Welcome to the world of Linux Mint! With this book as your guide, you'll explore this exciting Linux distribution from its installation all the way to its administration and maintenance. Geared toward the Linux novice, this book will build skills that will not only help you use Linux Mint for your day-to-day computing tasks, but also build a foundation on which you can expand your knowledge. Whether you simply want to benefit from a bird's-eye view of Linux Mint or get started on the road to becoming a Linux admin, this book will help you get there. Along the way, we'll work through how to complete day-to-day tasks such as creating/managing files and documents, and we'll also work on configuring our Mint installation, managing packages, connecting to networks, increasing security, adding/removing users, troubleshooting, and more!
Chapter 1, Meet Linux Mint, discusses what Linux Mint is and what sets it apart from other distributions. We'll also talk about some reasons you'd want to choose Linux in the first place.
Chapter 2, Creating Boot Media and Installing Linux Mint, will walk you through the process of installing Linux Mint on your computer. Several methods of installation, such as bootable DVD and bootable flash drive, are covered in this book, and you'll also learn about some of the best practices for the installation of Linux Mint, including tips on partitioning your hard disk.
Chapter 3, Getting Acquainted with Cinnamon, discusses Cinnamon, a fresh and exciting desktop environment (a graphical user interface) that is taking the Linux community by storm. In this chapter, we'll tackle this interface head-on.
Chapter 4, An Introduction to the Terminal, will explain how to navigate the filesystem, execute commands, search for files, and even work through an introduction to scripting. Although using a Terminal is not required in order to use Mint, learning the basics of the terminal will further empower your skills.
Chapter 5, Utilizing Storage and Media, discusses how to work through the examples of accessing various types of media in Mint. The examples shown in this chapter include formatting and mounting removable storage, along with analyzing disk usage, burning CDs and DVDs, and utilizing Mint's USB Image Writer.
Chapter 6, Installing and Removing Software, discusses how to work through the examples of installing and removing software on our Mint installation, as it features a large repository of free software packages. Also, several different methods of software management will be covered, with examples of both graphical programs and terminal commands.
Chapter 7, Enjoying Multimedia on Mint, is all about enjoying multimedia on Mint. This chapter covers features such as listening to MP3s, ripping audio CDs, editing audio tags, watching DVDs, and more!
Chapter 8, Managing Users and Permissions, talks about users and permissions. You'll learn how to create/remove users and groups, as well as how to configure user access to administrative commands with sudo.
Chapter 9, Connecting to Networks, is all about networking. Concepts such as wired and wireless networking will be covered, as well as accessing your machine via SSH and also how to share files.
Chapter 10, Securing Linux Mint, will work on hardening our Linux Mint system with concepts such as choosing strong passwords, encrypting your home folder, blocking access to specific websites, and even backing up and restoring important data.
Chapter 11, Advanced Administration Techniques, will cover advanced concepts for managing your installation. In this chapter, setting up cron jobs, moving to new Mint releases and killing processes, and monitoring resources will be covered.
Chapter 12, Troubleshooting Linux Mint, concludes our journey with Mint by providing certain tips and tricks for what to do when things go wrong. In this chapter, you'll learn about dealing with problems such as booting issues, audio and networking woes, as well as how to access system logs for troubleshooting.
Appendix A, Reinstalling Mint while Retaining Data, discusses a technique on how to move from one release of Linux Mint to another, as Linux doesn't really feature a direct utility for you to do this.
Appendix B, Using the MATE edition of Linux Mint, discusses another edition of Linux Mint, MATE. In this appendix, we'll explore the various specific features of the MATE edition, which runs better on older hardware.
Appendix C, Using the KDE edition of Linux Mint, discusses another popular desktop environment, and Mint features it as the default desktop edition. In our final appendix, we'll explore the KDE Mint flavor.
In order to work through the examples within this book, you'll need a computer with at least the following specs:
10 GB hard drive space (30 GB or higher recommended)
512 MB system RAM (1 GB or higher recommended)
1.0 GHz Processor (1.6 GHz dual-core or higher recommended)
Video card with 128 MB video RAM
DVD drive or 2 GB or higher flash drive (to create installation media)
Given the lightweight nature of Linux, you can certainly run Mint on lesser resources, of course. The better your system's resources are, the faster and more efficient your experience will be.
This book is geared primarily toward the Linux novice. Perhaps you've heard of Linux and are curious about it, or you just want to experience a new way of computing. In this book, we'll start our Linux exploration from the ground up using Linux Mint as our guide, so someone who is just starting out with Linux (or even someone who has never used it before) would see the maximum benefit. This book is also great for those who want an overall guide to Linux Mint, as we'll be covering all the core concepts required to make the most out of this exciting distribution.
In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. The following are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "In addition, feel free to join the #linuxmint-help IRC chat room and speak to other users there as well."
Any command-line input or output is written as follows:
ls -l /dev/disk/by-uuid
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "Clicking on the Apply button will save your settings."
Any terminal output is written as follows:
# cat /var/log/syslog
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