Install TinyMe

First, if you have Windows installed, please quit TinyMe and reboot into Windows and defrag your hard drive. Not defragging could lead to disaster! You have been warned!

Okay, are we all set now? The first step in installing TinyMe is pretty self-obvious: click the icon!

If you would like to see any of the pictures a little clearer, just click on it and it will appear at full size (800×600).

Now we want to give the root password, which is root.

This guide only covers a normal HD install.

We highly recommend you choose custom disk partitioning so you know exactly what's going on.

You have made a backup, right?

Partitioning is the process of dividing your hard drive into different sections (partitions). There are several reasons for partitioning. If you have Windows installed, you must have Windows and TinyMe on different partitions.

What you see here is how to set up a blank disk. (I'll show shrinking an already existing partition in a moment.)

First, make sure that the drive showing is the one you want. If you know how your drives are set up physically inside your computer, then this chart will show you how the Linux designation correlates to how a drive is hooked up. If you don't understand this chart, that's okay. Just ignore it.

Your drive may appear as sda or sdb or something like that instead of hda– that's okay.

The first partition we should create is the swap partition. See the system monitor in the upper right corner? The second line says:

RAM Usage: 75.3MiB/251MiB - 30%

251MiB is the total amount of RAM in the computer. Make the swap partition double that.

Now create the root (/) partition. This is where all the programs go. Note that although I'm giving it only 1.5GB here, in most cases you want to make / 5-10GB. We don't advise you give yourself a huge / partition– it's rare for someone to need more than 10GB.

Now what if you needed to resize an already existing partition? Or what if you decided you need another partition for data, for /home, for another Linux installation, or whatever?

Please note that if you are using TinyMe as your main operating system, we highly recommend you do not store your personal data (pictures, music, etc) in your /home folder. Please create a large partition (most people set it as /mnt/data) and set it aside just for that sort of purpose. If you wish to share this data with a Windows install, format the partition as FAT32.

The next couple of pictures demonstrates resizing the / partition and creating a new /home partition.

Once you've set up all your partitions, click the Done button and write the partition table to the disk.

Now the hard part is over. Copying the files over is pretty painless.

The bootloader is a program that lets you choose how to boot up.

TinyMe 2008.X does not auto-detect other operating systems except Windows. TinyMe 2009.0 and later will auto-detect other installations of Linux. If the only other operating system you have installed is Windows (or if you have no other operating system at all), then let TinyMe manage the bootloader. Just accept the defaults and click Next.

However, if you have other Linux distributions installed (and you're running TinyMe 2008.X), then we recommend you let the other Linux distribution handle the bootloader. For the Boot Device, select the partition to which you installed TinyMe. If you need help adding TinyMe to the bootloader of another Linux distribution, you can ask on the forum for help.

Now you have to set the root password. Make it something good– choose a password with letters, numbers and/or weird characters. 6 character minimum.

Now you have to create a new user. The guest user will be removed the first time you boot up your HD install.

And now you're done. Congratulations! If you haven't visited the forum yet, we recommend you sign up for an account so you can address any issues that may arise. Also, please take a moment and read How to Keep Your System in Good Order. Thank you!