Berry Installation Guide and walkthrough

[mystified]

Berry Linux is a live cd that can be installed to a hard drive or a usb drive.  It is a very easy and fast installation.  Berry linux can be downloaded from here: http://yui.mine.nu/berry/edownload.php

The latest version of Berry is built off of Fedora Core 9.  You can download rpms from http://zeniiia.linux.org.uk/pub/distributions/fedora/linux/core/  You use rpm -i to install a package and rpm -e to remove a package.  You can find more options by doing man rpm.

To start the installation boot from the cd.  It comes in two languages: English and Japanese.

Then it starts loading:

Continues with loading:

Loads kde

To start the installer you click on kmenu and go to berry > berry installer.
You are greeted with the following:

You are then greeted with an installation prompt:

Enter your username

Then password

Then root password

Hostname

Then it asks where you want to install your bootloader:

Then you are greeted with a start the installation screen:

Then it starts installing programs.  Berry, in spite of using kde is very lightweight and the package installation part went fairly quickly.

At this point you are finished:
Reboot into your own Berry Linux Desktop:

This was one of the simplest installs I've every done and it was very fast.  The desktop has a windows feel to it and would be excellent for someone switching from windows:  It has a My Computer and Documents folder.  It comes with wine preinstalled.  All in all an easy to use distro. 

[Jon]

Great guide.   I will consider giving it a shot on a VM myself.

[mikes]

Hi! I have been following Berry a while. But, v.98 & 1.00 do not install. Yet the Live CD is OK. I have not followed Fedora since about 7/8, and wonder if something changed? Or maybe my H/W is getting too old?
*Idea, if i install an older version, can i just update some of the packages from that point? And, if i want to install to a Thinkpad, can i update wireless drivers or would i have to update the whole Control Panel? (* blackberrys on the side of the yard!)   mike

[dansar99]

Hi..I just burned a live Berry cd. I really like this distro. I have a dual boot XP/Linux older HP comp. 1.6mhz 1g ram.  I'm not very techie so I always worry about installing. Currently I have PCLinuxOS which is pretty good but Berry looks like what I am looking for. I must have downloaded 7 or 8 different distros on live cd's but this one blew me away. I might install on the hard disk tomorrow.  Any useful tips on what to do or not to do? any help will be much appreciated.  Thank you.  Dan

[Jon]

Hi! I have been following Berry a while. But, v.98 & 1.00 do not install. Yet the Live CD is OK. I have not followed Fedora since about 7/8, and wonder if something changed? Or maybe my H/W is getting too old?
*Idea, if i install an older version, can i just update some of the packages from that point? And, if i want to install to a Thinkpad, can i update wireless drivers or would i have to update the whole Control Panel? (* blackberrys on the side of the yard!)   mike

Hi Mike,

Your hardware could be too old, but that would be a stretch.  I run a modern-kernel Linux on a PIII-450MHz at my house.  It's not blazing, but it works well (and reliably!).  We've seen that Berry has some difficulties detecting certain hard disk configurations which could explain your inability to install.

Fedora 12 is the most recent version of the Fedora distributions.  It may be their best overall release since Fedora 8.  If you install Fedora 8 and go to update packages, my guess is that you'll be forced into the big upgrade (just out of dependencies alone).  Fedora 12 should be fine as long as your hardware is from within the last several years.

Concerning the install of Berry (an older release), the same scenario would apply since it is a Fedora-based distribution.  Attempting to update a handful of packages could result in the updating of (probably) several thousands.  However, if you're cool with that and have the bandwidth, go for it!

Jon

[Jon]

Hi..I just burned a live Berry cd. I really like this distro. I have a dual boot XP/Linux older HP comp. 1.6mhz 1g ram.  I'm not very techie so I always worry about installing. Currently I have PCLinuxOS which is pretty good but Berry looks like what I am looking for. I must have downloaded 7 or 8 different distros on live cd's but this one blew me away. I might install on the hard disk tomorrow.  Any useful tips on what to do or not to do? any help will be much appreciated.  Thank you.  Dan

Hi Dan,

Welcome to the board!

You say you're not very techie, yet you're willing to install a Linux.  That makes you more techie than 90% of the planet.

What to do and what not to do?  Have fun.  Backup your hard disk, any extra specialty drivers you might or need, and your applications.  Then have fun.  We all have fun playing with our Linux computers and that's how you learn.  You'll make some mistakes and screw some stuff up.  Don't worry about it.  Do not give up if something goes wrong.  Keep trying.  Linux, to me, is clearly worth it.

Berry-specific hints.  I have none other than to try it out.  I have a request though.  When and if you get it installed, post about your installation here.  Let us know how it goes.

JME

[dansar99]

Thank you Jon for responding to my post.  I have a question about installing.

" where to install the bootloader" Is there a default option and if not, where would I put it ?

Dan

[Jon]

That really depends a lot on how your hard disk is configured on your computer.  My entire Fedora partition is in an LVM (logical volume manager).  So Fedora resides on a kind of encapsulated partition that looks like a partitioned hard disk.   

Some people choose to put their bootloader in a partition on their hard disk labelled /boot.  I always choose the MBR (master boot record).  The MBR is present regardless of how your computer is partitioned.

[mikes]

Hi Jon. Well, I'm back. And now this is the 3rd release that does not boot live. So, i could never get to install it.  At the point of stopping at the prompt (#) it says it is looking for berry on the hd? It goes through the bootsplash and drops down into text.
Too bad i cannot clipboard it.  I cannot do a mount command because i do not know what "CD" drive would be called. And, if i mounted it, then what? Any ideas?  thanx,  mike

[Jon]

Hi Mike,

If it drops to a prompt (#), it may be a Linux prompt.  You may have booted it safely, just not to an X (graphical) environment. 

What time of CD drive is this?  Are you on a laptop?  If so, mine is /dev/scd0 typically.  If it's IDE, mine was /dev/hd* (where * is a,b,c,d) depending on the number of physical drives.  But I can't vouch for that...it's been awhile since I've booted an IDE drive.    You can use the command fdisk to see what partitions are out on your harddisk if you want to mount the drive.

You can use lspci to see what is connected and you can look in /dev to see what hardware is present.  If you actually have a Linux running from command prompt, you may consider looking around in /etc/.

If you can get to /etc/X11/xorg.conf you can probably change the value of "Driver" under the "Device" section to "vesa" from "nv" or "nvidia".  Then run the command 'startx' and you may get a graphical desktop where you can use some tools to do some setup.

Keep us posted!

Jon

[kyo]

I have a question: can Berry Linux be installed on a Lenovo Ideapad S10-2?

[Jon]

Hi kyo,

Welcome to DSO! 

I see no reason why it could not be installed on the Lenovo.  But I don't know much about it.  Have you tried? 

Are you a fan of Berry, in particular, or just looking for a good Linux installation?

Jon

[kyo]

Thanks Jon. I'm not actually a Berry fan... more of a fan of Japan/Japanese stuff actually  I've heard about Berry before but I didn't know it was developed by a Japanese. A friend of mine referred me to study Linux thru Ubuntu a few years ago but work kind kept me busy from focusing on it.

Now that I have a laptop, I decided to go back and study Linux from the beginning during my free time... I'm really a newbie and I'm working on everything from scratch. Just downloaded a couple of Linux e-books before I've joined the forum so bear with me if I come up with annoying questions. 

[Jon]

Keep asking the questions.  There aren't annoying questions concerning Linux. 

If you go and look through our old posts (here and on other forums) we've all asked some questions that we felt silly posing.  But, other users always graciously answered our questions.  I still have tons of questions.

Good to have you with us.