How to install Chromixium 0.7a

Guide to installing Chromixium
Chromixium Guides
Installing
Version 0.7a 1

Contents
Introduction
1. Automatic Mode
2. Systemback Installer
3. Timezone/Keyboard/Language
4. Manual Partitioning
4.1 Resize a partition
5. Persistent USB Installation
5.1 Setup USB Persistence using UNetbootin
6. Post Installation Tasks
6.1 Connect to WiFi
6.2 Language Support
7. License
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Introduction
Chromixium is currently in Alpha status. It is pretty stable and crashes are uncommon,
however, at this stage it is recommended to only install onto a test system or in a virtual
machine such as VirtualBox.
There are a number of ways that you might want to install Chromixium. This guide will show
you the most common ways.
Whichever method you choose, installing Chromixium only takes a few minutes once your
system is ready.
1. To start the installer, click once on the “green arrows” icon in the Dock:
2. You will need to type in the password user to continue:
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3. When the installer opens, you will see 4 choices:
4. Here is an explanation of the choices:
1. Automatic (Easiest)
Choose this if you only want Chromixium on your computer. For example, you
have a clean hard drive/VM or you are happy to delete any existing installations
or data and install Chromixium in their place. If you choose this option, the
installer will automatically prepare your hard drive before installing Chromixium.
Carry on reading to install in auto mode.
2. Manual
Choose this option if you want to free up space and install Chromixium
alongside Windows or another version of Linux, or if you want to customize
your partition layout for an expert installation. This option will launch the
GParted partition editor before starting the installer proper. You can free up
space first by reducing partition sizes. This is not recommended whilst
Chromixium is in Alpha status unless it is on a test system. Start at section 4 Manual
Partitioning.
3. Direct
Choose this option if you have already partitioned your system ready to perform
a test installation of Chromixium. You can proceed straight to section 2 Systemback
Installer.
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4. Legacy
Choose this option if you are having problems with the installer. This option
only uses the Systemback installer and does not run any of the pre or
postinstallation
scripts. As such, you may find that you have to manually
update Grub to detect other installations on your system, manually set your
time/date, keyboard and language and manually add swap partitions to
/etc/fstab and /etc/default/grub. This option is provided for backward
compatibility and troubleshooting only. You can proceed straight to section 2
Systemback
Installer.
If you select any of the first 3 options, the installer will attempt to detect and enable Swap
partitions in the new installation. This is important if you want to use hibernation with your
installed system. The installation is actually done by the Systemback installer. After
installation you will have the option of setting up the time/date, keyboard and language.
The installer is currently English language only, but does support French, German, Italian,
Portuguese and Spanish installations. Other languages can be added after installation using
the Language Support tool in the Control Panel. See section 6.3 Language Support.
If you want to create a persistent USB installation, rather than a hard drive install,
please skip straight to section 5.
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1. Automatic Mode
As previously described, this mode will automatically partition your hard drive for you and is
the easiest way to install Chromixium.
NOTE: THIS WILL DESTROY ALL DATA ON YOUR HARD DRIVE
This mode will create 2 partitions:
● A small Swap partition at the start of the drive. This is used on low memory systems in
case RAM usage is very high, and it is used as a restore partition whilst hibernating.
The size is automatically calculated to be the best match for your system. The
maximum size is just over 4GB.
● The remainder of the disk is used to hold the Chromixium filesystem and is formatted
as ext4.
1. Click on Automatic in the installer main window.
2. The next screen will show the hard drive that has been detected for the installation:
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3. Look at the details carefully, especially if you have more than 1 hard drive on your
system. Linux refers to disks as either /dev/hda or more commonly /dev/sda. The last
letter is the drive number i.e. a = 1st or primary hard drive, b = 2nd hard drive etc…
4. The Auto mode will only try to install onto the primary (internal) hard drive on your
computer. If you want to install onto a different drive other than h/sda then click on
Cancel now and use the Manual method. If everything looks correct, press Forward.
5. You will now get one more chance to quit if the selected hard drive is not correct.
When you press Yes, the drive will be wiped:
6. The drive will be partitioned. It usually only takes a few seconds. Then you will be
shown a summary screen:
7. Make sure to make a note of the device number for Partition 2 it
should be /dev/sda2
or /dev/hda2. This is the partition that Chromixium will be installed onto. Click Forward.
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2. Systemback Installer
1. The Systemback installer will now open. In the first screen you need to type in your
real name, the username (no spaces), a password (which needs typing twice) and a
computer name (anything you want but no spaces, keep it fairly short). It’s not
recommended to add a root password. Chromixium is based on Ubuntu and sudo is
the preferred method of authenticating administrative access and uses your own
password:
2. Click Next once the details have been entered.
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3. On the following screen, you need to select the install partition (the one you made a
note of earlier). If you alter the column widths, you will see that it is labelled
Chromixium:
a. Select the partition /dev/sda2 by clicking on it
b. Click in the Mount point box and select “ / “ (this is the convention for the root
partition) >
c. Click on the green, leftpointing
arrow:
d. Leave the tick in the Format box.
e. The partition will show a / under New mount point and a x under Format:
f. Do not make any further changes on this screen.
g. Click Next.
