Before Installing OpenCV

This post is just for the people, who don't have any open source OS or Mac in their computer.For those, who have, you can skip this post.

Hey, let's come back to the installing openCV part in the next post.But first of all, let me tell you one thing, if you are on windows and are planning to learn openCV with the help of Visual Studio or Visual C++ bla bla bla, you will find yourself eventually in a very dangerous position.

I don't say windows is bad.Windows is one of the awesome softwares made in the previous century, but if you are planning to become a serious DEV, in todays world, you have to shift in to one of the Open Source Operating Systems.One more thing people say and a common rumour is that these OS's are not user friendly and they are very unstable.Neverthless, no open source is as robust as windows and the things you hear are partially true.But most of the supporting libraries for openCV and the openCV user community is not inclined to this and you need to install a lot of libraries that may make your system unstable some times.But, if you still plan to go for it, here's the link and don't forget to skip the rest of this post.

http://www.aishack.in/2010/02/installing-and-getting-opencv-running/

If you dare to take a step forward in your learning, and why I supported Windows in the above paragraph.....

What's ringing in your head is true, I want you to keep windows in your machine, till you get acquainted with the new OS or you will get bored of it (Either ways, you can go back to your old OS or gain some knowledge).

Personally, I recommend Ubuntu, and more preferrably install any version between 9.10 and 10.10.If you want to get started with Ubuntu, you can search for a free E-book "Ubuntu Pocket Guide", a relatively small one, that seriously gives you the confidence of a dev.

Ok, we will come back to our point, straight forwardly, I want you to dual boot your machine with Ubuntu.But if you are just a normal guy, who had no knowledge of installing OS, I recommend going with "Wubi" installer.The best thing about Wubi is, it lets you install Ubuntu just like any other Program in the control panel, and you can uninstall it with just a single click.More help about using Wubi, downloading and installing at the below link

http://www.ubuntu.com/download/ubuntu/windows-installer

One more serious thing to consider, while installing is that, it asks for you to install in some drive, try to make a seperate drive for it.If you don't know this, no problem, here's your step by step guide about creating a drive or volume or partition (all are same, as per windows terminology)

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/Create-and-format-a-hard-disk-partition

I am stressing this because even though you can allocate a space of some 10GB, in your drive with some 70 GB space, when you switch to Ubuntu, none of this 70 GB you can see, but you can see the other drives.

If you don't like experimenting, install Ubuntu in the smallest drive in your system or the drive that contains no important information.

While installing with Wubi, it restarts itself and when restarting, there will be two options, either windows or Ubuntu, make it go into Ubuntu to complete the installation part.After that when ever you start your system, you will have both Windows and Ubuntu for dual boot and if you want to uninstall, just go to control panel in Windows and check for Ubuntu and press uninstall.And one more thing, 15 GB is good enough space for Ubuntu and if you plan to give more, 20 GB is more than enough.In the next post, let's see about installing openCV