A few things you should do BEFORE installing Linux (Linux for Noobs Episode 2)

hello and welcome to linux for newbs episode number two this is the series that i wish existed when i first started where i take some of the pain points that i've encountered when i was new to linux and i try to prevent you guys from going through the same problems and also the series where i take absolute beginners and build them up increase their knowledge and make sure that everyone who is new to linux has a great starting point in the path to world domination or at least understanding linux a little bit better in today's episode what i want to talk to you guys about are some very important things that i think everyone should do before they start using linux before they install linux on their computers because there's some mistakes that i think new users often make over and over and over again and i want to create this video to give you guys some ideas of things that you can do to try to make things a little bit easier on yourselves as you try out linux before we continue i'd like 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initial installation of the kernel care agent you don't need to do anything else the agent can either talk to a dedicated kernel care plus patch server or an on-premises server inside your very own infrastructure learn more and try kernel care plus for 30 days on all of your servers by checking out the url that's on the screen right now and is also linked in the description below so let's get back to the content and the topic at hand the things that i feel all new linux users should do before they install linux on their rig let's get started now the first and the second thing both involve bootable linux installation media now if you don't already know you can actually boot from most linux distribution installation media right from that installation media you can run a demo environment commonly referred to as a live environment which is a way for you to use the distribution before installing it more on that later but one thing that's also included in quite a few different installation media files for linux distributions out there is something called memtest86 now there's a few distributions that may not include this you can even download memtest86 as a separate bootable iso file that you can write to a usb flash drive much in the same way that you can write a linux iso to a flash drive and you can use that to run a memory test on your computer so why am i recommending that you use the memory test and test your memory well what i find is that quite a few people out there are using linux on older machines or computers that they have lying around nothing wrong with that that's a great use case for linux it does very well on older computers within reason of course if you have a computer that has 512 megabytes of ram good luck you do need a reasonable amount of memory nowadays but when it all comes down to it older machines or used machines often have defective memory and often when i have people comment you know about linux not working they've run into some kind of problem it's airing out there's all kinds of issues i'll often have them run a memory test now the common rebuttal to this is they will say well what do you mean why should i run a memory test i mean my current operating system runs just fine there's no problem so surely i have no memory issues right well not so fast the truth is each operating system handles different types of hardware failures differently now for example with most linux distributions in most apps i could actually unplug the hard drive while the computer is running and any app on a linux distribution that is in memory and open will continue to run even without the hard drive now obviously when it goes to check the hard drive or access the hard drive it'll start to break down no operating system can survive the primary storage going away but linux can actually survive a little bit most distributions can and if an app is running in memory then chances are it is going to continue running now i'm not saying that you should disconnect the hard drive in your installation you should never do that but linux handles that kind of thing very well whereas windows will probably blue screen instantly and just completely crumble now no offense to windows in that regard i'm not trying to make this an anti-windows episode or anything like that to be fair if you take away the storage medium the primary storage from any operating system you will have problems but that's just an example of how one operating system handles something differently than another a different kind of hardware failure for example now when it comes down to it though windows kind of seems to handle defective memory better than linux now that's not to say you won't have problems you'll have errors in windows you go to the event viewer you'll have all kinds of errors when you have defective memory but maybe not maybe the part of the memory that's defective just isn't being used or something like that and it isn't detected but when you try to run linux on a machine the way that it caches memory is a bit different and it's going to hit that bad part of memory or that bad stick of ram has a bigger chance of hitting that bad defective area and then it just breaks down and what really makes this difficult is i would love to say well if you have bad memory in your computer this is the symptom that you will see but the in actuality the truth is this in linux there's no telling what problem you'll have because you'll have all kinds of errors you might just have one error it's a strange error it seems like it's almost never the same thing twice any time i run into defective memory i actually run into a completely different symptom every single time and often it's just not explainable like why is this happening it doesn't make sense and then i run a memory test and it's like oh now i get it there's defective ram so even if your current operating system is working just fine and you have problems running linux check the memory but what i would say is you should run memtest every single time before you install linux on your computer i would run memtest at least once a year you don't have to run it every single time you go to install linux but if you are installing linux for the very first time or it's