Installation

Welcome,

To begin the installation, we must obtain the installation media corresponding to your computer and microprocessor type. There are several kinds of installation media and a lot of ways to obtain them :

CD or DVD installation media, they can be ordered on "Mandriva Store" or you can acquire them in computer stores.
Download ISO images of installation disks, they should be copied to media (CD or DVD) corresponding to the image
(here "image" means "a file that is a byte for byte copy of a disk", in our case it's CD or DVD).
A boot disk image. This can only launch the installation. After burning and launching it, we must select a remote repository that holds the remaining files for installation.
(this procedure is reserved for expert users, or for computers that can't be booted on the regular installation media).
There are still some other methods of Advanced Installation(reserved for expert users)

NB : There are still more choices if you include "live" CD's. These don't need to be installed, and won't modify your system. Live CD's actually contain a full, working installation of Linux that runs from the CD itself. These are really useful for testing linux without any risk of damaging the computer's data.

Choice of installation media for your processor
Download of ISO images
Copy(burn) the ISO image to media.
The Installation
- Insert the media
- boot
- Start up screen
- After the installation
- polishing
- Advance Installation

Choice of installation media for your processor

For Mandriva, the choice of processor architecture is easy and limited, as only the PC (x86 processor architecture) is officially supported by Mandriva.

the versions who marked "i586"* are for a PC with a Pentium class Processor, such as any Intel Pentium (I, II, 3 or 4), and AMD's Athlon/Sempron. Or any processor compatible with "~~ x86's 5th generation, 32bit architecture".
The versions marked "x86_64" are for PC's with recent 64 bit processors, such as the AMD Athlon 64, AMD Sempron 64, AMD Turion 64, and some newer Intel Pentium 4 and Xeons marked "EM64T". Or any processor compatible with " x86's 8th generation, 64 bit architecture".

Note : There is backwards compatibility between the PC processor families. The choice between the "i586" and "x86_64" versions for recent computers is mainly about optimisation. A computer with a 64 bit PC processor would be able to use "i586" version, even if the "x86_64" version is more optimised for it. Warning: the contrary isn't true! An "x86" pentium class PC WILL NOT RUN the "x86_64" version!

~~There are also some unofficial versions of Mandriva marked "PPC" for computers with "PowerPC" processor, such Macintosh.

Download of ISO images

Mandriva give several "stable versions" of the distribution :

"Free" can be freely downloaded and redistributed by and to everyone
Commercial version marked "Powerpack" that are sold in the Mandriva Store or can be purchased through the download subscription

You can download the ISO from FTP server or via BitTorrent. For more information about using BitTorrent see this page.

Copy(burn) the ISO image to media.

Once the ISO image is downloaded, you should burn the image to corresponding media(CD, DVD etc.) :

Test ISO image and burn a CD/DVD from it

(For more information : ISO image management | ISO image integrity test with MD5)

The Installation

Insert the media

The first step is the same for the live CD version or for an installation : we must obviously insert the first installation or "live" media (CD, etc.) in the device!

boot

If Mandriva Linux loads and displays a splash screen it's good, otherwise the computer must be reconfigured to boot from your media. The computer must be configured to boot from the device (CD/DVD, USB key etc.) that contains the installation media. Consult your computer's documentation for the procedure you must follow to select the boot device.

Note :

At boot time, some newer computers display the key or keys you need to press to select the boot device(ex : F8, F10, F12). If your computer does not have this feature, your will probably have to change settings in the BIOS, and your computer should display the key or keys needed to enter the BIOS configuration menu (F1, F2, Del).
If you get the select boot device menu, select the device that contains the installation media and press enter, the splash screen should launch.
If you get the select the BIOS menu, you should find the field which corresponds to the selection of boot device (consult your computer documentation, keep your previous configuration information written down on paper to restore it after the installation), once you found it, select the device which contains the installation media. dont forget to save the changes and restart the system.
If you don't know which device to choose, try them all, one by one.
If you can't boot with from the CD-ROM drive some other solutions exist in the section Advance Installation

Start up screen

To launch the installation, you only need to press 'ENTER'. But… sometimes you may run into a problem!

You can display the list of advance parameters with the F1 or F2 key, they can be used in case of problems (For more about it...)

After the installation

You only need to follow the instructions on the screen. The only critical step is partitioning, when you wish to install linux next to another operating system (dual-boot) or choose yourself the partitions(For more about it...)

Note :

During the installation, if something seems weird you can make a screenshot, to have something to examine later, see Taking screenshots during the installation.
At the end of the install, remove the cd/dvd from the device.
Troubleshooting (installation and first start)
Sometimes the installation ends in a black screen at the beginning or even after a successful installation. It may happen that your hardware has all sorts of errors which derive from using the wrong ACPI support. You can overcome many of these errors by setting some kernel(For expert only) parameters, changing the kernel version(For expert only) or an update to the latest drakxtools package..

polishing

Once your system has been installed, it should launch itself by default the next time you boot the computer(If you had to change the boot device in the BIOS, you may want to think about restoring the original boot device)

If you can connect to internet, it's interesting to add some package repositories for URPMI. URPMI is an advanced RPM package manager. It's the main tool for installing/updating software in the system.

Note : URPMI looks like a software catalog where you can see the software that can be installed. This list is function of the package repository, the more repositories you set up in urpmi, the bigger the list of installable software will be.. The package repository "contrib", "java" and "plf" propose some packages to give you comfort, Play commercial DVD video, and some other proprietary formats, Games, etc...
Attention : Malgrés le fait que les sources connue(comme contrib, PLF, etc...) sont trés utile en augmentant l'offre de logiciels dans le catalogue, il ne s'agit pas de sources de paquetages crée par Mandriva et donc Mandriva n'est pas responsable de leurs fonctionnement. Le temps pour afficher le catalogue d'installation augmentera en fonction du nombre de paquetages et donc de sources. Le choix des Sources est a faire avec prudence mieux vaut se renseigner sur elles car les programmes qu'elles offrent peuvent une fois installés avoir une incidence direct sur le système(cheval de troie, etc… même si le système les limite).