Installation

What does it take to anchor the OS to your machine?

Almost all the Oses in the Roundup are equipped with a graphical installer. Unfortunately, though, that doesn’t mean you can expose them to a physical drive on a production machine as soon as you download the OS. You should realise that not all of them have undergone the same amount of testing as the Linux installers – and as we mentioned, it’s always a good idea to test in a VM first.

The one exception is Openindiana. Linux users won’t have any trouble navigating through its installer, which is very polished and streamlined, much like a typical Linux installer. You can use the partition built-into the installer to carve space for the OS, or use the familiar Gparted tool that’s available in the Live environment.

Then there’s Reactos, which is the only OS in the Roundup which offers a dedicated installable edition. Also available is a Live ISO image, designed to help you test the OS on your hardware. Once you’re satisfied that everything works, you can use the install-only variant to anchor Reactos to the computer. The OS’S installer is a throwback to old Windows installers and isn’t particularly difficult to use. Like many Linux distros, Reactos runs through a first-boot configurator to help you create a user and select a theme for the desktop.

Haiku and Visopsys both have simple and straightforward installers. All you need to do is point Haiku to a BEFS filesystem partition and it’ll copy the files and install the bootloader fairly quickly. The installer can now boot from GPT partitions and the 64-bit image ships with an EFI bootloader so that Haiku can boot on EFI computers.

Many Oses such as Haiku include a partitioner to help you create a dedicated partition for the OS.

The Visopsys installer also includes a partitioner to help you create a slice for the OS. You are forced to use the system as an admin user, but the installer enables you to set up a password for it. If you’re installing Visopsys on a new virtual disk, make sure you choose the option to write the basic MBR to the disk in order to boot into the installation.

The one OS that frees you from the cycle of installation is Kolibrios, which doesn’t have an installation procedure as such. All you need to do is to point GRUB to the kolibri.img file by adding an entry in the the 40_custom file under /etc/grub.d, and you’re good to go.