Now DrakX takes over and installs Linux. DrakX has a good interface and if you're the type of person, like I am, that likes to see what you're installing and perhaps not choose everything that the distribution gives you by default, you can choose the 'individual packages' option and take some of them out. If you've got enough disk space, you can also safely let the program install everything by default. You can try things out and if you feel you don't need them, you can use Mandrake's tools to un-install them. (as long as they aren't crucial to running the system)

On my computer, this install took about an hour. The program will tell you how long certain packages take to install. That's good if you like to know. If you don't like to know, then, in the meantime, you can read The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (also takes about an hour).

Then came time for detecting the hardware I had in my computer. My PCI network card was detected but not my ISA Sound Blaster card. That took away from the overall ease of the install so far as hardware was concerned. That doesn't mean it's going to happen to you, though. (particularly if you don't have the same sound card as I do!)

Now a series of questions came up about my network. I entered the information about my IP address (the number assigned to my computer on my home network) and the "gateway" or the computer that this machine will use to connect to the Internet (as it doesn't have its own modem).

Then I was asked about time zone information, and I chose the appropriate one in the scroll-down list for where I am.

Then you're asked to choose the "root" password. For those new to Linux, there's a whole administration role behind using a computer running Linux. It's rather lengthy to get into here, but there is a "super user" known as "root" that is allowed to do all the administration work (configuring the system, installing programs) and then there are other normal users that are allowed to log in to the computer and work on their own stuff. You're going to be asked to set up one of these normal user accounts, because working with Linux is a lot like being a Formula 1 race car driver. If you're just going downtown to get the paper, then you're not going to hop in that multi-million dollar car you use in the races. You'll use your own "normal" car to do that. Enough said then on the "root" thing.

I set up a user account for myself to work under normal conditions and I entered a user name and a password for myself as a user. Here's another thing I like about Mandrake compared to other distributions that I've seen. When you use Linux, you should learn how to use a 'shell', that is an interface where you can type in system commands by hand. In most Linux versions, the "Bash" shell is used by default. This shell has a configuration file known as .bashrc in the home directory of each user. I have normally had to add 'alias' lines to it. An 'alias' does nothing more than tell a command to do certain additional options by default. For example, if I type the command 'rm' and a file name under normal circumstances, that file gets 'removed' or deleted without asking you if that's what you really want. That's not too good if that was a really important file that you just hosed. If you don't want that to happen, you'd write something like " alias rm='rm -i' " in your .bashrc file. Then, forever more, it will ask you if you want to really delete things. Well, Mandrake creates a .bashrc file with these aliases in them automatically. That's a nice touch there, I think, particularly because Linux is in the UNIX family and in UNIX, you're going to have to get used to working with a shell.

Now you'll be asked to create a custom boot disk. That's just in case something nasty happens and you have to rescue your system. It's a good idea, not because Linux isn't stable. It really is, compared to your garden variety OS. But, you know, bad things sometimes happen. (and two-year-olds are curious about what all those buttons do!)

Now, Mandrake is going to install some software so you can boot both OSes. Here's where the installation took a weird twist for me. This is because I come from the Linux middle ages (not the old days when you had to be Linus Torvalds to install it, but the mid-90's 'fed up with [OS name omitted]' crowd, when men were men and they used Slackware)

In order to boot two OSes or multiple versions of Linux, I've always used LILO, the LInux LOader. Mandrake installed GRUB. This is another way of doing the same thing. I was just somewhat unprepared for it. It gets the job done. I'm not complaining. Just remember to tell it that you've got Windows installed when it asks you.

Now we get to the most important part of the install for participants in the exodus from the Windows world, the X-server configuration. The X-server is the Linux way of getting you the graphic user interface you're used to. We've been so brainwashed by the most famous operating system companies (all ONE of them) that we need nice graphics to come up and slap us in the face when we turn on the computer. In Linux, you can get the best of both worlds. On one hand, you get a computer that boots and tells you that is is, in fact, a computer (that was what you bought, wasn't it) by displaying boot messages about what's happening. You also get all the niceties of the graphic user interface.

During the X-server configuration, Mandrake found my video card and my monitor just fine (and my mouse, somewhere along the line). Then it will ask you to choose whether to boot Linux in graphics mode or text mode. I always choose text mode. As I mentioned, I want to know I've got a computer here. I recommend this choice. You're only one step away from your graphic user interface by typing the command: 'startx', anyway.

If nothing goes tremendously wrong, which I don't think it will (unless you're trying this on a Commodore 64). You now have Linux. You may consider yourself among the elite, cool people of the world. You use Linux!

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