The installation type

The next critical decision is the installation type, which can be one of Personal Desktop, Workstation, Server or Custom, or the choice to Upgrade Existing System. In order to understand the differences, once again, we recommend the official installation guide, but for the most flexibility, we recommend doing a "Custom" install, which gives you the most freedom and is the one we'll be describing here.

Warning

Things to know about two of the installation type choices:

  • Doing a Server install will thoroughly wipe all partitions on all disks, so don't do this if you plan on preserving an existing install and setting up a dual-boot host.

  • Upgrades just never seem to work properly. If your plan is to upgrade to a newer version of the current operating system, we strongly recommend backing up your important data, doing a fresh install, and restoring that data.