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8. Click on Start to begin the installation:
9. The system will now be installed to your hard drive. This usually takes about 5 minutes
and the progress is displayed:
10. Once it has been installed, click on OK:
11. If you selected the Legacy option, this is the end of the installation process. You can
now reboot into your new installation.
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3. Timezone/Keyboard/Language
Once the system is installed, some postinstall
scripts will run.
1. The bootloader will be updated with details of the swap partition:
2. You can now choose the change the timezone, keyboard and language:
Click Yes if the current settings of United States, New York time are not correct.
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3. To change the timezone, first select your global region/continent and then select the
principal/capital city of your country. The time will be automatically set based on these
settings:
4. The next set of questions allow you to set the keyboard. The first question sets the
model of the keyboard (keymap), in other words, what the keyboard is. The next steps
sets the keyboard layout, in other words, what the keys should do.
a. The correct keymap is usually automatically detected, but if you want to change
it, click on “Select keymap from full list” and then choose the correct
keyboard layout.
b. The keyboard configuration is next. This narrows down your selection and
allows you to be very specific about the language. There are a number of
steps, just choose the default if unsure and select your language where
appropriate:
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c. The last screen allows you to choose the language that you want to be used in
the new installation. This will allow translations of some menu items and most
applications and utilities, including the Chromium web browser. It also sets the
currency and time/date format:
The options are English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish
variants.
5. The locale information will be set. This takes about a minute:
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6. The installation is complete:
7. You can now reboot into the new installation:
8. You may now switch your computer back on. Remember to remove the install media
first. Your username will be displayed on the login
screen. Just type your new
password and enjoy using Chromixium!
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4. Manual Partitioning
Chromixium can be installed alongside other operating systems eg Microsoft Windows (also
known as dual booting). To do this you will need to free up space on the main Windows
partition and use this space to install Chromixium into.
Select option 2 Manual
to launch the Gparted partition manager, so you can free up space.
Some instructions follow on how to resize a partition. For detailed instructions, please see this
online guide.
Microsoft Windows 7 and 8 are likely to already take up at least 2 partitions on your hard drive
and computer vendors often add additional, hidden recovery partitions. You only need to free
a small amount of space for Chromixium a
full installation only takes up 2GB of disk space,
so you can comfortably install it onto a partition as small as 4GB (although this won’t leave
you much space to install additional applications and files).
You should try to free enough space a small swap partition as well. This area of the drive
helps Chromixium process memoryheavy
applications if system memory is low and it is used
to support hibernation. As a rule, your swap partition should be twice the amount of system
memory (RAM) that you have installed. If you are not sure and you can afford the space, 4GB
(4096 MiB) will be enough. However, as you can only have 4 primary partitions on a disk, you
may need to create a logical container to get over this limitation. See here for more details.
Microsoft recommend reducing the Windows C: drive from within Windows itself using the
Disk Management tool. However, you may use GParted to make the adjustments from within
Chromixium, but this is not officially supported and will result in Windows performing a disc
scan on the next reboot.
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4.1 Resize a partition
1. Enter the password user and GParted will open
2. GParted shows existing partitions as shaded bars and also as a list. A Windows
partition will be formatted with the NTFS filesystem, so it will be a pale green colour.
To reduce a partition, click on either the shaded bar or list entry (both will be selected)
and click on Partition>
Resize/Move.
a. The pale yellow area shows used space on the drive. You will not be able to
reduce the size beyond this area.
b. Type the size of the new partition into the Free space following box and press
enter on the keyboard (or drag the right edge of the bar to the left). To make it
easier think in multiples of 1000
(~1 Gigabyte), so 4000 would be the minimum to free up.
c. Click Resize/Move.
3. There will now be an ‘unallocated’ space in the partition table.
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a. Click on the unallocated space and click on Partition>
New
b. Accept the defaults presented (ext4 file system) and click on add.
4. Apply the changes, click on the Apply All Operations symbol on the toolbar:
5. Close Gparted by clicking on Gparted>
Exit or by clicking the close window button
(cross).
6. Refer back to step 2 Systemback
Installer to complete the installation.
7. If you are dual booting, you may find that Chromixium does not add your other
operating systems to the bootloader. After installing, your computer will only boot into
Chromixium. In this case run
sudo update-grub2
in a terminal to recreate the bootloader. Also see part 5 Post
Installation Tasks.
