Lightning Ebid

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Not only does the winmd5sum program calculate the MD5 sum of the ISO image file, but
you can also cut and paste the real MD5 sum value directly from the Ubuntu web site into
the winmd5sum window, and it’ll compare the two values for you.
Creating the LiveCD
Now that you’ve got the ISO image file for the Ubuntu LiveCD on your PC, it’s time to
make a CD out of it. A host of different CD-burning software packages are available, both
commercial and free. The problem is that many of the free CD-burning software packages
supplied by PC vendors don’t include an option for burning CD image files.
Burning the CD image file is somewhat different from burning regular files from your
hard disk to a CD. The ISO image file represents the entire CD, not just a single file on it.
It requires a special CD-burning feature to extract all of the files and folders contained
within the ISO image file.
Depending on the operating system you’re using, burning a new CD can be either a
simple or complicated process. This section explains how to burn CDs on different oper-
ating systems.
Burning CDs in Linux
The Linux environment contains two powerful CD-burning tools that both fully support
burning ISO image files:
♦♦ K3b for the KDE desktop environment
♦♦ Brasero for the GNOME desktop environment
With both of these tools, burning an ISO image file is as easy as selecting the Burn Image
to CD option, then selecting the ISO image file to burn.
You can get to K3b in Kubuntu from the K menu. Just select Multimedia, then K3b CD &
DVD Burning. The main K3b window, shown in Figure 2-6, appears.
Select the Burn CD Image button from the main window, select the ISO image file, insert
a blank CD, and click the Start button.
GNOME-based desktops (like Ubuntu) use the Brasero CD-burning tool. Figure 2-7 dem-
onstrates using the Brasero utility in Ubuntu.
To start Brasero in Ubuntu, select Applications ➭ Sound & Video ➭ Brasero Disc Burning.
When the main Brasero window appears, select the Burn Image option.
Burning CDs in Mac OS X
The Mac OS X operating system has built-in CD-burning software, so there’s nothing else
you need to download. You can burn CDs using the Disk Utility tool, which is located in
the Utilities folder within the Applications folder.
After you start the Disk Utility tool, select the ISO image file you want to burn from the
left-side finder area, then click the Burn icon in the top toolbar.
The Disk Utility tool burns the ISO image file to the CD, then compares the CD to the ISO
image file to verify that the burn was successful.

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Burning CDs in Windows
The Windows environment doesn’t contain CD-burning software by default. Many free
and commercial packages are available, but not all of them include an option for burning
ISO image files.
If your particular CD-burning software package doesn’t burn CD images, Ubuntu
r
* ecommends a free CD image-burning software package called InfraRecorder.
The InfraRecorder package can be found at the popular SourceForge web site
i
(* nfrarecorder.sourceforge.net).
Just download the InfraRecorder package and install it on your PC. After you start
InfraRecorder, click the Actions menu bar item, then select Burn Image. You’ll see a
dialog box to select the image to burn, then another dialog box will appear (shown in
Figure 2-8), waiting for you to insert a blank CD to start the burning.
Figure 2-8: The InfraRecorder CD burning tool for Microsoft Windows.
Once you insert a blank CD, InfraRecorder burns the ISO image file onto it. After you have
the LiveCD ISO image on a CD, it’s time to start playing around with Ubuntu!
Booting the LiveCD
The beauty of the Ubuntu LiveCD is that it offers you a real taste of what running Ubuntu
on your PC is like, without the hassle of going through the installation process. When you
boot the LiveCD from your PC, Ubuntu goes through all of the normal boot processes as if
it were actually installed on the PC hard drive. This includes detecting your PC hardware
and trying to load the appropriate drivers (called modules in Linux) to interact with the
detected hardware.

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The following sections walk through the Ubuntu LiveCD boot process and how to use
Ubuntu once you get it started from the LiveCD.
The Boot Process
The first step in booting the LiveCD is to determine whether and how your PC can boot
from its CD drive. Many PCs can do so by default. Just place the Ubuntu LiveCD in your
CD tray and restart your PC. If your particular PC doesn’t boot from the CD, there are a
couple of things you can try before giving up.
First, go into your PC BIOS and see whether it’s set to allow booting from the CD drive.
Different PC motherboard manufacturers use different BIOS software, and there are a
multitude of ways to configure this setting. Figure 2-9 shows the boot sequence section
in a sample BIOS setup.
Figure 2-9: The boot sequence BIOS settings.
Once you find the boot sequence section, ensure that the CD is higher up in the list than
the hard drive. This forces the PC to check for a bootable CD before trying to boot from
the hard drive.
Another trick that many PC manufacturers use is a hot key during the boot process to
select the boot device. On some PCs, hitting the F12 key during the boot splash-screen
brings up a boot menu, allowing the user to select which device to boot from. The user
selects the CD/DVD device, and the system boots from the CD.
Using Ubuntu
After you start the Ubuntu boot process, you should see the main Ubuntu boot screen,
shown in Figure 2-10.

