ubuntu installation process

When it comes to installing Ubuntu, there are so many useful snippets of information on blogs and guides all over the internet. If you Google “How to install Ubuntu”, you’ll see what I mean.

For an Ubuntu beginner or curious Windows intermediate user however, there’s no single, simple source of information when it comes to trying out your first Ubuntu installation. One thing I have noticed is that there’s a lot of technical jargon and sometimes unnecessary terminal commands in lengthy forum posts, but no simple “how to” guides, which I think might put some people off! A shame, when you think about how easy Ubuntu is to install, use and tweak to look really cool!

This post will talk you through your first Ubuntu installation, hopefully teaching you everything you need to know to give Ubuntu a try without breaking or removing your existing Windows installation. The end result will be a “vanilla” Ubuntu Installation running simultaneously with your Windows installation using either the GRUB bootloader, or WUBI, depending on how far you’d like to go on your first Ubuntu experience.

I hope my guide makes installing Ubuntu an enjoyable, simple experience. By the end of the guide you should have a dual boot Windows / Ubuntu machine that happily plays music, video, and acts as a perfectly usable home office computer with Openoffice 3.0. For the really adventurous you could even run Windows XP inside Virtualbox, which is linked to later on in the guide. The Ubuntu OS is unique and seriously cool, so, enjoy the trip.

If you’re planning on installing the latest version of Ubuntu (Jaunty Jackalope 9.04) you can install Ubuntu straight from the CD inside Windows or from a USB stick and the install process can takes care of formatting your hard drive partition for you. You might not yet have a spare partition to do this, so I’ve covered shrinking your existing Windows partition to make space for Ubuntu here.

How to install Ubuntu from a CD

1) Download the Ubuntu ISO from http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download and save to your desktop

2) Burn the ISO image to a blank CD using Roxio CD creator or similar:

3) Run the CD from “My Computer” – the CD should ask permission to run at which point you’ll see this option screen:

4) If you’d like to install Ubuntu using Wubi, select “install inside Windows” and follow the instructions. Installing with WUBI is ideal for a first taste of Ubuntu as you can remove from add/remove programs in Windows later on. This install process is really easy but you don’t get the same performance as if Ubuntu had a separate partition running on its EXT3 file system. The following screens are all based on the Wubi installer process, so you can follow the rest of the instructions below.

If you’d like to install Ubuntu separately to Windows, then skip to point 7) below.

Here’s what you see next:

If you’ve got the space on your hard drive, go for 30gb or more for the installation size.

5) Now configure your installation using the simple settings options. You can specify the location of the Ubuntu installation on your Windows partition, the size of the Ubuntu installation, the Ubuntu flavour (Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, etc), your preferred language, and a username and password for the Ubuntu system.

When you click install, you’ll see this screen:

As soon as the files have finished downloading, you’ll see this:

6) That’s it! Click reboot now, and select “Ubuntu” on the startup screen. You now have a fully functional dual boot Windows / Ubuntu machine.

If you’d like to install Ubuntu separately to Windows, then follow these instructions:

7) Click “Demo and full installation” and your computer will restart and boot into Ubuntu.

It’s worth saying at this point that you’re about to install Ubuntu on an entirely separate drive partition. That means, you need to make sure you have enough space on your computers hard drive to accomodate the new setup. Keir Thomas found that a partition less than 4gb would lead Ubuntu to crash during install in his first look at Ubuntu 9.04 over at Lifehacker.

Here’s a guide on how to resize or shrink your Windows Vista partition. Follow those instructions before you reboot into the live version of Ubuntu and you’ll have a really easy time during the following steps. Maybe you’d like to install from a USB? Let’s have a quick look at the process of installing from a USB before we continue:

Here’s how to install Ubuntu on a USB drive from Windows Vista:

Format your USB stick with a FAT32 partition from Windows. You can get to the format dialogue by opening My Computer and right mouse clicking the removable drive icon. Click “Format” and follow the settings in the image below. You need a minimum 2gb USB stick.

9) Download UnetBootin. UNetbootin allows for the installation of various Linux/Ubuntu distributions to a partition or USB drive, so it’s no different from a standard install, only it doesn’t need a CD. The coolest thing about the application is that it’s a “portable” app. You don’t need to install it into Windows meaning UNetbootin will run on your Windows PC without “admin” privileges.

The new version of Ubuntu isn’t in the Distribution list supplied with UNetbootin yet, so use the downloaded Ubuntu ISO from earlier on. Add the ISO using the “Diskimage”, make sure your USB drive is selected below and click OK.

The ISO transfers to the USB pretty quickly, so soon after you click OK you’ll see this screen:

10) That’s it – when the installation process is complete, restart your computer and make sure it’s set up to boot from USB. On my HP Laptop, pressing F9 on the boot screen shows a boot order menu. Selecting “USB Hard Drive” follows a black screen, an Ubuntu logo, and finally, your new Ubuntu desktop appears.