8. Expert installations may be achieved with the Systemback installer by assigning a
range of mount points such as /home, /var, /opt etc... and the bootloader can be
installed to a disk or partition of your choice. This will not be covered in this guide.
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5. Persistent USB Installation
Chromixium supports a method of transferring the downloaded ISO to a USB drive which can
then be used to boot into and install Chromixium. Usually a Linux ISO boots in readonly
mode, but it is possible to allow changes to be made to the live system when it is stored on a
USB device by enabling ‘persistence’.
The benefits of this approach are:
➔ Your installation is portable and not hardware specific can
be taken with you and
plugged into any computer
➔ No need to risk altering your computer’s hard drive
➔ It can be set up within Windows or Linux
➔ The ISO is compressed, so you can install it on a relatively small USB drive eg 1GB
➔ You can do a system restore by simply deleting the persistence file.
Drawbacks:
➔ A live system is generally slower to boot than an installed one
➔ USB devices are more easily lost or stolen
➔ USB flash memory degrades over time
➔ USB devices must be formatted as FAT32 so the persistence file can not be larger
than 4GB (this can be overcome using a persistence partition).
See here for more information: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCD/Persistence
5.1 Setup USB Persistence using UNetbootin
UNetbootin is the easiest, crossplatform
tool for creating a persistent USB installation. It can
be used within Windows, Linux or Mac OS X.
Download it from this website: http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/. It does not require installing,
but will need admin rights to run it.
Linux users are recommended to install it from their Distribution’s software repositories.
1. Plug your USB flash drive into your computer and make sure it is detected by the
operating system. It must be formatted to FAT32.
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2. Start Unetbootin and enter your admin password.
3. Click on DiskImage:
4. Click on the browse icon and locate your downloaded Chromixium.iso file:
5. Enter the amount of space (up to 4096MB/4GB) for the persistence file:
6. Click on OK to start the installation. It might take a while to create the persistence file:
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7. When it is finished, reboot the computer and press the appropriate key to boot from
USB or enter the boot menu eg F2, F9, F12, Esc.
8. When you boot from your USB device choose the first option, labelled “Default” to boot
with persistence.
9. Remember, the live user account password is still “user”. You should change it to a
complex password by rightclicking
anywhere on the desktop and choosing
Applications>
Settings>
Users and Groups.
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6. Post Installation Tasks
6.1 Connect to WiFi
Networking is handled by the Gnome Network Manager. If you are connected to Ethernet
(cable) it will be automatically detected. To connect to WiFi follow these steps:
Network Manager starts with the system and sits in the system tray.
1. Use the tray icon to connect to a WiFi network. Left click on the icon to see all
available networks:
2. A window will open which will show all the available WiFi networks. It might take a few
seconds to refresh:
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3. If your network is protected by a password, this box will appear just
type your
password in and click Connect.
4. To see the password as you type, tick the Show password box.
5. Network Manager will now attempt to connect to the network:
6. The connection will be made and the taskbar icon will change to indicate so. The
number of white ‘stripes’ indicates the strength of the signal/connection.
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6.2 Language Support
Once you have installed Chromixium, you can add other languages/translations. You do need
to be connected to the Internet before you can install any additional languages. See section
6.1 above.
1. Rightclick
on the desktop and click on Control Panel.
2. Scroll down until you see the Language Support icon:
3. If you see this screen, click on Install:
Enter your password when prompted.
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4. The main window will open:
5. Click on Install / Remove Languages...
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6. Scroll through the list to find your language:
Tick the language you want to install and then click on Apply Changes.
7. Enter your password when prompted. Your language will be installed:
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8. To make your language the default system language, find it in the main list and drag it
to the top:
9. Click on Apply SystemWide.
10. Click on the Regional Formats tab.
11. Choose your language from the dropdown
list and click on Apply SystemWide:
12. Click on Close.
13. Reboot for the changes to take effect.
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7. License
Creative Commons AttributionShareAlike
4.0 International
(CC BYSA
4.0)
This tutorial has been created as part of the Chromixium OS project which is licensed under
the GPL. The Author is RichJack and this work is licensed under the Creative Common
AttributionShareAlike
license:
You are free to:
● Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
● Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material
● for any purpose, even commercially.
● The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.
Under the following terms:
● Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, andindicate if
changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that
suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
● ShareAlike — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your
contributions under the same license as the original.
● No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that
legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
Notices:
● You do not have to comply with the license for elements of the material in the public domain or
where your use is permitted by an applicable exception or limitation.
● No warranties are given. The license may not give you all of the permissions necessary for your
intended use. For example, other rights such as publicity, privacy, or moral rights may limit how
you use the material.
● This is a humanreadable
summary of (and not a substitute for) the license:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/bysa/
4.0/legalcode
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How to install Chromixium 0.7a

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