inc.
RAM	1 GB DDR2 @ 800 MHz
Hard Disk Drive	320 GB SATA
DVD Writer	8x Inbuilt slot loading
Graphics Card	AMD Radeon HD 2600 Pro with 256 MB RAM
Webcam	Inbuilt
Microphone	Inbuilt
Keyboard	Apple USB Keyboard
Mouse	Apple Mighty Mouse
Operating System	Mac OS X Leopard
Office Suite	iWorks '08 or Microsoft Office 2008 Standard
E-Mail client	Entourage or Mail (as part of Apple or MS Office)
Web browser	Safari (inbuilt), Mozilla Firefox, Opera etc.
DVD Burning Solution	Roxio Toast (OEM Version bundled)
Wi-Fi Card	Inbuilt with 802.11 b/g/n
Bluetooth	Inbuilt
Remote Control	Bundled
Total Cost (w/MS Office)	96,100+16,000 = INR 1,12,100
Total Cost (w/iWorks)	96,100+3,800 = INR 99,900

Now, this iMac is a real pleasure to use. It's got all of the features fully loaded. I would like to mention about iLife suite. The iLife suite is very feature rich and very powerful media suite. iLife contains five powerful programs; iPhoto, iMovie HD, Garage Band, iDVD & iWeb. These all programs are pretty nice handling their respective fields of applications. Of these I really appreciate iPhoto & Garage Band. This Garage Band software is so powerful and fun to use that many bands in the world have created full length music albums only by using this software.

For our multimedia geek friends, there is tons of software available for Mac. Adobe Inc. ships its whole CS3 suite for Mac. You have Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Flash, InDesign, Illustrator, Fireworks, and Acrobat etc. Adobe has dedicated their full time resources on these software's to make them Mac compatible. On the other hand, Apple has its vast and full featured set of Final Cut Studio suite. This suite is used worldwide by movie directors, animators, graphic designers etc. There is this piece of software called Logic Studio. This one is entirely dedicated to sound production alone. So if you're into film or sound production then you should really consider shifting your priority to Mac. Final Cut Studio & Logic Studio is available only for Mac.

The Dell XPS 420

If you're a die-hard Windows supporter or you love gaming, then this desktop is the way to go. It comes with a lot of cool features. Let's get to hardware straight away.

Hardware

Component	Model	Verdict
Processor	Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 @ 2.4 GHz	Best value for money processor
Motherboard	Unknown	Maybe Intel, Maybe Nvidia
RAM	2 GB DDR2 @ 667 MHz	Should be 800 MHz instead.
Hard Disk Drive	320 GB SATA II w. NCQ @ 3 Gbps	Loads of space for torrentaholics
DVD Writer	Inbuilt 16x burner	Has also support for Light Scribe
Graphics Card	GeForce 8600 GTS	Opt for 8800 GT while ordering
Monitor	20" widescreen LCD	Has 1680 x 1050 resolution
Webcam	Inbuilt 2 MP	Great Value
Microphone	Inbuilt	First to offer inbuilt microphone
Keyboard	Bluetooth	Ah, the comfort
Mouse	Bluetooth	This also adds to comfort
TV Tuner	Inbuilt Hauppauage	This is one very good tuner
Remote	Bundled with TV-Tuner	It also controls the desktop
Cabinet	Dell's own beauty	Has 120mm fan & LCD display!
Speakers	2.1 Dell	These are good home speakers
Misc	Media Accelerator	Enhances multimedia encoding.

Software

Field	Software	Price
Operating System	Windows Vista Home Premium	Included with package
Photo Editing	Adobe Photoshop Elements	Included with package
Video Editing	Adobe Premiere Elements	Included with package
Sound Editing	Adobe Soundbooth CS3	Included with package
Office Suite	MS Office Standard 2007	16,000
Internet Security	Norton Internet Security	2800 (one year subscription)

This is one great area where Dell excels. Now as you can see that Dell has included Adobe Elements Suite with this system. This suite is powerful enough to for your home needs. You will also have to invest in the security measures of this system as this is based on Windows. Dell currently doesn't offers its computers that come with Linux installed in India. Overall the software package is excellent. Now you'll also have to invest in the Office suite. You can either install the free and marvellous OpenOffice.org suite which can handle Office 2003 files effortlessly. It stores its file in the default Open Document Format (.odt for text, .ods for spreadsheets & .odp for presentations). This format was the first format in the world to get ISO 9000 certification. Although the OOXML format which is used in the Office 2007 files is also now ISO certified. But overall ODF is way ahead in terms of features and compatibility. But as we're comparing our systems, so I've selected the MS Office Standard 2007 version for this system.

