3 ways to install Linux

There is more than one way to install Linux on a computer. Which one is best depends on how often you do it, how different your requirements are and whether you work in a lab or at unpredictable customer locations (and have to take your lab with you). Basically there are three ways:

click-through

You put the DVD into the drive, boot from it and follow the instructions on screen. There is nothing wrong about this as long as you are only doing 3 installations or so per month in your lab - or 10 as a consultant at customers. To support this type of installation in your lab you can set up an NFS server to store your installation media and the like.

SUSE's final confirmation screen in a manual installation

 I describe the details at http://www.linuxintro.org/wiki/install_linux

automated installation

Automated installation is called kickstart with Fedora and Red Hat or AutoYaST with SUSE. Instead of answering the installer's question, you hand over a text file to it that contains the answers. How big do you want your partitions to be? Just describe it in the file. Then store this file on a virtual floppy disk, on a file server or on the install media and tell the installer where it is:

SUSE's installer pointed to an autoinstall file on an NFS server

I describe the details for SUSE at http://www.linuxintro.org/wiki/autoYast
You can develop this topic until you have a complete installation factory. Have you looked at Chris' phpEquiMon? This is a collaborative hardware inventory list that integrates PXE to redeploy servers with one click and one reboot. It's great if you have the skillset to install it.

cloning

If you have a Linux installation you can clone it. You do not depend on SUSE's or Red Hat's auto install mechanisms. You just copy your harddisk byte-by-byte to another harddisk in another computer. Even better, copy it file-by-file. Then you can go to a bigger harddisk. My favorite command is

tar -cvz $(ls | grep -v proc)  | ssh root@192.168.0.5 "cat >slash.tar.gz"

I describe it in detail on  http://www.linuxintro.org/wiki/cloning