2. Post-Installation Steps

To enjoy your new Linux installation forever without any worries, it is important to take a few simple precautions. You must do these as soon as you complete installing Linux on your machine for the first time.

1. Create a boot diskette and a rescue diskette. Utilities for creating these diskettes are available along with your Linux distribution.

2. If you are the paranoid type (like me), you can make two copies of each of these diskettes. Diskettes are notorious for failing when they are most needed.

3. Test out your boot diskette. Make sure you can boot into Linux using the boot diskette. Remember Murphy's Laws may strike at you just when you least expect.

4. Checkout thoroughly your new system. Try all major packages.

5. Try out the X windows system, and the desktop, and the windows manager, if you have installed these.

6. Try out the connection to your LAN, and to the Internet.

7. Create at least one "non-root" account, for testing and debugging your installation. Perform ALL the above checkouts once again, using the non-root account you created.

8. Join a local Linux Users Group (LUG). You must find out if there is a LUG close by. If there is none, start an informal LUG yourself, in your neighbourhood, your campus, your city, or your town.

9. Join one or more mailing lists for Linux updates and news. There are literally hundreds of them.

10. Register yourself and your machine in the worldwide Linux Users Counter.

11. And finally...Download the Section 3 and run it. Make a safe copy (on a removable medium) of the directory: /root/postinfo which the script will create. You may also like to make a printout of the summary report /root/postinfo/summary created by the shell script.

12. You must run this shell script: as soon as you have installed Linux for the first time, and after every major revision or upgrade to your Linux system. You can also set up the script as a cron job, so that it runs itself periodically and automatically. This will avoid you a lost of hassles later, in case something gets messed up later.