Price

Total without MS Office & Norton	69,100
Total with MS Office & Norton	87,900

Linux Computer

We head now towards the Open Source Arena. As the highest price we saw was that of iMac with MS Office (Rs. 1, 12,100). So we're going to build a Linux computer that doesn't exceed this price tag.

Configuration

Component	Model	Price
Processor	Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 @ 2.4 GHz	11,000
Motherboard	XFX Nvidia 680i LT SLI	9,900
RAM	2 x 2 GB Kingston DDR2 @ 800 MHz	4,500
Hard Disk Drive	2 x 250 GB WD Caviar SE16 in RAID 0	5,300
DVD Writer	Lite-On Super All-Write Light scribe -20 x	1,500
Graphics Card	2 x XFX 8800 GT Alpha Dog Edition	30,000
Monitor	ViewSonic VX2245 WM – 22" TFT	16,500
Power Supply	Cooler Master i-Green 500w	5,500
Keyboard	Microsoft Wireless Desktop	1,500
Mouse	Included with keyboard	0.0
Webcam	Logitech	2,200
Cabinet	Antec 900	8,000
Speakers	Altec Lansing MX 5021	7,500
TV-Tuner	Compro VideoMate TV PVR/FM	1,950
Operating System	SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 64-bit	2,500
Total		1,07,850

Now you can see that buying a Linux computer is a mind-blowing powerhouse performer. A 64-bit version of the free openSUSE 11, Ubuntu 8.10 or Fedora 9 is also completely installable on this computer. But I chose SLED 10 because you'll get support for paying as little as Rs. 2.5 thousand per year. You can install the Myth TV package on this computer which will suffice your media centre needs. Even on this configuration it doesn't exceeds the price tag of Rs. 1.12 lac.

Optional Components

Some of these optional components can be installed across all the computers. They're must for every computer.

Component	Model	Price
UPS	APC Online UPS	11,000
Printer & Scanner Combo	HP Photosmart C4388	8,000

However the above said components can be changed according to your needs.

Reinstalling GRUB (Linux Bootlaoder)

This is very common incident. If you have dual-boot system then you might have installed Windows over Linux sometimes. Then you might have noticed that the Windows Loader (NTLDR) overwrites the GRUB and you can no longer boot into Linux again. Use this method to reinstall GRUB.

Pop in the disc of the Linux and restart your computer Select the linux rescue and push eneter Enter chroot /mnt/sysimage Grub-install /dev/had Press ctrl+D to logout and reboot

This will install your GRUB again and you can boot into Linux again. If you are unable to boot into Windows after doing this then you'll have to carry out few more steps, which are:-

Boot Linux Now type sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst If this is not your file then you'll have to search for grub.conf which is generally in /etc Now add these lines title Windows rootnoverify )hd0,0) chainloader +1

That's it, now you can easily dual boot Linux and Windows.

Partitioning & Installing Linux

This is the part when most of the people are afraid to install Linux on there hard drives. But its very simple. Usually we have these options when we want to install Linux :-

1. Erase the whole hard disk and use it to install Linux.
2. Resize Windows partition and then install Linux.
3. Make use of the free space available on the hard disk.

So its actually upto you how you want to install Linux. Well, most of the people I know install with dual-booting it with Windows. So I'm going to tell you the proper way of dual booting Windows & Linux. Just follow these simple steps :-

1. Boot into Windows and open System Management by right-clicking on the My Computer icon.
2. Then, click on Disk Management. This will show all your partitions.
3. Now, we need atleast 6-7 GB of space for Linux. So move your data from the last partition of Windows to some medium (CD,DVD etc).
4. Now right click on that partition and delete it. If it is bigger than the space you're giving to Linux, then you can create a new partition in for Windows and give the remaining space to Linux.

That's it. Now, I'll tell you how to install Linux on your computer.
If you're new to Linux then this method is best..
I presume that you've completed the above steps. Now we'll move towards installation.

1. Pop in the Linux installation disc in optical drive and boot from it.
2. After you answer some of Ubuntu's question, you'll be presented with the partitioning window, which will look like this

This is the default option for partitioning. You need to click on the 3rd option, Guided-use the largest contiguous free space. And then Ubuntu will take care of the rest.

Now just enter your new username & password, click install, reboot and viola, you're using Linux.