Today I installed Kubuntu 8.04(Hardy Heron) on my laptop. As the title says it took me just 12 Min and 30 Sec to fully install the system. Now that includes partitioning, Installing the Operating System and Commonly used programs. From the moment the first dialog which welcomed you to the install till the dialog that told you to reboot your system it took 12 Min 30 Sec flat.
The breakdown of the Install times
| Partitioning, User information and Locale setup | 2 Min 50 Sec |
| Installation of the operating system | 9 Min 40 Sec |
| Total Time | 12 Min 30 Sec |
Now the system when it rebooted had:
(application type) (name of the application) [equivalent for windows]
Web Browser: Konqueror [Internet Explorer/Firefox]
Office Suite: Open Office [Microsoft Office]
Media Player: Kaffine [Windows Media Player]
Mail Client: Kontact [Outlook Express]
Web Messenger: Kopete [Yahoo Messenger/Gtalk]
Effects: Built into KDE 4 [Vista effects… I apologize for comparing the two]
also PDF Viewer, Image Viewer and many other basic applications.
Partitioning took me almost 3 Mins that was mostly coz I was making separate partitions for the linux root file system, if you choose the default it should atleast reduce another minute in the installation process.
Getting specific programs and drivers involved connecting to the net. All I had to do was open Adept a program manager and choose all the applications i needed eg. Firefox (12 Mb), Amarok(12 Mb)(An amazing music player that is default in the Kde 3 version), Flash Player/Java Support(15 Mb) ect.
If you were ever wondering if you wanted to try Linux, the time is clearly now. The transition is painless and the rewards plenty(Best being No more viruses ever!) plus its totally free from piracy and other worries. The latest version does not even require you to worry about partitioning and other sys admin work :P It takes care of everything right from Windows itself!
Note: The Install was performed on a HP tx1110us Laptop(2Gb Ram) using the Kubuntu 8.04 KDE 4 Amd64 DVD(Beta).