Completing your Ubuntu installation, step by step

Installing Ubuntu is so easy that it requires very little effort past this point. If you’ve managed to repartition your hard drive and restart your computer you’ll sail through the next few steps:

11) Click “install” on the live desktop (top left)

12) Choose your language in the welcome screen

13) Choose your location

14) Choose your keyboard layout

15) Set up your disk partition. This is probably the most “technical” part of the installation. When I shrunk my Windows Vista drive volume, I never formatted the new partition, which means the “use the largest continuous free space” option works nicely:

16) Choose your username and password:

17) Migrate your Windows documents and settings

18) You’re now ready to install your new Ubuntu installation

kubuntu installation process

Kubuntu is a user friendly operating system based on KDE, the K Desktop Environment. With a predictable 6 month release cycle and part of the Ubuntu project, Kubuntu is the GNU/Linux distribution for everyone.

Kubuntu is an entirely open source operating system built around the Linux kernel. The Kubuntu community is built around the ideals enshrined in the Ubuntu Philosophy: that software should be available free of charge, that software tools should be usable by people in their local language and despite any disabilities, and that people should have the freedom to customize and alter their software in whatever way they see fit.

If you want to download Kubuntu click here . Afte downloading .iso image from the download link you need to burn a CD after that you need to boot from your kubuntu cd you should see the following screen in this screen select “start or install kubuntu” and press enter.

Now you can see on next screen kubuntu cd is loading

Now your next screen is kubuntu initializing

After loading complete desktop you can see the screen including the two icons like below.Now if you want to install kubuntu just click on install icon on your desktop.

Now you need to select you installation language in this i have selected english and press continue

Next step is you need to select your country and time zone in this i have selected uk as country and london time zone and press continue

Now you need to select your keyboard language here i have selected United Kingdom and press continue

Now you need to create user and assign the hostname for your computer and press continue

Here you can see Hard Disks initializing

Now you need to select how you want to partition your hard disk.In this example i am selecting “manually edit partition table” and click on forward

Now you can See the following screen with the disks available in your machine here you need to create partitions for this you need to select the available freespace and in this example you can see the 8GB of space for this installation here i am going create a partitions you need to right click and select create partition table.

Now you can see the following screen asking for your confirmation to create partition table click yes

Now you should see the following screen with the available space now you need to create a partitions by cliking on create button at the top of the menu

Now you can see the following screen here you can select new size,partition type and click on add.In this example i am entering size as 100 mb and partition type as ext3 and click on ok

Now you need to create another partition using the available space and click ok

Here you can see the two created partitions and click on forward

Confirm the commit changes to your hard disk by clicking on yes

Now you can see the completed changes successfully and click on ok

Here you need to create a mount points by selecting mount point and partition and click on continue

Collecting all the required information for installation in progress

Here is the all the list of information for available for installation here you need to click on install to start the installation.

Creating filesystem in progress

Installation in progress and it shows the copying files percentage.

Installation Completed Succesfully and you need to restart the system by clicking “Restart Now”

Network Configuration in Kubuntu

Most ethernet configuration is centralized in a single file, /etc/network/interfaces. If you have no ethernet devices, only the loopback interface will appear in this file, and it will look something like this:

# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
address 127.0.0.1
netmask 255.0.0.0

If you have only one ethernet device, eth0, and it gets its configuration from a DHCP server, and it should come up automatically at boot, only two additional lines are required:

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

The first line specifies that the eth0 device should come up automatically when you boot. The second line means that interface (“iface”) eth0 should have an IPv4 address space (replace “inet” with “inet6” for an IPv6 device) and that it should get its configuration automatically from DHCP. Assuming your network and DHCP server are properly configured, this machine’s network should need no further configuration to operate properly. The DHCP server will provide the default gateway (implemented via the route command), the device’s IP address (implemented via the ifconfig command), and and DNS servers used on the network (implemented in the /etc/resolv.conf file.)

To configure your ethernet device with a static IP address and custom configuration, some more information will be required. Suppose you want to assign the IP address 192.168.0.2 to the device eth1, with the typical netmask of 255.255.255.0. Your default gateway’s IP address is 192.168.0.1. You would enter something like this into /etc/network/interfaces:

iface eth1 inet static
address 192.168.0.2
netmask 255.255.255.0
gateway 192.168.0.1

In this case, you will need to specify your DNS servers manually in /etc/resolv.conf, which should look something like this:

search mydomain.com
nameserver 192.168.0.1
nameserver 4.2.2.2

The search directive will append mydomain.com to hostname queries in an attempt to resolve names to your network. For example, if your network’s domain is mydomain.com and you try to ping the host “mybox”, the DNS query will be modified to “mybox.mydomain.com” for resolution. The nameserver directives specifiy DNS servers to be used to resolve hostnames to IP addresses. If you use your own nameserver, enter it here. Otherwise, ask your Internet Service Provider for the primary and secondary DNS servers to use, and enter them into /etc/resolv.conf as shown above.

windows vista installation process

This step-by-step guide demonstrates how to install Windows Vista.

