Lets Install

OK, you now have an idea on how partitioning works and the different ways of installing Ubuntu on your PC. So lets go ahead and install.

You will need to boot up off the CD to follow the steps (either on your real PC or virtual PC). Once the desktop loads its time to hit the Install Icon on the desktop and you should see something like this:

Select the Language you wish to use and hit forward: You will see:

Select your time zone: Please note – you can ZOOM in to help click and select your area: then hit forward.

Select your Keyboard Layout and hit Forward:

Now this is the Part that you need to know what you are doing. If you are using a virtual machine this is what it will come up with above: it is OK to leave the defaults as is to let the install allocate the right settings. You can play around more if you have a dedicated hard drive and want to allocate different sizes to different mounts/folders. Here are a couple more screen-shots from different environments:

This above is a dedicate Hard drive allocating 3.5 gig automatically to it:

Above has 2 physical discs: 1 40 gig seagate IDE hard drive and 1 60gig western digital SATA hard drive, hence the /hda and /sda

The re-size option above allow you to re-size a drive for you, so you can allocate a part of a drive to linux, leaving the rest as is. This is handy for very large drives or a pc that only has one hard drive and you want to share it with windows (dual boot). Moving the slider sets the partition size. So whatever above is your setup, hope this helps to understand how it all works.

Now this is a new feature on Fesity, but to be fair, I have only seen it work once. I have only seen it work when you re-size the Master C for windows and share it with Ubuntu. What is does is scans the local drive c for account and settings and helps you migrate over the information from your windows profile. I personally would not recommend it. Just think – all the crappy windows issues coming over too? If you have seen this work and work well, please let me know how and what it did. I would just leave this and click forward.

This is where you create you initial account: Choosing a name, desired log-in name, password and then password again, an a PC name. Then Hit Forward:

This is now the FINAL page, giving you a heads up on what is about to happen, what drives are going to be re-sized,wiped and configured. The regional settings and language, after you hit INSTALL, there is no turning back. So are you sure you backed up? Hit Install.

Now it runs through the install process:

When you get to this screen, you are all done: Select Restart now (hold thumbs) and wait for the System to start up. Take note: by default if you are using a Dual boot method, Ubuntu Linux will be made the default at start up. So if you walk away – it will automatically start-up Ubuntu. If you want it to default to Windows then Keep an eye on this site – will show you how a little later. In the meantime you will need to select windows at start-up if you want it.

OK that was it: Log in using the user-name and password you chose in the set up process and experience your new Desktop.

Next up….. Post install: Configuring updates, extras, passwords, settings and more.

Ready to install?

OK, so you have had a look around and are now ready to start the install process. Have you Backed up?

There are different ways of installing Linux on your PC, to name a few:

1. You are using Linux on its own and the machine has only the one hard drive in the pc (this is the best for first timers that are worried about loosing windows and data) you can also do it this way by unplugging any other drives in your machine (paranoid) so it just leaves the drive you want to erase and work with, then swapping over when you want to go to windows (really paranoid).

2. Dual Booting – one hard drive. – This installation will RE-SIZE your hard drive that contains windows and uses the remaining disc space that you select as spare for Linux. This will give you a GRUB (boot-loader) menu that will allow you to select if you want to start Ubuntu Linux or Windows on start-up. If there is anything important in Windows or on this drive, it is important that you back this up. I have never had a problem when it re-sizes the drive (but if the power goes out and you have not UPS) there is a change that it can cause a corruption and the drive will need a format.

3. Dual Booting – more than one hard drive: – this is the same as above in a sense – you will have a choice or either resizing one of the hard drives in the machine (does not have to be the windows drive) or you can actually use a “whole drive” separate form the windows drive, or a partition that you have set aside on a drive that can be erased and used for linux. This too will create a GRUB menu at startup to select the Operating system you want to load up at start up.

4. Then another favorite for beginners of Linux – is to install withing windows (yuck) a copy of Vmware server : Freely down-loadable from vmare.com – a free registration to get the install key for it (free of charge). Installing this software will allow you to install a VIRTUAL PC of Linux inside / on top of, the windows operating system. This will reserve a selection of disc space (8gig if you accept defaults). This is another very safe way to give the Ubuntu Linux system a good testing without taking a chance of damaging your systems data.

So you will need to decide which option is best for yourself, depending on you knowledge of PCs, hard drive structures, partitions, and a little Linux know how. I would like to give you a brief explanation of how the hard drive are seen and the name given within Linux so that it helps with your install, you can reference back to this a little later so make a note of this:

By convention, IDE drives will be given device names /dev/hda to /dev/hdd. Hard Drive A (/dev/hda) is the first drive and Hard Drive C (/dev/hdc) is the third. This applies to IDE hard drives not SATA or SCSI drives!. So if you had say a 80gig hard drive on its own and it was split into to partitions of 40gig each you would have something like: /dev/hda1 and /dev/hda2 – meaning partition 1 and partition 2 or the Hard Drive A /dev/hda…… make sense? So if you had 2 hard drives in your machine they would be /dev/hda and /dev/hdb === if they each had been split into 2 partitions then: /dev/hda1 ; /dev/hda2 ; /dev/hdb1 ; /dev/hdb2 so it is straight forward. All you need to remember is Under windows which drive is the primary A and the secondary B. Here is a link to a website that shows this all in table form as well as explains things for more advanced setups like logical drives (having a few) and understanding how they would be seen. Click HERE for the Information.

Once you got your head around this then we can begin…… on new post.

Great – now you have a copy of Feisty!

Ok, so the download is completed, you have an iso of the cd, now what? Well for the users who do know what to do with this file, ignore this bit:

Burning the CD: Now you have an ISO file of the CD, an image of the install cd that is, you can now write that information to a cd, so that you can boot up off of it. All you need to do is grab you favorite cd burning tool, ie nero in windows is my favorite and select to burn an image from file. You just need to find the .iso file you downloaded, pop in a blank cd and let Nero write that information to cd. Once this is complete you are ready to have a look.

The CD of Feisty fawn is bootable and also a Live version – which allows you to boot into Ubuntu linux without having to install. You can have a look around at the system and see its features and the tools that come with the cd, all without having to write anything to your hard drives.

Go on – pop the cd into your cdrom and reboot the pc. You will notice a boot menu, just leave the defaults and hit enter to start the system up. Once the system is up and ready to use, it should look something like this:

So now you are here, have a bit of a play around – have a look at the default tools and applications, use firefox web browser (much better than IE) and surf the web. You may come across a few websites needing plugins, ie Flash and Java, it should be straight forward to install plugins, but if you are not sure, dont bother right now: I will cover this later on in the series.

In my next post…….. Installing the Ubuntu system. A note: if you are going to run Ubuntu alongside a windows machine, as in Dual Booting it, I would recommend a backup of all your important data – JUST IN CASE. I have been down the “loose all your data” route before, not saying I will lead you that way, but you may have a slightly different configuration of hardware than I and it may cause and issue with my steps being followed .

Ok So… in the meantime

Ok here is a recommendation of my favorite linux – go ahead and download the new (well sort of new) latest version of Ubuntu 7.04 called Feisty Fawn. You can grab yourself a copy for

PC: Ubuntu Feisty Fawn X86
PC AMD / 64Bit: Ubuntu Feisty Fawn AMD 64bit
The mirror I am using is based in the UK – very quick, but if you are not in the UK then follow this link and select a closer location to yourself: Ubuntu Downloads