Installing Linux on your 64-Bit System for SKCraft

(Warning: wall of text and lots of images!)

This is mainly directed at the players using a 32-bit OS who cannot play right now. Of course you can also follow it if you just want to try Linux. I'd be happy if it helped someone, somehow.

You will need to have a computer that can run a 64-bit OS. Fortunately, all players who reported issues have such a PC. Your machine should also meet our minimum requirements, but if you were able to play Alice until recently, this should be the case. You will also need 12 - 20 GB of free HDD space if you want to install. Best results with 20 or more, but it works with less as well.

First, the big questions.

Q: Why should I try Linux?​

• Linux systems are very fast, usually faster than Windows, and process information more efficiently while also being more stable. It is a big performance boost.
• By design, Linux is a very safe OS. Very few viruses have existed for Linux systems and it is very difficult to program them, so you do not even need antivirus software - this of course improves your performance yet again.
• Most distributions ("flavors") of Linux are small and require less than 8 GB of hard drive space to work normally, while e.g. Windows 7 uses more than 30 GB. This makes it suitable for use as a secondary OS since you can install it without sacrificing too much space.
• It may look a bit different, but the general usage is usually just like you know it from Windows. You don't have to learn new skills to use it.
• Many programs you know are available on Linux, and for other programs there are alternatives which are just as powerful (or even better). This includes web browsers like Firefox/Chrome or office suites like LibreOffice. With the WINE compatibility layer you can also run many Windows programs. But, most importantly, you can run SKCraft Alice without any problems.
• There are several different desktop environments you can choose from and these are usually very customisable. There are countless themes and iconsets for download. Your desktop will look how you want it to, not how Microsoft wants it to.

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Q: Which distro?​

There are dozens of Linux distributions available. All of them feature the Linux kernel, the "core" of the system, but the other software they bring with them differs greatly. Some distros are very "barebone" and designed for experienced Linux users, for example Arch or Gentoo. Others are designed to work out-of-the-box, they are user-friendly and bring lots of software with them, like Ubuntu or OpenSuse.

For our purposes, you need a distro that is fast, not too big, easy-to-use and requires no previous knowledge. My recommendation is Xubuntu - it is based upon the well-known Ubuntu and features the lightweight yet beautiful XFCE desktop environment which makes it fast and simple. With its graphical installer even inexperienced users can effortlessly install it.

If you have lots of free disk space and want to try Linux more extensively from an end-user perspective, an alternative would be Linux Mint. It requires more space but also features many more tools and tidbits. It has several desktop environments available, including the aforementioned XFCE.

Lastly, if you are not afraid of going somewhat deeper into Linux as a "power user", there is CrunchBang. This is a very fast and lightweight system that still remains quite user-friendly, but you will likely need a bit more know-how and technical prowess.

Of course you're free to use any distro you like - note however that I will only feature Xubuntu in this guide because of time reasons. If you're interested, you can inform yourself further on distrowatch.org.

Q: What if I don't like it?​

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You don't know that before you tried it, so you should do exactly that. You can burn Xubuntu (or whatever you chose) on a DVD or write it to a USB thumbdrive. You can boot from these and try the system without installing it. We have to use the Live mode anyway so if you want to try first you can simply follow the first step of the guide.


Before you start, it would be a good idea to defragment your hard drive on Windows if you want to install Linux. Maybe also uninstall some software/games you don't need to free up some disk space. You will have best results if you can give Linux 20 GB or more disk space, though it will work with less.

- THE GUIDE -​

This will take about an hour altogether if you don't count the download time in. More if you want to fiddle and play a bit. Now let's go.


1. Getting a Live System

You can either create a Live DVD or a Live USB thumbdrive. A thumbdrive is faster and also more flexible because you can install software on it, but a DVD is good enough for our purposes.

Whatever you choose, be sure to get a version that is labelled as amd64 - these work for Intel CPUs as well, but AMD had the first 64-bit CPUs and some dork named it amd64 because of that. Now it is the standard name. ಠ_ಠ

If you want to install with a DVD, you first need an ISO file to burn.

