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Installing Ubuntu desktop for Dual Booting with Windows

 

 



 

Introduction

Ubuntu is a Linux distribution published by the canonical team. The term ‘Ubuntu’ is an ancient African word meaning ‘humanity to others'. Ubuntu is a freely available desktop operating system that is easy to use. There are other versions of Ubuntu that are targeted for Servers, IoT and Cloud as well. In this article we are going to focus on installing Ubuntu desktop on a personal machine.

Why Ubuntu?

There can be several reasons for a person to use Ubuntu as their Operating System on the machine they use. The first obvious point is that is free to use. Therefore, some people may like to use this for their computational tasks. Some people can have use cases that will require a Linux system (or a UNIX like OS) such as programming in C or android platform development (which can be harder or impossible to perform on a Windows environment). For those people, a Linux distribution will be a good option (Since other UNIX like Systems can be cost prohibitive for most people).  There are many other good Linux distributions available. But, for a new entrant into the Linux world, Ubuntu will be a good choice since it has an easy-to-use Graphical User Interface which most novel users will find useful. Plus, it is one of the most used and well supported Linux distributions in the world.

 

This article is mainly intended for dual booting Ubuntu alongside Windows. However even if you are installing Ubuntu alone the installation section and the section for setting up BIOS/UEFI will be useful to follow.

 

Installation

 

Pre-requisites

1.       At least 25GB of storage space 

2.       At least 2Ghz dual core processor 

3.       At least 4GB of RAM 

4.       A USB flash drive of at least 8GB 

5.       Another working machine to download and create the bootable USB drive. (The same machine to setup Ubuntu to dual boot can be used for this) 

6.       A working internet connection.

 

Preparing the bootable USB drive

 

  1. Get a USB drive and format it. If you are on Windows, you can locate the USB drive on file explorer and right-click and select format.
  2. Download the Rufus tool which is recommended by Ubuntu to create the live image.
  3. Download the ISO image for Ubuntu desktop from Ubuntu website.
  4. Connect the formatted USB drive.
  5. Launch the Rufus tool.

  6. In Rufus tool, set device to USB drive and boot selection to the downloaded .iso file (the live image).

 

Dual Booting with Windows

There is a good chance that you already have a Windows version running in your machine. In that case, you might prefer to dual boot Windows alongside Ubuntu. Follow the below steps for that purpose in Windows 10.

1.       Boot into windows. 

2.       Launch the Disk management tool. (Press start, and type ‘create and format hard disk partitions’ and select the tool.)


3.       Select the partition that you want to Shrink ( In this case it is the C partition) and right-click it  and select ‘Shrink Volume’

4.       In the window that appears next, enter the amount to shrink (here, select an amount to shrink that will give Ubuntu its minimum required disk space and make sure that you have enough disk space for Windows after shrinking) Once shrinking is complete, it will be marked as unallocated. 

  

 

Installing Ubuntu on the Machine

Once you have created the live USB foe Ubuntu and a partition freed up, you can proceed to install Ubuntu by connecting the live USB disk.

1.       Shut down the machine, connect the USB drive and start the machine. 

2.       While starting, enter the BIOS/UEFI. For this you will have to find the key combination to enter BIOS/UEFI. This will be different from vendor to vendor. For example, in most HP devices this will be to repeatedly press F10 button while booting up. 

3.       Once you get into the BIOS/UEFI menu, find the boot options (This might be called different names on different vendors. You will have to find a list of options for booting from Hard Drive, USB, CD/DVD). Give ‘Boot from USB’ option the top priority. Moving the item to the top of the list will make it higher priority. Then save any changes. Note- Remember to bring down the priority back down after installation.

4.       Boot up the machine again. This will boot up from the USB and will show Ubuntu installation options. 

5.       Out of the options, select ‘install Ubuntu’. 

6.       This will guide you through the setup to install Ubuntu. Select a keyboard layout and select normal installation. For dual booting, select ‘Install Ubuntu  alongside them’ (This option will be not prompted if you do not have any Operating Systems currently installed.) 


7.       In the popup click continue.

8.       Select your location on the map. 


9.       Enter the Name when requested This will automatically fill the details, Computer’s name and username. (You can change these if you prefer or proceed with the filled details) Enter a password and confirm it. You will need to store this password in a secure place since this will be the password for Superuser/root as well. 

10.   Click continue and wait for ubuntu to be installed.

 

After installation.

1.       Once the installation is completed, a request will be given to remove the USB. To this remove the USB and press enter. 

2.       If you have Windows installed the machine will most probably boot into windows. Restart the machine and enter the BIOS/UEFI setup. 

3.       In the boot order, move the boot with USB to a lower priority and Ubuntu partition up to give it the top priority. This will show a boot menu at startup. If Windows is given top priority, there is a chance that a boot menu might not show up during bootup. This is because apparently in some systems which came with windows pre-installed, the Windows partition takes precedence even when other Operating Systems are installed.

4.       Once the boot order is setup, save all and boot again. If the setup is successful, a boot menu will be shown with all the Operating Systems available.

 

Well done! Ubuntu is now installed on your machine and ready for use.

 

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