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Installation Type

Figure 1.9: Choosing an Installation Type

In this screen, you will be able to select from among several installation options. In a Desktop installation, these are:

• Full Installation installs absolutely every program that ships with SOT Linux 2003, and takes up around 1.6 GB of disk space.
• Typical Installation installs the packages that are necessary for normal home desktop use. Software development tools are excluded, saving you some disk space. You'll need about 1.2 GB for this option.
• Minimal Installation is for those who want to try out a slimmed-down version of GNU/Linux without using too much disk space. This bare-bones version of the operating system will only take up about 530 MB on your hard drive.

In a SOT Linux 2003 Server installation, the Typical installation class is absent. Instead the following options are present:

• Development Platform for programmers and developers, requiring 1.4 GB of disk space.
• Server Installation, needing 1.2 GB of space.

Checking the box Custom Installation lets you pick and choose each individual package you want to install. If you choose this option, you will be presented with a "tree" containing all the packages shipped with SOT Linux. You can open and close nodes on the tree to display and select packages as necessary. A description of selected packages appears in the bottom pane. See Figure 1.10.

Tell me more! Package dependencies. Many software packages, in order to function correctly, require other separate packages or libraries to be present on your system. These additional packages are called dependencies (the original package depends on them to perform some of its work). Before your chosen packages are copied to disk, the installer will check your list for dependencies. If you have chosen any packages that depend on other (unselected) packages, the dependencies will be installed as well. To see the additional packages and recalculate the required disk space, click on the SATISFY DEPENDENCIES button after selecting packages. The dependencies will be added to the list of selected packages on the screen.

Figure 1.10: Selecting packages in a custom installation

If an option is disabled, you do not have enough free space on the chosen partition to hold that type of installation. You are free to return to the Installation Path screen and re-work your partition sizes (see section  1.8).

Once you have chosen an installation class, the SOT Linux 2003 installer will begin copying files from the installation CD to your hard drive. You can continue completing any remaining installation screens while this happens. You will no longer be able to access the disk partition and installation class screens once copying begins.

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