Step by Step - Installing Ubuntu

Ubuntu is one of the best Operating Systems available today, and I want you to know how very simple it is to install on your home computer. This step by step guide will show you everything you need to know in order to get up and running in record time.

Oh! Also - If you haven’t already checked it out, be sure to read my Quick Start Guide to Ubuntu (Linux)! to get familiarized with some of the features, history, and lingo you’ll be encountering when you use Ubuntu Linux

Let’s get started!

Ubuntu is freely licensed open source software (FOSS). This means you are free to download, share, remix, and build upon the program’s source code. Note how this is different from Microsoft and Apple, who want you to pay for, not share, and not modify their respective Operating Systems.

There are a variety of ways you can obtain Ubuntu. However, because it is FOSS, the way most people obtain it is to: Simply download the entire CD image directly, for free, and then burn it on to a blank CD-R from http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download.

Other methods involve:

• Buying a CD from Canonical (Ubuntu’s parent company): http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/purchase
• Buying a disc or a USB drive from a third party company, such as OS Discs: http://www.osdisc.com/cgi-bin/view.cgi/products/linux/ubuntu
• Requesting a Free CD: https://shipit.ubuntu.com/
• Downloading from Bittorrent: http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/downloadmirrors#bt
• Using the WUBI installer for installing through Windows: http://wubi-installer.org/

All these methods are very similar but to start, let’s go through the steps to simply download an Ubuntu CD image and burn that to a disc. Once again, you’ll simply go to: http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download

The website should detect what kind of computer you are currently working on and will give you a corresponding version of Ubuntu. However, you should be aware that if you are going to install on another computer, you should know whether that computer’s main processor is 32-bit or 64-bit. If you don’t know, find out by checking your system or alternatively, opt for the 32-bit download as that will work on most modern processors.

Download the ISO file. ISO is the file extension for a CD image. This is your Ubuntu CD Image.

A CD Image? What’s a CD image?

Think like a regular image – say you have a digital photograph on your computer. This photo can be printed out on paper. Just as a digital image can be printed, a CD image can be printed or “burned” to a CD.

What You’ll Need:

To burn a CD image, you’ll need:

• A CD burner! Most computers come with these by default. If you’ve ever made a CD on your computer, you can burn CD’s.
• The image of the Ubuntu disc, which we’ve already downloaded from here:
• A blank CD-R.
• CD image burning software. Mac’s can currently burn using the Disk Utility program. If you’re on Windows, I recommend using a free program like Imgburn: http://www.imgburn.com/.

I won’t go through every single detail of burning the image, as it’s different for Macs and Windows, depending on what kind of software you’re using, you'll have your brand new Ubuntu disc! Congratulations!

Further Reading: Ubuntu has a great community guide that show you how exactly to burn ISO files with certain kinds of software: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BurningIsoHowto

Now that the disc is burned, put the burned CD back in your CD tray, close it up, and restart your computer.

We'll need to get into something called the BIOS. The BIOS stands for Basic Input/Output System and it's a tiny piece of software that's built in to your computer's motherboard. This piece of software controls the computer as it boots up before going in to the main OS. Macs (and some newer PC's) have something similar called an EFI. It performs a similar function. Both of them are typically blue or black, with blocky text, and are pretty ugly, but functional.

To get in to the BIOS of you PC, the computer will typically prompt you to press a key to enter setup, most often the "delete" key. Hiren has a great guide to helping you enter your BIOS over at his site here.

Similarly, to enter Mac's EFI, press "Command-Option-O-F" (I will say here that it's probably not the wisest or easiest thing to install on a Mac. Ubuntu runs great on all hardware equally well, but you might as well run Ubuntu from the Mac desktop in Parallels or VirtualBox rather than setting it up on the entire disk).

Once inside the BIOS or the EFI, you want to set up the boot sequence. Make sure your CD drive is ordered to boot before your hard drive.

Save your settings and exit.

The computer will now restart and boot from your Ubuntu Live CD.

As you boot, you will see a loading bar with the Ubuntu logo.

Once loaded, you should be prompted with a new menu. Select the one that says "Try Ubuntu without Installing."

Oh! I should have mentioned this earlier... Ubuntu has some pretty amazing technology at work here. Your CD is actually a Live CD, which means you can run the entire OS from the disc without having to install a single thing. This is fantastic because it lets you try out everything before deciding if you want to commit.

With a Live CD, everything is loaded temporarily into the computer's memory. When you turn the computer off, the memory is wiped, which means nothing you do will be saved. So don't go just running everything from the disc, installing a bunch of programs, creating a bunch of documents only to be surprised to find out that everything is gone when you reboot your computer. To save things, you need to install.

But of course, as you can now see, this Ubuntu thing is beautiful and exciting! Of course you want to install!

So let's look at the install screens:

Once you double click on the Install icon, you'll be prompted with a set of screens asking you how you would like to have Ubuntu set up.

• You'll have to choose your Language:
• Set your Time Zone:
• Set your Keyboard Layout:
• Select where to Install Ubuntu on the Hard Drive using the Partition Manager:
• Set up your User info:
• And finalize your install:

Okay, so you're going through the set up here, and you encounter the partition editor for the first time. You might be asking yourself "What the heck is a partition?"

Never fear! I have the answers you seek!

You are installing this software on your computer's hard drive. Most computers, by default, have one hard drive. However, in most computers, you can install up to 4 (or more, depending).

These are read as separate drives. Typically your first drive (in Windows) is your C drive. They count up alphabetically from there.

But what if you wanted to split one hard drive in to different parts? 

Partitioning is just like it sounds - it can split one drive in to two. Now obviously, this is just a digital change which can be reverted, but when you partition a drive, the computer recognized a "digital wall" of sorts between different parts of the drive. Essentially, when you partition a drive, your computer will think you now have two drives.

This is great because you want to keep Linux files completely separate from existing OS installs. This lets you do something called "dual booting." One of the options in the Partition Editor will use the empty space on your drive, automatically create your Linux partitions, and install a little itty bitty program called GRUB in the first line of the drive that lets you select whether you want to run, say, Windows or Ubuntu each time you boot up.

Alternatively, you could simply erase everything on the drive and simply install Ubuntu over everything, but I wouldn't recommend it to new users.

BONUS: Just some terminology you should know. 

Windows file system is called NTFS.

Linux file system is EXT4 and SWAP.

Mac file system is HFS.

You don't need to understand all these just yet - this can be tricky. Just know they are different. NTFS is very old and inefficient. HFS is stable. EXT4 is the newest, most stable file system with journaling capabilities. SWAP is similar to memory.

If you don't know what that all means - don't worry. You don't need to be too concerned with it at this juncture.

Congratulations!

Welcome to the world of Ubuntu! Glad to have you here! You should be very proud of yourself and the new computing freedom you've just discovered!

Start getting familiar with the system - explore around, hop online, import your bookmarks, set up your e-mail, etc.

Also, check out the Ubuntu Manual and register on the Ubuntu forums!

In Taking Ubuntu to the Next Level (coming soon!) we'll introduce some of the more awesome and unexpected aspects of Ubuntu, as well as install some killer software.

If you still need some help, reference the videos below:

Hope this helped. Don't forget to check back for more lessons soon!

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-Artifex