been about a year since the last time you have installed anything on that computer or even server run your memory test utility memtest 86 or whatever utility you like to use test the memory make sure it's good and if you are currently running into some weird issues with your linux distribution when you try to install it then maybe it's especially worth checking the memory because there might be a legitimate problem and you might need to replace a stick of ram or two and if the memory test shows that you have actual problems then what you can do is remove one stick of ram run the test again and then replace that sticker ram with the other one test your memory again to determine if you have just one bad stick of bad memory or if you have more than one bad stick of memory that'll help you determine the scope but i definitely recommend you run a memory test before you install linux for the first time on your computer now the second thing is kind of similar to the first because it involves live installation media now again like i've mentioned the majority of distributions of linux the installation media doubles as a demo environment called a live environment when you boot from most linux installation media it'll actually boot into a desktop sometimes you'll have an option try or install maybe if it's ubuntu for example it'll say try ubuntu or install always choose try first never i repeat never ever ever install linux straight away with the install button without trying it first i get all kinds of people that send me messages and comments you know they might say linux isn't working for me it's just failing or maybe and this is a common one my wireless doesn't work or something like that and every time i see that i'm thinking the same thing did you not know that there's a such a thing as live media that you can demo compatibility before you install it and maybe people just get very excited they click that install button or maybe a friend of theirs has told them linux works on everything go ahead and install it the truth is this no operating system in existence works on 100 of hardware and it's very easy to see this if you try to install mac os on a pc it might work just fine it might not and often it really doesn't so if anyone tells you linux works on everything wipe your hard drive install linux no no no not so fast let's slow down a bit what you should actually do first is boot into the live environment click the try button and try all of your hardware before you replace your operating system for example you can connect to your wi-fi network and are you able to do that well if you are great that means your wi-fi card is supported it's all set and ready to go you could also try to play a video that'll help you check to make sure that your video card doesn't have any lag or missing frames it also helps you check the audio card to ensure that that works but to be fair when you are running in the live environment it's very common that it'll run slower than it would if it was installed on the hard drive but so you know basically don't take the speed as being what it's going to be like when you finally install it it could be a lot faster we're going to ignore that test all of your hardware if you use multiple displays if you have more than one monitor plug in that other monitor make sure that works before you install linux and if all of your hardware works that you need to work then you should definitely go ahead and install it but never install linux without first testing all of your hardware what i'm hoping to accomplish with this section of the video is to have fewer people saying things like my video card doesn't work my sound card doesn't work my wifi card doesn't work help me fix it well yeah i can help you fix it and i'm happy to respond to comments like that but in my opinion that scenario should never happen unless you're telling me that i've tried it in a live environment and this audio card doesn't work or this wifi card doesn't work that's fair it can help work past that but if you have already replaced a working operating system with linux without first checking compatibility you have made a mistake and even though linux has great hardware support it's not a hundred percent make sure you check everything first so you might be wondering then if i encounter a piece of hardware that's not functioning properly in linux what the heck should i do about that well i'm going to tell you what you should do about that right now so i will open a terminal but essentially what you are going to do while you are running the live environment is you run the ls pci command you don't always have to use the command line there's always ways of avoiding the command line it's a common myth the command line is not required but you know it works in this case at least for me it's what i'm used to anyway what the lspci command will do is actually print a list of the hardware that's installed on your computer physical hardware so if for example your wi-fi card is not working and an easy symptom of that is you try to connect to your wi-fi network you click on the wi-fi icon and it detects nothing and there's no networks listed there or the wi-fi option is missing in the distribution it'll be hidden in some distros if you don't actually have supported wi-fi hardware so in that case there's a bit of research that will have to do so assuming then that we have a wi-fi card that is not behaving properly we need to find the model of wi-fi card that we have installed on the machine within the output of lspci now in front of me right now is a thinkpad x1 extreme laptop and the wi-fi card that i have here is fully supported i've had to do nothing to get wi-fi to work it works out of the box but let's assume that it didn't in this case when i run lspci i see within the output that i have a wi-fi card i know it's wi-fi because it actually says wireless right on the line it says intel corporation wireless ac 9560 so let's assume then that this is not working for whatever reason i just can't get this working so what i'll do is jot down the output of lspci relative to the actual wi-fi card that i have at least the model number in my case 9560 and then what i'll do is i will google i'll just go to google so what i'm going to do is search for the distribution that i want to run for example if it's ubuntu the first