• Xubuntu 13.10 64-bit Torrent
• Xubuntu 13.10 Europe HTTP mirror
• Xubuntu 13.10 US HTTP mirror
• Linux Mint 16 download page
• CrunchBang 11 download page

Most burning tools have a "Burn Image" option or something like that. I recommend to use a slow writing speed, like 8x - it reduces the chance of writing errors, and writing errors are a very bad thing for an OS. If you don't have any burning tool, I recommend the free ImgBurn.


If you want to install with a USB thumbdrive, make sure that the drive is at least 2 GB big. You can use the PendriveLinux Installer which will download the appropriate ISO for you and install it to the thumbdrive. Make sure to get a 64-bit version - I have not tested this tool but it's recommended on the official Ubuntu page, so I assume you can also get amd64 versions.

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2. Booting and Testing the Live System

Note: For this guide I am assuming you have a BIOS, not EFI. Of course Xubuntu also works with EFI but I don't know if something special has to be done for it since I do not have an EFI mainboard.


Put the DVD in your disc drive or the Live USB into a free USB slot and then reboot your PC.

Depending on your mainboard, there are several ways to boot from DVD/USB. Most mainboards have a boot device chooser which is usually opened with F8 or F12. You can simply choose your boot device and it's done.
However, some don't have this and you may have to enter your BIOS setup; this is usually done with F2 or the Delete key. Go to the "Boot" section and change the boot device priority so that your DVD/USB is in the first place.

Many mainboards will also start from the DVD by default if a bootable disc is inserted.

If it's booting from your DVD/USB you should see a small keyboard symbol at the bottom of your screen, followed by the Xubuntu loading screen. After this you should see something like this:

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Yours might look different. I am using the older 13.04 version in VirtualBox for screenshot purposes.

Choose your language. This is important because this selection also sets the keyboard input mode for the live session, so if you don't have an English keyboard you may encounter problems. After this click Try Xubuntu. Your screen will go black and then show a desktop like this one, probably with a different wallpaper:

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Looks good already, doesn't it? Feel free to fiddle around with the system, check out how things work, install more software from the Ubuntu software center if you're on a USB stick... it doesn't really matter if you break stuff. Most changes you do now will not be on the installed system anyway.

Is your screen resolution too small? Click the menu button in the top left corner and open the Settings Manager. This is where you configure your system. Open the Display configs in the Hardware section and select a better resolution.

If you have a wired LAN connection, you should already be connected to the Internet; if you are on wireless, click the network icon in the top bar to enter your WiFi password. Most USB wireless sticks and wireless PCI cards will simply work. If yours doesn't, you can either google for solutions or get a new wireless stick/card or a LAN connection. (Great advice, no? ) Funnily, your chances are better if you're using cheap hardware because it doesn't need overcomplicated drivers.

You should also open Firefox (which is pre-installed) from the application menu so you can easily continue to follow this guide.


3. Preparing Your HDD

If you have decided to install Xubuntu, don't click the "Install" desktop symbol yet! Your hard drive has to be prepared first. This is also possible during the installation but it's a bit more complicated. We'll use the easy graphical tool GParted.

Since the partitioning tool GParted can completely break the system if you don't know what you're doing, it is not found in the application menu for safety. Therefore you need to open it from the Terminal. You can find the terminal in the application menu or press Super + T. (Super is the Windows key's name in the Linux world.)

There, you type: sudo gparted
"sudo" means "superuser do", it's equivalent to "run as administrator". On an installed system you would also need to enter your password when using sudo, but that is skipped on a Live system. Now the GParted window should open. Don't close the terminal or GParted will also close!

WARNING: BE VERY CAREFUL! Do not do anything unnecessary or thoughtless with GParted or you may delete all your data. If you're careful enough nothing will happen. Try to do everything with as few actions as possible, it is both faster and safer. As long as you're doing this everything is safe.

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Yours will look different since you already have a formatted drive (or several). I only use 10 GB for my virtual machine. Like I mentioned in the beginning, you will have best results if you can sacrifice 20 or more GB of your hard drive space for a Linux partition. (If you don't know what a partition is, let Wikipedia inform you.)

