Installation Guide (ISO)
A comprehensive installation guide for Venom Linux
Venom Linux comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by applicable law.
- x86_64 CPU
- 4 GB RAM (System Memory)
- 100 GB of Disk Space
- CD/DVD drive or a USB port for the installer media
Venom Linux provides a few live installer images that contain a installer. These live images come with a full desktop enviornement and basic applications configured for that environment. MATE, Xfce4, LXDE and LXQT are available in addition to these flavors Venom Linux provides a Xorg-only iso and a base image. The base image provides a minimal set of packages to install and setup a Venom Linux system.
All the installation images can be downloaded from the Venom Linux Website
It is advised to verify the mdsum of the downloaded iso file; e.g. md5sum venom-xfce4-20200602.iso
If the mdsum matches with the mdsum on the download page of the Venom Linux website you can move forward and either burn the iso image on a CD/DVD or create a bootable USB drive.
Identify you USB drive with fdisk by opening your favorite terminal emulator and typing:
sudo fdisk -l
The output of this will show the USB device as /dev/sdb or /dev/sdc, we will refer to /dev/sdx in this guide where x is the appropriote letter from the output of the fdisk command. Next you need to make sure that your USB drive is not mounted by unmounting it with
sudo umount /dev/sdx
Now you are ready to write the downloaded iso to your USB drive, we will use the dd command for this.
Warning: use the dd command with caution as it will overwrite any data on the USB drive.
sudo dd if=/home/username/Downloads/venom-xfce4-20191002.iso of=/dev/sdx bs=4M && sync
Change the command to let dd find the iso in the correct directory and change the image name and device name of this example to the correct image name and device name. Note sdx, do not use partitions i.e. sdb1, sdc1, etc. instead use sdb, sdc, etc. The sync command at the end will flush all data.
dd will not print any output until the process is completed (or if it failed).
Depending on your device, this process can take a few minutes.
Any modern disk burning application should be able to write the iso file to a CD or DVD. A few suggestions are:
- Brasero
- K3B
- Xfburn
- Infrarecorder (Windows)
In general live sessions will be less responsive on a CD or DVD than with a USB or hard drive.
Boot your machine using the previously-created installation medium. Depending on the BIOS manufacturer this can be done by starting the computer and press ESC, F1, F2, F8, F10 or F12 during the initial startup screen. A menu may appear giving you the option to give a CD/DVD or USB drive boot sequence priority over the hard drive, move it to the first position in the list. Or select the installation device (CD/DVD or USB). You can choose to run the live image from the media, or, if you have the resources available, you can load the contents of the image into RAM. This option takes some time at the beginning but provides a quicker installation procedure.
Once the live image has booted you need to check if you have a working internet connection.
Venom Linux does not have a graphical installar. To start the installer you open a terminal, the default terminal that comes with the Destop Enviornement is fine. To start the installer run the command sudo venom-installer alternatively you can become root by typing su - at the terminal prompt, when prompted for a password type in root and then run the command venom-installer.
Note: on newer ISO images it is not necessary to open a terminal. There should be an install icon (Venom logo) on the desktop. Double clicking this icon will conveniently launch the installer in a new terminal window.
When the installer starts you are greeted by a curses menu, the following section will detail each screen of the installer.
Select the keymap for your keyboard, for example us for US QWERTY keyboard:
When Partition Disk is selected from the Installer Menu you are greeted with a handy tip in regards to partitioning your disk for BIOS and EFI Systems. For BIOS systems MBR partition table is recommended (dos label type).
For EFI paritions a GPT GPT partition table is required.
Also a FAT32 partition with at least 100 MB - 200 MB is a safe choice.
This partition should be set as type EFI.
This guide will walk you through setting up partitions for both BIOS as well as for UEFI systems.
Select either cfdisk or fdisk to partition your disk. cfdisk is a bit more user-friendly compared to fdisk.
Select the disk you want to partition for your Venom Linux install
Select a Partition Label type with regards to your system as was hinted in the Partition Tip earlier.
Select dos label type
Create your partitions as you see fit.
In this example we are creating a root partiton, a home partition and a SWAP partition.
Select GPT label type
Create your partitions as you see fit but remember to create a dedicated partition of at least 100 MB for EFI.
Change the partition type of the 100 ~ 200 MB partition to EFI System.
Create a SWAP partition; to create a SWAP partition in cfdisk you need to alter the partition type
Don't forget to write your changes to disk before you quit cfdisk.
If you have set-up your partitions for UEFI system (GPT partition table and 100 ~ 200 MB EFI partition) the Venom Installer will detect this and will prompt you to choose the EFI partition.
If you have set up your partitions for a BIOS system (MBR) then the installer will obviously skip this step.
When you have written the changes to disk it's time to choose the partition you want Venom to live in.
Format the partition.
Select the filesystem of this partition:
The Venom Installer will detect your SWAP partition if you gave it the correct type during partitioning.
Select the SWAP partitions:
The installer will ask if you would like to setup another partition.
In our example we created a /home partition, this is the time and place to set it up.
Choose the partition you would like to use.
Type /honme
Select the file system for this partition,
We are presented with the option to setup yet another partition. In this case we will choose "No" as we didn't created any other partition besides /home. If you created a dedicated partition for e.g. /var this would be the place to set that up.
Note: If you select "Yes" and there is no other partition to setup the installer will skip and move forward to the next step
After done setting up partitions we get a small summery of the partitons we just setup.
The root partition is not included in this small overview because root is basically needed to have Venom installed.
After this is done you can choose Set Timezone from the Venom Linux Installer menu.
Select your timezone accordingly.
Set Hostname and type the hostname for your machine.
For example "en_US" choose yours accordingly.
Select your time.
Set-Up a User Account
Set User Account by entering a login name and a password, you will be prompted to retype the password.
Set Root Password is similar to setting up the user with the difference being that no login name is needed.
Next up is setting up grub;
Unless you really know what you are doing it is highly recommended to install the grub bootloader.
So select yes in this section.
The installer will ask where you want to install the bootloader.
Select the device your Venom Linux installer will live in; for example it's /dev/sda (notice that there is no number after sda, which is correct).
Last but not least you will get a chance to review your selected settings before you let the installer run.
It's important to pay attention here and check if everything has been setup correctly.
Note that if you are not installing on an EFI system the EFI section will be marked SKIP.
Obviously if you are installing on an EFI system this will present a value; e.g. /dev/sda1.
After you have verified that the settings you have saved are correct you can let the installer do it's work;
The installer will ask if you really want to continue with the installation
Once Yes is selected the installer will start installing Venom Linux on your system with the settings as you have selected and reviewed.
You will get a notification when the installation is complete.
The installer will ask for a reboot, just hit enter to select OK.
You will be dropped back to a commandline prompt; if you are root a simple reboot command will do, if not run sudo reboot to reboot your system. Congrats! You have succesfully installed Venom Linux.
Enjoy!