Once loaded, Ubuntu will provide the option to try out Ubuntu without installing, or to perform an installation to a hard drive: As long as the Ubuntu CD or USB drive is still inserted, you should find that Ubuntu boots instead of Windows. Select the "Save and Exit" option from the BIOS main menu and allow the system to boot. Note that the BIOS in some older systems do not support booting from a USB device. Find the setting for the boot sequence, and if it shows your hard disk as being the first device to boot from, change this so that either your CD/DVD drive or USB device appears as the first device in the boot order. Press whichever key you are instructed to press and you should find yourself in the BIOS setup menu. Early in the boot process the BIOS will display instructions to enter BIOS Setup (which often, but not always, involves pressing DEL or a function key).
To achieve this, restart your system and watch closely as the system boots. If your system reboots once again as Windows then it is likely you will need to change the boot order in your system BIOS. To run Ubuntu from the CD/USB flash simply insert the CD or flash drive into your computer and reboot your system. This essentially means that the operating system can be run from a CD or USB flash drive without having to be installed on your hard disk drive. The Ubuntu image you now (hopefully) have in your possession is able to run as a Live Image. If you'd like to try Ubuntu without having to install you can easily do so. If this is the case and you are new to Linux then there is a good chance you don't want to install Ubuntu until you've had a chance to try it out for a few hours, days or weeks.
There is a good chance you already own a PC which is probably running Microsoft Windows. From within this window, select the version of Ubuntu from the drop down menu that matches the image previously downloaded:
Once the installer has been downloaded and launched, and the license agreement accepted, the main screen should appear.
This tool is currently only available for Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 and can be downloaded from the Pendrive Linux web site at: In order to write the Ubuntu image to a USB drive, the Pendrive Linux Universal USB Installer is required. This has the advantage that Ubuntu will boot and run in live mode much faster from a USB flash drive than from a CDROM drive. Writing the Ubuntu Image to a USB Flash DriveĪs previously mentioned an alternative to booting from a CDROM is to write the Ubuntu image to a USB flash drive and then boot from that.
The download will take the form of a single ISO image file which may then be burned onto a CDROM, written to a USB flash drive, or used as an image for a virtual machine.Ĭheck the documentation for your preferred CD writing software or current operating system for steps on how to write an ISO image file to a CD if you do not already know how to do this. Having made an appropriate architecture choice the download may be initiated by clicking on the Start download button. Details of this installation process are covered later in this chapter and in the chapter entitled Installing Ubuntu 10.x on a Windows Disk with Wubi. Alternatively, if you have a 64-bit processor you can use either the 32-bit or 64-bit version of Ubuntu, though for general use, Canonical recommends the 32-bit system for both 32-bit and 64-bit hardware.Īnother option is also provided to use the Ubuntu Windows Installer to install Ubuntu alongside an existing Windows installation. If your computer contains a 32-bit processor then you must use the 32-bit edition of Ubuntu. This can take the form of either a 32-bit or 64-bit version of Ubuntu. The next choice involves a decision about the architecture of the operating system. Though this book will cover aspects of Ubuntu that are common to all three editions of the operating system, the main focus will be on Ubuntu Desktop Edition. Contains only those packages that are essential for server systems allowing high performance with minimal complexity and resource usage.