(The information here is pretty general, and should work for just about any distribution, but unless you're using Slackware, I suggest you read the install documentation that came with your distribution.)

Installing Llinux  nowadays is probably the easiest, and most fun part of the process. If you've just created your partitions, you're probably still booted with your boot/root disks. At the bash prompt, simply type "setup," and hit enter. (Remember, Linux is case-sensitive.) After a few seconds, you'll be presented with a menu, and about 8 options to choose from. Start by setting up your partitions: swap, linu, and dos. It's probably best that you set them all up now, as the script will add them to your /etc/fstab (a file that contains information about the partitions on your disks) for you.

Next, select the location of your installation media. If you're installing from a hard drive partition, you'll be asked to enter the partition, and then the directory on that partition. Partitions are typed in like this: /dev/hda1 where the "a" in "hda" is corresponds to the number of the drive (i.e. the primary master is a, the primary slave is b, or your first hard drive is a and the second b, etc.).

For your first install, provided you have sufficient disk space, you should try to go with a full install of all the software. This will include all the servers, OS files, and programming development tools you'll need to get you started. On Slackware 3.6, that takes up 386megs. Not too bad... If you're not going to be running a web server/email server, you can eliminate Apache and Sendmail, whereas if you're going to be running a dedicated server box, you may want to eliminate the X windows packages.

After the install has completed, reboot your system, login as root, and change the root password by typing "passwd". If you've successfully networked your machine, anyone with your IP address will be able to telnet into your machine, and well, format it, so change that root password, and make it a good one.

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