Chapter 6. Using the Ubuntu Installer The various server tasks will install software roughly as follows. Web server: apache2 ; Print server: cups ; The “Standard system” task will install any package that has a priority “standard”. This includes a lot of common utilities that are normally available on any Linux or Unix system. You should leave this task selected unless you know what you are doing and want a really minimal system. If during language selection a default locale other than the “C” locale was selected, tasksel will check if any localization tasks are defined for that locale and will automatically try to install relevant localization packages. This includes for example packages containing word lists or special fonts for your language. If a desktop environment was selected, it will also install appropriate localization packages for that (if available). Once you’ve selected your tasks, select Continue . At this point, aptitude will install the packages that are part of the selected tasks. If a particular program needs more information from the user, it will prompt you during this process. You should be aware that especially the Desktop task is very large. Especially when installing from a normal CD-ROM in combination with a mirror for packages not on the CD-ROM, the installer may want to retrieve a lot of packages over the network. If you have a relatively slow Internet connection, this can take a long time. There is no option to cancel the installation of packages once it has started. Even when packages are included on the CD-ROM, the installer may still retrieve them from the mirror if the version available on the mirror is more recent than the one included on the CD-ROM. If you are installing the stable distribution, this can happen after a point release (an update of the original stable release); if you are installing the testing distribution this will happen if you are using an older image. If you are installing a diskless workstation, obviously, booting off the local disk isn’t a meaningful option, and this step will be skipped. Before a boot loader is installed, the installer will attempt to probe for other operating systems which are installed on the machine. If it finds a supported operating system, you will be informed of this dur- ing the boot loader installation step, and the computer will be configured to boot this other operating system in addition to Ubuntu. Note that multiple operating systems booting on a single machine is still something of a black art. The automatic support for detecting and setting up boot loaders to boot other operating systems varies by architecture and even by subarchitecture. If it does not work you should consult your boot manager’s documentation for more information. As there is no common firmware interface on all ARM platforms, the steps required to make the system bootable on ARM devices are highly device-dependent. Ubuntu uses a tool called flash-kernel to take care of this. Flash-kernel contains a database which describes the particular operations that are required to make the system bootable on various devices. It detects whether the current device is supported, and if yes, performs the necessary operations. 6.3.6.2. Making the system bootable with flash-kernel 6.3.6.1. Detecting other operating systems 6.3.6. Making Your System Bootable 65