Make sure you select the correct hard drive if you have several! You can change the drive with the drop-down list in the top-right corner of the window. "/dev/sda" is the drive which is plugged into your first SATA slot, "/dev/sdb" the second and so on.

Now we have to make your Windows partition smaller. To do that, click the NTFS partition in the diagram or in the table below the diagram. If you have more than one partition on the drive, choose the rightmost one as long as it has enough free space. GParted shows how much space is used inside the partition.

After that, click the green Resize button. A popup similar to this one will open:

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You can simply resize the partition with drag and drop if you want (pull the handle on the right side to the left), but it is more exact to enter the values. You should make it at least 12 GB smaller, 20 GB would be best. You can shrink it even more if you want to install more programs or play Alice singleplayer.

Don't move the partition and do not pull the left handle, only shrink the partition with the right handle!

It should be at least 12 GB of free space because a fully installed Xubuntu will need about 8 GB for itself, you need at least 2 GB for installing video drivers, Java, SKCraft and possibly a few more programs, and then there should be (at the very minimum!) 2 GB left for the swap.

The swap is a special partition for virtual RAM - Windows uses the pagefile for this, Linux uses its own partition which is a bit faster. The swap should be at least the same size as your real RAM and double this size maximum. That means if you have 4 GB RAM, you should use 4-8 GB for swap. Only make it larger than your RAM if you have enough space! On a very minimal system (12 GB) you can simply use 2 GB even if you have more RAM.

The rest of the space you freed up shall be used for Xubuntu itself. Select the free space and then click the "New" button to create a new partition.

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Change the file system type to ext4. Make the partition as large as possible but make sure that enough space is left for the swap! The label can be whatever you want, but naming it something like "linux" would probably be more descriptive. After that, create another new partition with the remaining space, label it more or less appropriately and change the file system to linux-swap.​

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Should look something like this, except that you also have a big NTFS partition in there:​

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(Yeah I changed the size of the virtual hard drive. 10GB wasn't enough.)

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If you're sure everything is correct, click the green check mark button to apply all changes. There is a safety warning, click OK after you've read it. A progress window will appear.​

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Do not touch anything while GParted does its work! Do not accidentally turn off or reset your PC, do not close the terminal or GParted. You don't want to lose all your data, do you? Good. If you encounter any serious problems, send me a forum PM or use google if you think you can fix it yourself.​

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After the partitions are successfuly created, you will notice that Xubuntu automatically mounts the newly created file systems. We do not want this right now, so before you close GParted, right-click each of the partitions in the list that has a key symbol and select "unmount". It doesn't matter if you forget this but the Xubuntu installer will lag for about a minute if you do. Save yourself some time, yes? ​

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Well, this was the most difficult and boring part. On to something more interesting.​

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4. Installing Xubuntu​

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If you're ready to install then close GParted make sure you are connected to the internet. Then double-click the "Install Xubuntu" desktop icon. The language choosing window will pop up again, and after checking if you have selected the language you want to use after the installation, click Continue.​

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You should see this:​

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In this window you should select both checkboxes if you have some patience and good internet. If you want the installation to be as quick as possible, you don't have to select the updates - you can do updates later. You have to select the third-party software however, otherwise you are unable to play mp3s, Flash or some other non-free stuff, and some of your hardware like a wireless stick may not work the way it's supposed to.​

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(Also, this screen says you need at least 5 GB, but that is already exceeded if you install third-party stuff and updates.)​

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After this you are asked what you want to do with the drive. We did this already, so choose "Something else".​

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Now you should get this screen:​

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Select the ext4 partition you created and click the Change button below. A small options window appears. In the Use as drop-down list, choose "Ext4 journaling file system". In the Mount point drop-down list that appears now, choose "/". Check the Format box and click OK.​

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If you use only one hard drive, you can click Install Now.​

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If you use multiple hard drives, check the drop-down list below: the boot loader needs to be installed to the drive that is selected as boot device in your BIOS. That is usually the drive that your Windows is also on and it should be pre-selected. You should double-check though.​