The best way to install Windows Vista is to do a clean install. It is not difficult to perform a clean installation. Before you perform the installation I recommend that you check Windows Vista System Requirments list to ensure that your hardware is supported by Vista. If you dont have Windows Vista drivers for all your hardware, it is a good idea to download all the drivers from the hardware manufacturers website and save all the necessary drivers on a CD-R before you start the installation.

Windows Vista DVD is bootable. In order to boot from the DVD you need to set the boot sequence. Look for the boot sequence under your BIOS setup and make sure that the first boot device is set to CD-ROM/DVD-ROM.

Step 1 - Place Windows Vista DVD in your dvd-rom drive and start your PC. Windows Vista will start to boot up and you will get the following progress bar.

Step 2 - The next screen allows you to setup your language, time and currency format, keyboard or input method. Choose your required settings and click next to continue.

Step 3 - The next screen allows you to install or repair Windows Vista. Since we are doing a fresh install we will click on "install now".

Step 4 - You can now type the product key that came with your Windows vista.

Step 5 - If you do not enter the product key you can still proceed with the installation in which case Windows will ask you which version of Vista you have purchased. Windows Vista Home Basic, Home Premium, Ultimate, Business etc. Select the version you have purchased and click next.

Please note, although you can select any version of Windows and proceed to next stage. It is not good idea to select a different version to the one you have purchased becuase you will not be able to activate Windows at a later stage. Windows Vista can detect which version you have purchased once you enter your product key.

Step 6 - Tick "I accept the licence terms" and press next.

Step 7 - Choose the type of installation you want to perform. You will notice that upgrade option is disabled as we have booted from the DVD-R. Therefore we can only select Custom (advanced) option which basicly installs a clean copy of Windows from scratch.

Step 8 - Choose where you would like to install Windows Vista. If you have a new upartitioned hard drive you would get your hard drive listed as shown on the image below. If have have an old hard drive with data or other partitions it will show up as logical drives. You can select the drive options (advaced) to format, delete, or create new partions. Because I am using a single new hard drive i will select next to continue. Windows will create a partition and format it using NTFS files system.

Step 9 - Windows starts the installation process and starts copying all the necessary files to your hard drive as shown on the image below. It will go through various stages of the setup and will reboot your system few times. When your PC reboots it attempts to boot from CD as its the first boot device. Do not press any key during the boot prompt so Windows Vista will continue with the installation by booting from your hard drive.

Step 10 - After installation copy process is complete you are presented with the Setup Windows dialogue box as show below. At this stage you need to choose a user name, password and a picture for your user account. The account you create here is the Administrator account which is the main account for your Windows Vista that has all the privilages. Click next continue.

Step 11 - Now you need to choose your computer name and desktop background. Click next to continue.

Step 12 - Choose wether your want to Help protect Windows automatically. Select "Use recommened settings" to continue.

Step 13 - Review your time and date settings. Select your time zone, correct the date and time and click next to continue.

Next screen presents you to select your computers current location. You can choose between home, work, public location. Choose home to continue. You will finally get a "Thank you" screen which confirms the end of the interactive installation process. This is not the end of the setup process. There are still many after installation configuration to be done. Click next to continue.

Step 14 - Windows now runs a benchmark type of application which checks the performance of your system. You will see a status bar at bottom which shows the progress. Once the process is complete you will be presented with the logon screen.

Step 15 - Finally you have the logon screen. Just type your password and press enter or click on the arrow to logon to Windows Vista for the first time.

Step 16 - Soon as you logon you will be presented with welcome centre. You can use the welcome centre to configure, customise, and update Windows vista.

Step 17 - Finally you need to check if all your hardware has been detected correctly. You can do so by checking your device manager. To access device manager click Start menu -> Control panel -> System -> Device manager. You will see all your hardware listed as shown below. You need to check if you have any yellow exclamtion marks next to the name of the device similar to "USB 10/100 LAN" on image below. This indicates the driver has not been installed for this device.

At this stage you need to install Windows Vista drivers by double clicking on "USB 10/100 LAN" or your device. The properties dialog box will appear. Click on Reinstall Driver. Then you can choose wether you want to install the driver from the internet (if available) or install manually from a CD or other media

Once you have removed all the yellow exclamtion marks from the device manager your Windows Vista configuration would be fully complete.