There are several ways to use a Desktop CD to install Ubuntu on a computer system:
Boot from the CD, wait until the screen shown in Figure 2-2 displays, and click “Install
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Ubuntu 10.04.”
Boot from the CD, press a key while the boot screen shown in Figure 2-1 displays,
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set your language, use the arrow keys to select the “Install Ubuntu” option, and press Return or Enter on your keyboard.
Boot from the CD, press a key while the boot screen shown in Figure 2-1 displays,
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set your language, and press Return or Enter on your keyboard to boot using the “Try Ubuntu without any change to your computer” option. Once your system boots using the Desktop CD, double-click the Install Ubuntu 10.04 icon on the desktop.
These two mechanisms run the same installer to permanently install Ubuntu on your computer system. The instructions in this section describe how to install the Desktop, or end-user, version of Ubuntu from an Ubuntu Desktop CD, such as the Ubuntu Desktop CD that is included with this book. See Chapter 3, “Installing Ubuntu on Special-Purpose Systems,” for information about install-ing other versions of Ubuntu Linux, such as the Ubuntu Server or OEM distributions, which require that you obtain a different installation CD from the Ubuntu web site. For an overview of the different Ubuntu CDs, see the section of Chapter 1, “The Ubuntu Linux Project,” entitled “Ubuntu CDs.”
Caution
If you are installing Ubuntu onto a system on which another operating system is already installed, make sure that you have backed up any data that you want to preserve to removable media such as a CDrOM, DVD, UsB flash drive, and so on. If you want to continue using that operating system, the Ubuntu installer does a great job of automatically re-partitioning your disk so that you can boot your computer system into either your existing operating system or Ubuntu, but nothing is perfect, and “soft” is a big part of “software.” It is completely impossible to have too many backups of your critical data. If your computer system already has another operating system installed on its hard drive(s) that you want to preserve, the Ubuntu installer will automatically offer to resize the existing operating system partitions and install Ubuntu as an alternate oper-ating system on your machine. n
You’ll need to supply a few pieces of information during the installation process so that Ubuntu is correctly configured for your system, language, and geographic location. The installation process is as follows:
1. The dialog shown in Figure 2-6 prompts you to specify the location and associated time zone where you will be using your computer. This value is used to further customize the language that you specified in the previous screen by using the appropriate date and time formats, numerical conventions, and currency values for your geographic location.
If the time zone that is initially displayed is incorrect, click the map in your approxi-mate location, or select a time zone or city from the Zone pop-up menu. Once you’ve selected an appropriate time zone or city, click Forward or press Return to proceed to the next screen.
Figure 2-6
Specifying your geographic location
2. The dialog shown in Figure 2-7 prompts you to specify the type of keyboard attached to your computer. The default value is based on your settings on previous screens — if this is incorrect, click “Choose your own” and select your keyboard type from the full list of supported keyboard types. You can enter sample text into the text area at the bottom of the screen to verify that the correct symbols are being displayed as you type. Once you are sure that the correct keyboard is set, click Forward to proceed.
Figure 2-7
Specifying your keyboard type
3. The dialog shown in Figure 2-8 enables you to select where you want to install Ubuntu.
This dialog looks different and provides different options depending on how the disks in your system are currently configured and what partitions they already contain (if any). Figure 2-8 shows the screen that you would see if you were installing Ubuntu on a system where no operating system is currently installed.
Figure 2-8
Specifying where you want to install Ubuntu
The option that you want to select on this screen therefore depends on the current state of your system’s hard drive(s), how many hard drives are present in the system, and where you want to install Ubuntu. Your options are as follows:
If you are installing on a new computer system or hard drive, the “Erase and use the
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entire disk” option will be selected, as shown in Figure 2-8.
If you are installing Ubuntu on an x86 or 64-bit PC system on which an
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ing system is already installed and do not have unallocated space on your disk, the “Install them side by side, choosing between them each startup” option will be selected, as shown in Figure 2-9.
If your system already contains an operating system but you do not want to preserve
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it, you can select the “Erase and use the entire disk” option to erase your existing operating system and install Ubuntu on the entire disk on which it was located. The image of your disk at the bottom of the screen will be updated to illustrate that you will be using the entire disk, as shown in Figure 2-10.
If your system contains multiple hard drives, they will all be listed in this dialog.
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Select the disk upon which you want to install Ubuntu.
Figure 2-9
Suggested partition resizing in order to install Ubuntu
Figure 2-10
Deleting an existing operating system in order to install Ubuntu
If you have unallocated space on your disk that is large enough for your Ubuntu
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installation, select the “Use the largest contiguous free space” option.
If you are an experienced Linux user and want to manually specify how to
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tion your disk, select the “Specify partitions manually (advanced)” option, and see the sidebar entitled “Manually Partitioning a Disk” for additional information about using the manual partitioning tools provided by the Ubuntu installer.
Once you have selected the appropriate option for your system, click Forward to con-tinue. if you are resizing an existing operating system in order to install Ubuntu on your system as a dual-boot system, you may see a dialog notifying you that changes have to be written to your disk. Click Continue to proceed.
4. The dialog shown in Figure 2-11 enables you to provide personal information that will be used to create your account during the installation process. This account will have the abil-ity to execute privileged commands on the system, as explained in the section of Chapter 4,
“Basic Linux System Concepts,” entitled “Performing Privileged Operations in Ubuntu.”
Figure 2-11
Specifying information about your account
The three options at the bottom of this dialog enable you to specify how your system will start up. Depending on the resolution of the monitor on the system where you are installing Ubuntu, you may need to scroll down to see all of these options:
Log in automatically:
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L Your system will start and automatically use the account that you specify on this dialog to log in and display your default desktop
Require my password to log in:
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L Your system will display a generic login screen on
which you must select or enter the name of the user that you want to log in as. Once you enter that user’s login name and password, the system will log you in and dis-play your default desktop.
Require my password to log in and to decrypt my home folder:
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L Your system will
display a generic login screen on which you must select or enter the name of the user that you want to log in as. Once you enter that user’s login name and password, the system will log you in and display your default desktop. The difference between this and the previous option is that your home directory will be stored in an encrypted fashion while you are not logged in, so that no other users can possibly view its con-tents without your password.
After you have filled out all of the fields on this form, click Forward to proceed.
5. A special intermediate screen displays if another Linux operating system was detected on your system and you are preserving that operating system. You will not see this screen if you are installing Ubuntu on a new system or are installing on a system where you are deleting any previously installed operating systems.
If any customized account information, such as e-mail settings, browser bookmarks, and so on, was found in that operating system installation, this dialog offers to copy it to the new installation that you are creating.
If no custom settings were found, the dialog simply reports this, and you can click Forward to proceed to the final installer screen. If any account information was detected and you want to copy that information, select the account(s) in this dialog, and click Forward to proceed to the final installer screen.
6. The Ubuntu Desktop installer displays the screen shown in Figure 2-12, which summa-rizes the information that you have supplied on previous dialogs. Click Install to proceed.
Figure 2-12
The summary dialog for starting the installation process