How to install Ubuntu : The Ubuntu Installation Guide

When it comes to installing Ubuntu, there are so many useful snippets of information on blogs and guides all over the internet. If you Google “How to install Ubuntu”, you’ll see what I mean.

For an Ubuntu beginner or curious Windows intermediate user however, there’s no single, simple source of information when it comes to trying out your first Ubuntu installation. One thing I have noticed is that there’s a lot of technical jargon and sometimes unnecessary terminal commands in lengthy forum posts, but no simple “how to” guides, which I think might put some people off! A shame, when you think about how easy Ubuntu is to install, use and tweak to look really cool!

This post will talk you through your first Ubuntu installation, hopefully teaching you everything you need to know to give Ubuntu a try without breaking or removing your existing Windows installation. The guide uses Wubi to install Ubuntu, from Windows. That way, if you decide you don’t like it, you can uninstall Ubuntu straight from Windows add/remove programs! If you decide that you want to keep the install, there’s a method to move the wubi installation onto its own partition. I’ll be blogging about that soon.

I hope my guide makes installing Ubuntu an enjoyable, simple experience. By the end of the guide you should have a dual boot Windows / Ubuntu machine that happily plays music, video, acts as a perfectly usable home office PC and runs Windows XP from inside the Ubuntu OS while looking unique and seriously cool. All of your friends will want Ubuntu! Good luck!

Here’s what you’ll need to know:

How to install Ubuntu from Windows Vista using Wubi

Here’s how to get started:

1) Go to http://wubi-installer.org/ - the home of Wubi, the Ubuntu installer. Run Wubi!

If you’ve got the space on your hard drive, go for 30gb or more for the installation size.

2) Now configure your installation using the simple settings options. You can specify the location of the Ubuntu installation on your Windows partition, the size of the Ubuntu installation, the Ubuntu flavour (Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, etc), your preferred language, and a username and password for the Ubuntu system.

When you click install, you’ll see this screen:

As soon as the files have finished downloading, you’ll see this:

3) That’s it! Click reboot now, and select “Ubuntu” on the startup screen

How to set up your wireless network

Next, we’re going to set up the wireless network. By now you should have correctly installed Ubuntu and after a restart and a login, you’ll see a desktop a little like this:

What next? Before you do anything else you’ll need to connect your PC to a wireless network.

How to connect to your wireless network in Hardy Heron

Connecting to your wireless router so you can access the internet is pretty easy. Here are the steps:

1) In the top menu, click System>Administration>Network - you’ll see a dialogue box like this:

2) The network settings dialogue will appear (that’s the box on the right). Click “unlock” and key in your password. Now, highlight the wireless connection, and click the properties button on the right.

3) The dialogue on the left should appear (wlan0 properties). Click “enable roaming mode” and click ok. Now close the network settings dialogue.

4) Next, you need to click the wireless logo in the top right hand of your screen. A small menu will appear. Click the wireless network you want to join and you’ll see this dialogue appear:

Just key in the WPA / security details of your wireless LAN and click connect. Ubuntu will connect to the network straight away

How to install a Nvidia display driver, and generaly get going with proper graphics performance

Next we’ll look at how to set up your Nvidia display driver, and how to instantly tweak the graphics performance of your new installation.

Nvidia drivers don’t seem to be open source like many other drivers for Ubuntu. All that means is that they don’t share their source code (closed source) in the way that Ubuntu developers need to be able to make things better, more usable and all that other stuff they like to do. Even if I’m wrong about the statement I just made there, Nvidia drivers are referred to as “NVIDIA closed source binary drivers”. That sounds a bit frightening. It might explain why your Nvidia doesn’t have a driver installed and ready to go when you first boot Ubuntu. Either way, installing a driver is easy and not at all frightening.

How to install your Nvidia driver

1) Go to System>Administration>Hardware drivers

I’m afraid you’re going to have to ignore all that “risk” business if you want to trick up your Ubuntu installation…

2) Click on the “Enabled” check box and follow the instructions…

3) Eventually you’ll see this message. Time to restart your computer.

When you’ve restarted your machine, it’s time to start thinking about putting your new driver to good use. Let’s get the default visual effects set up correctly:

4) Go to System>Preferences>Appearance and select the “Visual effects” tab and select Extra

Your machine will instantly “feel” more responsive and you’ll notice the full use of your graphics card is being utilised. Try moving a window - fun, isn’t it! “Wobbly Windows” is a feature of Compiz and we’ll be looking at how tu use Compiz to create a desktop cube environment next.

