This post will begin the series on the newest release of Ubuntu. For more information on Ubuntu Hardy Heron, read my post from last Friday, “Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04 LTS Released” or go to the Ubuntu website.
Since I already discussed the new features in the new version of Ubuntu, I figured the next logical thing would be to show how to install Ubuntu Hardy Heron. Don’t worry, it isn’t nearly as hard as you might think. In fact its probably easier to install Ubuntu than Windows (usually faster too 
).
Loading ...To begin you should download Ubuntu from the download page (click here). Choose ‘Desktop Edition‘ and ‘Standard personal computer‘ unless you plan to install the server edition or the 64bit edition. Then choose the mirror closest to you. If there is more than 1 server close to you, try downloading from a couple to see which is the fastest. Remember that the download is ~700MB so it will take several minutes to download depending on your download speed.
After you download the Ubuntu .iso you need to burn it to a CD. If you are unsure how to do this please look at the posts “How to Burn an .ISO File Using Ubuntu…” or “How to Burn an .ISO File Using Windows XP“. Once you have burned the ISO to CD you are ready to continue with the installation.
Next reboot your computer and have it boot from the CD drive. The Ubuntu start screen should appear and ask you to choose a language. Choose a language by pressing ‘Enter’. Then choose ‘Try Ubuntu without any change to your computer‘.
After a few minutes Ubuntu will be in “live cd” mode. Here you will be able run Ubuntu nearly the same as if it were installed on your computer. This allows you to test your hardware and play with Ubuntu before installing it. If you have already tried Ubuntu, or know that you want to install it and skip the live cd mode, you should choose, “Install Ubuntu”.
At this point your screen should look something like this:
Once you are ready to install Ubuntu, simply click on the “Install” icon located on the desktop. If you are left with a black screen or any error messages, you should probably check out the Ubuntu forums for help.
Once the installer opens you should see the following screen:
The installer is again prompting you to choose a language. Once you have selected a language, click Forward.
Next, the installer will ask you to choose a city in your country and time zone. From this it will determine the correct time zone. Again, when ready to continue, click Forward.
At the next screen, choose your keyboard layout. These layouts are based on country and keyboard style. For most people, “USA, USA” will be the best choice. Once again, click Forward.
The next screen is where things can start to get a little tricky. Basically, there are 3 different options. Ubuntu can shrink your current partition (if you already have an OS installed, such as Windows), use the entire disk, or you can choose to setup your partitions manually.
If you already have Windows installed and do not want to lose any data, choose the guided setup to resize your current partition. BACKUP YOUR DATA TO BE SAFE!
If you already have an OS or data on your hard drive, and want to ERASE ALL DATA, choose the guided setup to use the entire disk.
If you need a specific configuration, choose the manual install.
I usually choose a manual setup since I dual boot Windows and Ubuntu. Below is my usual partition scheme:
Windows- (~20GB), formatted NTFS
Boot partition- (~250MB), formatted EXT3
Ubuntu- (~20GB), formatted as EXT3
Swap partition- (~1GB, since I have 3GB of RAM), with the swap format
Then, whatever hard drive space is left is usually formatted with NTFS (for storage) so that both Windows and Linux can read and write to it.
Once you have decided on a partitioning scheme, click Forward.
Now you should see a window asking you for a name, username, password, and name of the computer.
Just fill in the information making sure to remember your username and password. All of these settings can be changed after the install is complete. Click ‘Forward’ to continue.
Last but not least you are at the final screen in the install. This is just a summary of the configuration so far. Be sure to take a quick glance at this to make sure your settings are correct. When ready, click ‘Install‘.
A status bar will appear to show you the status of the installation. Typically the installation takes anywhere from 15-45 minutes depending on how fast your computer is and which partitioning scheme you chose. If you chose to resize your hard drive, this will take a substantial amount of time (a couple hours). However, if you are installing on the entire disk or to a formatted partition, the install should be fairly short.
And at last you are done! Simply click ‘Restart now’ to restart your computer.
Before it completely restarts it will ask you to eject the CD so that it will boot off the hard drive again.
This completes the installation of Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04.
For more information, check out these links:
Installing a Dual-Boot with Windows and Ubuntu
NOTE: The two links above may be for different versions of Ubuntu but the install process is very similar.
Let us know how your installation went in the comments…
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Written by Eric
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May 11th, 2008 at 5:15 am
Well done. A useful explanation to show how easy the Heron really is.
Now just take a Ubuntu disk and get each of your Windows suffering friends to give it a whirl.
If enough of us did that we could wipe out Gatesware in a year.
May 13th, 2008 at 7:51 am
I agree, i will send this link to a few friends who are having windows problems!