keyword in the search here is going to be ubuntu and then i'll just type wi-fi then the model number 9560 i'll press enter and it's going to give me some results and this is hit or miss you might get a ton of results you might not but chances are if your hardware is not supported or it has a problem in your distribution and sometimes it could just be a bug maybe there's a bug in this distribution that you're using and that's why it doesn't work but usually when you search for the distribution and the name of the hardware the model number of the hardware that you are trying to run you will see results in google of other people that have had this problem now i've been using linux for a very long time like 18 years and within that time i have never run into a situation where i do a google search with a keyword for a distribution and then the model of hardware i'm trying to run there's never been a time where i didn't find something that pointed to why it doesn't work perhaps i'll find a forum post where someone is complaining that it doesn't work and then other people will reply maybe at the end of that forum post they will actually have an answer perhaps it's a bug and if it is then it'll actually have a link to the bug report i could subscribe to that bug report and maybe even offer to give some output to help the developers fix the problem and if i subscribe to the bug report i will get an email when it's fixed and now i know when it's time to go ahead and try this linux distribution on my laptop or desktop or whatever i have so what you'll do is just scroll through the google search here in the results and just do some research and you will definitely find the answer here assuming that you haven't accidentally disabled your wi-fi card with the wi-fi on off switch that some laptops have assuming it's not that simple you should find your answer here if it's a video card for example where you aren't able to add a second display it just doesn't detect the second display then you'll probably also find some results here that'll help explain why that might be if it's an audio card and you searched for the keyword of your distribution ubuntu or whatever and then the model number of your audio card you will probably find some search results that will help you understand why it's not working now it's often the case that when you have a piece of hardware that's not performing well or is not supported it comes down to the fact that the hardware you have in your computer is newer than the distribution of linux that you're trying to run for example if you are running a version of ubuntu released a few months ago and then you upgrade your desktop to have a video card that was just released last week a released version of ubuntu cannot possibly know about hardware released in the future now canonical the makers of ubuntu will often release hardware enablement updates at some point in the future that'll catch ubuntu up to hardware support and then support the things that weren't supported originally but you do have to wait until that comes out before your brand new video card can be supported now sometimes you could be running a distribution that isn't really good for desktop now in my opinion debian is not a good choice for laptops and desktops specifically debian stable why because debian stable releases on average every year and a half to two years and while that's not a problem when debian stable does release a new version it's always about six months old on release day which means a brand new version of debian stable has hardware support that is already six months old on the day it comes out and that is why i don't recommend debian to new users and i don't recommend debian stable for people that run on laptops or desktops now obviously if you are running an older computer that already is a year too old then chances are debian will work just fine on your computer no problem assuming of course that there's no hardware in your machine that it doesn't have drivers for in which case you would go ahead and run the lspci command that i mentioned earlier and do a google search but i just wanted to give you guys that disclaimer because sometimes when people just buy a brand new piece of hardware you know they go to the store they buy a brand new laptop then they come home and then they're sad because you know it doesn't work now first of all you should only buy hardware that supports linux if that's the operating system that you want to run in my case i always check that first before i buy a laptop or a desktop and i do some research and make sure all of the hardware is supported but the point is if your distribution is old or its hardware support is old and your hardware is new you're definitely going to run into problems now there's all kinds of tips i could give you guys when it comes to starting out with linux and i will do that in future episodes in this series but for right now the main takeaway is this if you are running linux for the first time on your kit definitely check the memory first do a full memory scan make sure there's no problems with the memory and then also test in live mode compatibility with the hardware on your computer before you install linux and then you should actually be in good shape and have a better time always keep in mind the age of the hardware if it's brand new and you are running a distribution that is older especially debian stable you may run into problems which is where linux mint ubuntu or popos will definitely work better for you then an older distribution would run on your hardware so i hope that was helpful for you guys i have some future episodes in this series being planned right now and i hope this series is helpful to all of you that are starting out with linux but in the meantime definitely subscribe to the youtube channel for all of the most recent episodes that i'm coming out with to get alerts on those when they come out and thank you so much for watching or listening depending on where you are digesting this content from thanks again you

Channel: LearnLinuxTV

Views: 16,064

Keywords: Linux, Tutorial, Review, Howto, Guide, Distribution, Distro, Learn Linux, operating system, os, open-source, open source, gnu/linux, LearnLinuxTV, LearnLinux.tv

Id: SmGrNppwVVQ

Length: 20min 51sec (1251 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 13 2020