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...
Do you want any more from the book ?

[Huddylion]

...
Do you want any more from the book ?

No think that should cover it all will digest the info and give it a go many thanks indeed for your time and help :-)

[RonOne]

Thank You.

[cheaver]

...
I'll stop after 3 more posts as a section on Partition is looming now:

Figure 2-10: The Ubuntu boot menu.
The LiveCD allows you to perform four functions other than booting Ubuntu:
♦♦ Install Ubuntu to the hard drive.
♦♦ Check the validity of the LiveCD.
♦♦ Test the memory on the PC.
♦♦ Boot from the PC’s hard drive.
The last option can be a lifesaver in an emergency. There may be a time when the boot
sector on your hard drive becomes corrupt, and the Linux OS won’t boot. Just pop in your
trusty Ubuntu LiveCD, select the option to boot from the hard drive, and you might be
able to save your data!
If you choose to boot from the CD image, Ubuntu goes through all of the hardware detec-
tion processes as if it were booting from an installed image.
You’ll notice that you can access several options from the boot menu using the keyboard
F keys. Table 2-1 shows what each of these keys are for.
Table 2-1: The Ubuntu LiveCD Boot Menu Keys
Key Description
F1 Display a Help screen that lists the F key options.
F2 Select the default language used for the Ubuntu menus.
F3 Select the keyboard mapping used for Ubuntu.
F4 Select the boot mode for video devices.
F5 Enable special accessibility features, such as screen magnifiers or on-screen keyboards.
F6 Provide additional boot parameters to the GRUB (boot loader)

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The F6 key allows you to add any specific boot options required for special hardware on
your PC. This feature is extremely handy when trying the LiveCD from laptops, which
often have issues with special hardware devices.
The LiveCD Desktop
Once the boot process finishes, you have a complete Ubuntu system running on your PC,
shown in Figure 2-11.
Figure 2-11: The Ubuntu LiveCD desktop.
The LiveCD desktop includes all of the features of a normal Ubuntu workstation desktop,
including all of the installed software. You can test-drive any of the applications—as if
you had installed Ubuntu on your PC.
Depending on the speed of your PC, running some of the applications from the
LiveCD could be slow.
The LiveCD desktop includes two desktop icons that aren’t available on the normal Ubuntu
desktop. One is a folder with example files using the various document and multime-
dia files Ubuntu supports by default. Just click on a file to launch the application that
Ubuntu uses to handle that type of file. The examples include word-processing documents,

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Part 1: Starting Out with Ubuntu
spreadsheets, audio files, and video clips. These files will give you a pretty good indica-
tion of how things would run in a real Ubuntu installation.
The other desktop icon is labeled Install. As you can probably guess, clicking that icon
starts the Ubuntu installation program. We’ll walk through the details of that in Chapter 3,
“Installing Ubuntu.”
Although you can run all of the applications from the LiveCD, as you go through the
various applications, you may notice one problem: When you’re running Ubuntu from the
LiveCD there’s no place to store your files for future use.
When Ubuntu runs from the LiveCD, the operating system is running in memory. The
home folder for the default user (called ubuntu) exists only in memory. Any files you save
will be lost when you reboot your PC. The next section shows how you can change that.
Storing Files
Even though you don’t have direct access to your hard drive from the LiveCD, you still
have plenty of options available for saving files. This section discusses some ways to store
your files as you work from the LiveCD.
Using the Windows Partition
One of the great features of Ubuntu is that it comes with support for all Microsoft filesys-
tems. This feature allows you to read and write files from your Ubuntu system directly
from or to any drive formatted for DOS or Windows (including the newer NTFS format,
which Windows XP and Vista use).
You can view the hard drives on your PC directly from the LiveCD desktop. Click the Places
menu item. You’ll notice a list of different places you can view, shown in Figure 2-12.
Figure 2-12: Accessing Microsoft Windows partitions from the LiveCD.

Chapter 2: Playing with the LiveCD
41
Your PC hard drive is identified either by its volume name or the generic size of the disk
if it doesn’t have a volume name assigned to it. Select the hard drive volume, and Ubuntu
will open your hard drive directory structure within the Nautilus disk management util-
ity (discussed in Chapter 5, “File Management”). You can browse through your Windows
hard drive folders just as if you were in Windows itself. Not only can you access all of your
files, but you can write new files in the folders.

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...

I think that's it - the book then continues with lots of other stuff - but I think you have all you need here.