Installation of Ubuntu 6.06 LTS in 10 steps, with focus on partitioning your Hard-Drive
7 09 2006Ok this really should have been my 1st post, but well.. Anyway, the Ubuntu installation, despite its graphical interface may be a little daunting, especially if you intend to dual-boot, like me, and need to edit the partition table manually.
1. Accuire Ubuntu, either get a FREE!! CD delivered from Shipit, or download and burn the ISO image from the net, either way, now you insert it into your disk drive, and reboot
2. If you are lucky, after step 1, the Ubuntu Live CD will boot, this will NOT make any changes to your PC.If it doesn’t, you need to change the boot order on your PC, when your PC starts up, it will tell you that ‘Del’ or ‘F12′ or something will bring up the boot menu. Change the menu so that your computer will boot from your CD drive before your hard drive, then restart your PC.
3. You should use this opportunity to see if Ubuntu will work on your PC, check sound, Internet and all that kind of stuff, including externally connected peripherals. If you intend to use an MP3 player with Ubuntu, wait until you have installed it to set it up, its not too difficult to do. Also with WiFi, you may need to install a thing called ndiswrapper, so don’t be too worried if it doesn’t work
4. Now that you have made a decision to install Ubuntu, lets get going! But 1st, I would recommend making a backup of any important files on your hard-drive, especially if you intend to partition it. I didn’t, and i haven’t lost anything, but its still recommended.
5. From the live CD run the install Ubuntu option. The 1st few steps are self explanatory, until you get to the Hard drive part, where you want to install Ubuntu. If you intend to leave Windows behind altogether, you can tell the installer to format your hard drive and install Ubuntu there. This is why a back up is essential in some cases. Selecting this option WILL ERASE YOUR HARD DRIVE!! The reason for this is that Ubuntu uses a hard drive differently to how Windows does.Windows uses NTFS and Ubuntu, ext3. I won’t boggle you with what they mean, just remember that they are different. If you don’t mind losing all of your unbacked up data,and Windows, then fire ahead with this option. Otherwise, read on.
6. Selecting the option, “Edit the partition table manually” will bring you to the partition manager, a partition is a section of your disk and with this tool you can section off your hard drive into a Windows part and a Ubuntu part, then when you turn on the PC, you will be given a choice to boot either Windows or Ubuntu. OK, on entering the Partition manager, go to your main Windows partition, its the big one, and resize it, which will leave free space for Ubuntu to install, MAKE SURE YOU DON’T DECREASE YOUR WINDOWS PARTITION TO SMALLER THAN THE SPACE TAKEN UP ON IT.Then go to create a new partition, this will be your main Ubuntu partition, so from the drop down menu, select ext3 as the format, but don’t use all the free space on the disk, leave some, you will find out why in a second.
7. After you have created this partition, you will need to create another partition, called a SWAP partition, this is hard drive space that acts like extra RAM, Windows, calls it virtual memory. The recommendation is 1 and 1/2 times your RAM, although i used 512MB on a machine with 1GB of RAM and it works fine. This partition should not be ext3, rather Linux-swap. OK now you have your windows partition made smaller and your two other partitions, time to move on
8. Now you will be shown a list of all partitions on your disk, an what you are going to designate them as. Your main Ubuntu one (the ext3) one, should be simply ” / ” and your swap partiton as swap, strangely enough!
9. OK, nearly there, you may be asked whether or not to install GRUB, definitely click yes! This is the program which will let you choose between Ubuntu and Windows.
10. Now once everything is done, restart your PC and voila,you should see GRUB and your choice of a couple of different Ubuntus and also Windows, use the top Ubuntu, and don’t pay any attention to the others, and there you are, enjoy!
Note: If you encounter difficulties, try the wiki here or the Ubuntu Forums, here
After installing all of steps as you showed, I had a problem.When I install, system requir username and password and I have typed.
After that, when I restart PC. The system continually require Username and password. A silly thing that I type right what I declared at the installation steps but it has a error:
“The system administrator is not allowed to login from this screen.”
Can you tell me why?
I’m not sure whats done wrong there i’m afraid, but it sounds like something simple. maybe try asking at ubuntuforums.org in the absolute beginners forum, the community should be able to help
Hi
I tried to install ubuntu dapper drake, but when I need to partition I get problems.
I choose all my partition sizes seizes etc, but when I choose to create them it comes up with an error saying either “error” (Yes, just that), or unable to create partition of that size or something and sometimes it just hangs.
Any ideas. I am doing everything right I think. This installation is for my laptop with ntfs file system and windows home. On my desktop I have some years ago succesfully installed mandrake with windows xp pro.
I had the same problem when i attempted to partition my external hard drive, i set up everything but for some reason it just wouldn’t let me, i havent gotten around this problem so im afraid i cant help!
Your links for if you encounter difficulties are dead, and give 404 errors.
All fixed!