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Make sure that /dev/sda, /dev/sdb or something like this is selected and not /dev/sda1 or /dev/sdb1 ! The letters are the drives while the numbers are the partitions on the drive: sda is the first drive, sdb3 is the third partition on the second drive. If a partition is selected and not a drive then everything will go horribly wrong. If the correct drive is selected, click Install Now.​

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The installation starts. Meanwhile, you will be entering some information. After selecting your timezone and keyboard layout you will be asked to create a user account. Choose a short username and computer name, you will thank me later. Also, don't encrypt your stuff, it will slow everything down, and you probably don't have any information you need to store as securely as possible, do you?​

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Now a slideshow with some info will show up. You should read it if you didn't extensively play with Xubuntu yet. If you're interested in what the installer is doing right now, click the small arrow next to the info text at the bottom. If you're not interested, go surf the web, play Sudoku or whatever - you can continue to use the Live system during the installation.​

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Don't skip the downloads though. Unless you like to search codecs and hunt for missing language packs (which you need for English as well!) for hours, in that case I won't stop you. ​

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After the installation you'll be prompted to either restart or continue testing. Do whatever and restart when you want to. During reboot you will notice that the GRUB2 bootloader now has taken the place of Windows' loader; you should be able to boot into both Xubuntu (which may be called just Ubuntu in the list) and Windows, in addition to the RAM testing tool memtest. Boot into Xubuntu.​

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5. Post-installation Setup​

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No, we're not done yet. You still need a few more things.​

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Open this guide again. If you'd rather use Chrome (or Chromium) instead of Firefox, you can find it in the Ubuntu Software Center. Installing is as easy as clicking a button and then entering your password. Want to listen to some music while you're doing the boring stuff? Nobody really likes the gmusicbrowser software Xubuntu brings with it - I recommend Audacious. It has brilliant quality and supports Winamp skins! <3​

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After this, proceed.​

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(If Firefox had the sync of Chrome I'd be in heaven...)​

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5.1 Changing OS boot order​

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While it's nice to be able to dual-boot Windows and Linux, you probably still want to use Windows as your main OS.​

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You have noticed that Xubuntu is set as the "default" OS in the GRUB2 bootloader - that means if you just start your PC and then do nothing, it will boot Xubuntu. If you want it to start Windows instead, here's how to do it.​

• Open a terminal and enter sudo thunar to open the file manager with root (admin) rights
• From now on you also have to enter your password when you use a sudo command; the password is invisible and not like ******, so don't worry if you don't see it
• Navigate to /etc/grub.d/
• Read the README file in that folder if you want
• The file 30_os-prober is what starts Windows, 10_linux starts Xubuntu
• The numbers in the filename determine the boot order
• Rename 30_os-prober to 10_os-prober and rename 10_linux to 11_linux
• Close Thunar, but not the terminal - you still have root rights for a limited amount of time... or until you close the terminal
• Enter sudo update-grub
• This command updates the configuration file which GRUB2 reads when booting

With the next reboot your PC will boot into Windows if you don't choose Xubuntu.

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5.2 Graphic Drivers​

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The first thing you need is graphics drivers.​

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1. Intel integrated graphics: The official drivers for Intel graphics are open-source and automatically installed, so you can skip this.
   
2. nVidia video card: Open the Settings Manager and click the Software & Updates settings. There, switch to the Additional Drivers tab. Choose the latest poprietrary drivers from the list (you are given the option to install an older version as well). When you click Apply, you will have to enter your password, and then it will download the drivers.
   
   You can configure your video settings with the "nVidia X Server Settings" in the Settings Manager.
   
3. ATI / AMD video card: In the Ubuntu Software Center, search and install the following packages:
   
   fglrx-experimental-13
   fglrx-amdcccle-experimental-13
   fglrx-experimental-13-dev
   
   Once installed, you'll need to restart your computer to apply the changes. After that you should be running the ATI/AMD driver. It can be configured with the "AMD Catalyst Control Centre". You should find two of these, except one has "(Administrative)" on the end. This is because you need administrator (root) privileges to edit some features in the driver.

