Booting from an Ubuntu Desktop CD is as easy as inserting the appropriate Desktop CD into your system’s CD drive, restarting your system, and making sure that the system boots from the
Caution
If your pC boots from the hard drive even if the correct Desktop CD is present in your CD drive, you’ll need to modify the boot order in your BIOs settings. The boot order is the sequence in which available devices are searched for bootable disks when your system is powered on. To do this, turn your computer on and press the key on your keyboard that gives you access to the BIOs. This is typically either the Delete or F2 key on most modern systems — if not, the key that you’ll need to press is usually identified at the bottom of your screen when you turn on your computer and it first starts up.
Depending on the type of BIOs your computer uses, boot order settings are usually stored in an advanced settings or Boot screen, which you can navigate to using the arrow keys on your keyboard. press return to display this screen once its name is highlighted. Once this screen displays, use the down-arrow key to navi-gate to the First Boot Device or CD Drive entry, and see the help messages at the right side of the screen for information about how to make your CD Drive the first boot device. You can then press the esc (escape) key to exit this screen, and press F10 to save the new settings, exit the BIOs settings screen, and reboot. n
When you boot from the Ubuntu Desktop CD, you’ll initially see a screen like the one shown in Figure 2-1.
Figure 2-1
The initial boot screen on the Desktop CD
If you do nothing when you see this screen, your system will continue booting from the Desktop CD and will eventually display the screen shown in Figure 2-2.
Figure 2-2
The default Desktop CD try/install screen
Once you see this screen, you can optionally use the scrollable list at left to change the language that the Ubuntu Live CD or the Ubuntu installer uses. You can then either:
Click “Try Ubuntu 10.04” to boot into Ubuntu Linux without making any changes to
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your computer system. This allows you to experiment with Ubuntu without making any changes to your system (generally referred to as test-driving). The Live CD desktop is shown in Figure 2-5, later in this section. Experimenting with Linux after booting from a Desktop CD is described in the section, “Test-Driving Ubuntu Linux,” later in this chapter. Skip ahead to that section for more information.
Click “Install Ubuntu 10.04” to install Ubuntu Linux on your system. Installing Ubuntu
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on your system is described in the next section, entitled “Installing Ubuntu Linux from a Desktop CD”. Skip ahead to that section for more information.
Tip
If the screen shown in Figure 2-2 displays a link that says “update this installer”, you may want to click that link to ensure that you have the latest version of the installer. If you do not update the installer, the installa-tion process will still work correctly, but may offer slightly different installainstalla-tion opinstalla-tions than those that are discussed in this section. similarly, updating the installer may introduce dialogs that are slightly different than those discussed in this section, but which should still provide the same capabilities. n
If you press any key on your keyboard while the screen shown in Figure 2-1 is visible, the screen shown in Figure 2-3 displays.
This screen enables you to specify the language that you want to use when booting or installing Ubuntu from the Desktop CD. This highlights one of the great features of Ubuntu — it is truly designed for and committed to an international audience.
Figure 2-3
Specifying a language when booting the Desktop CD
To continue, use the cursor keys to select your language and press Return. If you do not select a language within 30 seconds, English will be used as the default language. The traditional boot menu for the Live CD displays, as shown in Figure 2-4.
Figure 2-4
Boot options from the Ubuntu Desktop CD
This screen is similar to the boot screens for the Ubuntu Server/Alternate CDs (discussed in Chapter 3) and older versions of the Ubuntu Desktop CD. This screen enables you to select whether you want to boot from the Desktop CD to try Ubuntu, install Ubuntu, test the CD for defects, test your system’s memory, or ignore the Desktop CD and boot from the system’s first hard drive.
To boot Ubuntu Linux on your system so that you can experiment with it without making any changes to your system (generally referred to as test-driving), press Return or wait 30 seconds, at which point your system will automatically boot from the Desktop CD. If you’re booting from an Ubuntu Desktop CD, the standard Ubuntu Desktop displays, as shown in Figure 2-5.
Figure 2-5
The standard Ubuntu desktop from the Desktop CD
Once you’re running Ubuntu from the Desktop CD, you can:
Install the distribution from the Desktop CD as described in the next section.
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Test-drive Ubuntu using the menus that are available in the upper-left corner of the
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screen and the sample files provided in the Examples folder.
Experimenting with Linux after booting from a Desktop CD is described in the section, “Test-Driving Ubuntu Linux,” later in this chapter. When test-driving Ubuntu, you can practice run-ning specific applications and even experiment with installing and configuring the software that is discussed in the remainder of this book.