How to install Compiz Fusion (the 3d desktop environment)

Compiz is a seriously powerful extension to Gnome (basically the GUI for Linux). It’s been possible to create extra desktops in Ubuntu for a long time, but with Compiz you can switch between them via a three dimensional cube, which is actually very usable and seriously cool. Amaze your friends with Compiz by showing them your machine doing tricks like this:

Installing Compiz from hardy Heron is extremely easy. In fact, you already have it installed in Ubuntu Hardy. If you have an earlier version of Ubuntu, follow these instructions. If you have Hardy, read on…

Compiz is already installed but you need access to the advanced settings manager to activate the cube and cube rotation. You’re going to install a package called: compizconfig-settings-manager. Installing it in Hardy is easy -

1) Go to Synaptic Package Manager (System>Administration>Synaptic Package Manager) and do a search for compizconfig-settings-manager. Check the install box and click apply.

2) if you go to System>Preferences you’ll see that a new menu item has appeared - “Advanced desktop effects settings”. Open the menu.

This is the compiz settings manager, the place where you activate all of the cool tricks. There are so many fiddly little settings to play with that it would be impossible to write about them all. I’ll leave you to break discover them yourself. There are however some really important ones to switch on that are worthy of note and will provide an important first step:

3) Under “Desktop” check “Desktop Cube”. There are lots of settings inside this module, but for the time being leave it checked

4) Underneath the desktop cube checkbox, check “Rotate Cube”.

If all goes well, then holding down CTRL>ALT and the right hand mouse button should instantly zoom you out and display a three dimensional desktop! Mouse around and it will spin up and down and from left to right. The rest, I leave to you. enjoy

How to install Virtual box and run Windows XP from Ubuntu

Virtualbox is a virtualisation package for Linux originally developed by Sun Microsystems. It’s an incredibly powerful and easy way of being able to run Windows XP or Vista from Ubuntu. The last part of this guide will talk you through the process of installing Virtualbox, after which we’ll look at installing Windows XP. Running XP inside Ubuntu has so many benefits, like file compatibility, using active-x in internet explorer and lots more.

Here’s a few shots of my PC running Ubuntu and Windows XP, BBC Iplayer and Microsoft Office 2007. Click the images for a full size view:

I took the screenshots while Compiz cube was in mid-rotate. Looks good doesn’t it? Performance wise, Windows XP starts up just as quickly if not slightly quicker than a standard installation if you have a powerful machine. Just goes to show what a great operating system Linux can be.

How is it done?

Installing Virtualbox is quite straightforward. There’s a simple process to follow to get up and running with your XP virtual machine. That process looks like this:

1) Install Virtualbox using Synaptic package manager

2) Add your user profile to the vboxusrs group so Virtualbox will work

3) Create a virtual machine in Virtualbox

4) Install Windows XP (from CD in this post) on your new virtual machine

5) Booting your virtual machine from the Windows XP installation CD

Installing Virtualbox using Synaptic Package Manager

Open Synaptic (System>Administration) - search for “virtualbox-ose” and install.

Add your user profile to the vboxusrs group

Once Virtualbox is installed, you’ll have to add your user profile to a group created by the install process called vboxusrs. Time to start using Terminal - here’s the command:

sudo adduser [your username] vboxusers

Create a virtual machine in Virtualbox

You’re now ready to start the application (Applications>System Tools>InnoTek VirtualBox) - here’s how it looks:

We’re going to create a new virtual machine called WinXP-2 so you can see the process from start to finish. There are about 8 steps to follow, begin by clicking the “New” button.

The virtual machine wizard dialogue. Click next to get started, give the new machine a name and select the type of OS you’re going to install.

Give the new machine a name and select the type of OS you’re going to install.

Create a “dynamically expanding image” - if you use up all the available space the disk image you’re creating will expand.

Now select the actual size of the image. This is how much virtual hard disk space you’ll have to play with when you first boot the machine. When you click next you’ll be given a summary of what’s happening so far.

You’re now taken to the Virtual hard disk dialogue and your new hard disk has been created and should display in the drop down. Click next. You’re given one final confirmation and that’s it, click finish.

Booting your virtual machine from the Windows XP installation CD

Clicking finish will take you back to the virtualbox user interface. Clicking “start” will initiate the first run wizard. There’s no need to use the wizard, actually it’s quite important to get used to the settings dialogue.

To be able to get your virtual machine booting from an XP install cd, we need to mount the CD/DVD drive. Click the settings button and you will see this window - click the CD/DVD-ROM tab.

Make sure you select the “Mount CD/DVD Drive” checkbox.

While you’re in the settings window, familiarise yourself with the different tabs. Particularly, “Network” - it’s worth taking a look and making sure that the “cable connected” check box is selected - which enables your new virtual machine to get an internet connection. When you’re done, click OK.

Finally, with the Windows XP installation CD in your drive, click the start button. With any luck you’ll see a new installation happening right in front of you!

Once you’ve got XP completely installed, you might want to install the guest additions ISO, which will allow you a full screen resolution and a lot of compatibility between Ubuntu and XP. I’ve just written a post about this here. I hope you enjoy your new Ubuntu PC!

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