During the installation process, you'll need to make various decisions about how to configure your system. These decisions might include determining your partitioning scheme and deciding whether or not to encrypt your home folder. Linux Mint, like most distributions, offers several ways in which you can configure it during installation. Mint can be installed on your hard drive by replacing the operating system that came with your computer, or it can be installed alongside existing operating systems or even on USB flash drives and virtual machines. In fact, Linux Mint can be used from bootable media (such as a DVD or flash drive) without wiping your hard drive. In this chapter, we'll go through most of the common installation scenarios and best practices. By the end of this chapter, you'll have your very own Linux Mint installation that you'll use to follow along with the remainder of the book.

In this chapter, we will discuss the following...