(Big thanks to toma678 for his help with AMD cards! I hope you're not mad because I edited and shortened it a bit.)​

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5.3 Java​

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For now, I recommend downloading the OpenJDK 7 runtime environment from the Ubuntu Software Center.

However, Minecraft and many mods are built with Oracle's proprietary Java version. Although there are very few differences, this may or may not cause problems. Personally I have not had any problems with OpenJDK, but there are some who think OpenJDK is the root of all evil concerning Minecraft problems (you know who you are). If you encounter any issues and you can trace them back on OpenJDK, you can still install Oracle's Java.

I am only recommending OpenJDK because it is MUCH easier to install - one click, one password, done. Oracle's Java however is difficult to install and you have to use some serious command line hax. This is because it is provided as an "all-distributions download" package instead of the Debian (.deb) installation files which Ubuntu normally uses. If the need arises, you can follow this tutorial to install Oracle's Java.

And all this because the Oracle dudes are too lazy to provide downloads for major Linux distros. Ugh. This used to be different.


5.4 Alice

We're almost done now! All that remains is to visit http://skcraft.com/welcome and get the cross-platform JAR download. Save it into your Home folder (/home/username), that's easiest. If your browser saves it into the Downloads folder, you can simply move it with Cut & Paste (the usual hotkeys - Ctrl + X, Ctrl + V).

You may or may not be able to start it right away - if not, it is because the file is not marked as executable. You can easily remedy this with the terminal. If you have saved the JAR directly into your home folder, simply type: chmod +x sk (and now you just press the Tab key to have it autocomplete the filename). "chmod" means "change modifier", +x is the option for chmod and means "executable = true". Most commands are some kind of abbreviation.

