Jason Hasselkus

Here we are, day one of the build your own arcade system on a budget. So, to recap what we already have:

• A 17″ CRT monitor. Yes the big heavy tubes still exist.
• Pentium III, 512 Mb of Ram, 40 GB harddrive and CD ROM in a spare computer
• Keyboard, mouse and speakers
• PCI Linksys Wireless network card - This comes in handy while installing Ubuntu, not necessary, but some kind of internet connection is very useful.
• Ubuntu 6.06 - Live CD

The first thing I do is start to get my OS all setup on the old computer. I switch to my BIOS settings and change it so that it boots off my CD Rom drive. Sure enough the Live CD with Ubuntu on it starts to play and we are off and running. At this point, I’ve already resided to myself that any and all data that was on that harddrive is going to be erased, this isn’t going to be a multi-boot machine, so I’m going to take the most of the defaults that Ubuntu gives me.
After the CD is installed, and your booted up into Ubuntu, you’ll notice an icon on the desktop that says “Install”. Well now seems about the most appropriate time to click that icon and start the install process. For simplicity, lets just take all the defaults and get Linux up and running on your box, answer the questions that it asks of you and remember your password! After the install is complete, it’s going to ask you to reboot. Go ahead and reboot and get ready for the real work.
After you have Linux installed, it’s a good idea to get the latest and greatest code out there for you new setup. So what I do is use Synaptic to update my software and attach to all the repositories. It’s a good idea to add as many repositories as you can, so that you have an easier time using the package managers. Also keep in mind that this step can be rather lengthy, as there will be many updates, especially security updates waiting for you. Since this should keep you busy for at least a few hours, I’ll end here and we’ll pick it up tomorrow on how to install the software to get all this fun stuff working.