(Didn't I say you don't have to use the terminal all the time? oops lol. At least it's easy to learn. )

~~~​

2014-01-23: Posted.
2014-01-25: Edited a few minor things, notably for video drivers.
2014-01-26: Cleaned the graphic drivers section and added toma678's AMD part.

 

The Optional Read™​

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I won't write this in any particular order but I'll headline everything so you can pick some things you like. Anyway, I will include some tips and tricks, some info about customising the XFCE desktop, an introduction to bash (the terminal shell) and some terminal apps, and more.​

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However, I will not write everything at once; I will save the post whenever I finish something and add to it. If you want to learn a bit more you should check this post sometimes over the course of the next days.​

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(@Admins: I wanted to put everything into spoilers but they are buggy. One spoiler is split into two after the first linebreak/paragraph.)​

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Using symlinks to connect media folders​

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You likely have well-filled media folders in your Windows partition. You probably don't want to dig through the endless Windows folder structures every time you want to listen to music or find a wallpaper. Linux created new media folders in your /home directory, and they are awfully empty. Maybe we could use these somehow? But you surely don't want to copy the folders from Windows. Also, you likely don't have enough space. And why should all your stuff be on your PC twice? That's redundant and inefficient.​

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There's a solution to this. Linux has always had a very nifty feature called symbolic links, or symlinks. Windows can do that as well since Win 7, but it's more difficult to do and you don't really need it there. Now what is the difference to a "normal" link, a hard link?​

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A hard link directly links to a file, and the OS and programs know that it is a link and not the actual file. A symbolic link however is relative; the OS can pretend that the link is the file, even if the file is somewhere else. This means that you can link your /home media folders to the Windows media folders, and all programs can use the folders and their contents as if they were located in /home, even though they are actually on the Windows partition! (Note: for Linux, a folder is just a special kind of file.)​

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When creating a symlink you should be a bit careful. If the folder that shall become a link is not empty, its contents will be deleted. If you already have stuff in the /home media folders, rename the folders. Actually, also rename them if they're empty, if only to not forget their names. Just make the names something like Music_old or whatever.​

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Now, you need to find the Windows folders you want to link into Linux. Open the file manager and click on your Windows partition in the sidebar to do that. Windows media folders are in Users/username/...​

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As an example, open the Music folder. Might be called My Music or whatever, perhaps it's just Music, I forgot. Copy the Music folder's path from the navigation bar. We do this because the Windows partition does not always have a label and its name may be represented by a jumbled mess of numbers and letters. In my case, this would be: /media/marko/72CA83CACA838955/Users/Marko/Music/​

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If you want, you can also give the Windows partition a label with GParted. This would make things easier. If you have followed the installation guide you should know how to do it. However, while GParted is in the Live environment, it is not installed (to my knowledge); you likely have to install it from the Ubuntu Software Center.​

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Open a terminal. Normally we would have to navigate to the folder where the link is to be created, but the terminal starts in /home, so we can skip that. (Tip: the Tilde ~ symbol is a shortcut for your own /home folder!) Make sure you have renamed the old Music folder, then type ln -s and paste the file path you just copied with Ctrl+Shift+V. Press Enter.​

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Now check the file manager. A new Music folder should be in your home folder, with the contents of your Windows' Music folder. If the link folder is called "My Music" or something, you can simply rename it to Music.​

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Now you can simply do this again for pictures, videos, documents, downloads and whatever else you want. Do not link the desktop folders though.​

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Configuring GRUB2​

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You have seen the GRUB2 bootloader now. It looks a bit bland, doesn't it? Maybe you want it to stay this way if you like minimalism, that's your choice, but I like to have a wallpaper for it. Also, it will automatically start the first OS entry after 10 seconds, but this is rather long. So let's edit the GRUB config!​

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First of all, you should know that GRUB2 has two config files. Only one of them is actually used, while the other one is much simpler and is used to create the more complicated one.​

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Open the file manager, navigate to /etc/default/ and open the text file (not the folder) called grub. Edit the value of GRUB_TIMEOUT. The default is 10 seconds; change it to 5 or shorter if you want.

If you want a wallpaper, make a new line below the first block of config values and enter:

Code:

GRUB_BACKGROUND=/home/username/Pictures/grub/filename.jpg

You can use most popular image formats, including JPG and PNG. Now it should look something like this:

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The image I use is this one:​

Spoiler

It's small, I know, but GRUB usually works with a lower resolution anyway. Also, this is the work of 10 minutes fiddling around with GIMP, and I'm a GFX noob, so it's not that high-quality to begin with

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Don't forget to save the config file. Afterwards, open a terminal and run sudo update-grub. With this command, the changes you did to the config file are written into the more complicated config which GRUB actually uses.​

 

I wanted to show you my current setup, but the screenshot PNG is so large it always fails during the upload thanks to my awful connection. Either I'll have to JPGify or upload via cellphone tethering, but I already entered sloth mode (it's almost 11pm here) and I'm currently evaluating which of these requires less energy. Probably tethering.

Anyway, I said I wanted to write some more on this, but I just came back from work and I have to relax now. I'll do it tomorrow morning when I have time and am not dead tired.

 

As long as your PC is powerful enough to run games in a VM, this is a good solution. Still, it will never match the performance of a fully installed OS.

Yeah sure, that'd be great. You can send it to me in a PM, I will incorporate it into the guide and give you credit for it.

Glad to know I could help out

 

I now added toma's AMD part and also wrote something for The Optional Read™. Next part probably tomorrow, maybe today if I feel like it.

 

Windows 8 doesn't like to share space with other OSes, so it's not that great for multibooting. Windows 7 handles it much better.

Anyway, you should probably have a Windows 8 installation DVD or a "repair disc". With these you can usually fix boot problems with Windows. The GRUB boot manager will likely be replaced by the Windows boot loader (which means you can't boot into Linux) but that's not too difficult to fix. Maybe I'll write another section about that.

Also, for everyone else who wants to install: If you have Windows 8, be careful because you probably don't have a BIOS PC but EFI. While EFI is fast and handy, it makes things more difficult for installing Linux, so I suggest you google for things you might have to keep in mind during the installation.

 

No, it's written with a dash, so it doesn't matter because I say "rename to 10_os-prober". Will correct it though.

Also, Skype is a Microsoft program now, so I don't expect it to become much better... or ever leave beta.