Saturday, June 9, 2012

How to partition hard drive for installing Ubuntu Linux 12.04

Installing Ubuntu Linux as the only Operating System on your computer. What you will need:
1) A working computer that has a CD or DVD burner - hopefully separate from the computer you are installing Ubuntu on.
2) A blank CD or DVD
3) An Internet Connection
4) ISO burning software so you can create the install CD or DVD
I user IMG Burn as several of my tech buddies do - works really well and is simple to use.
You can download IMB Burn from: http://www.imgburn.com/ or by clicking on the link below:
IMG Burn home page
Download Ubuntu Linux Desktop latest version (current version is 12.04) at time of this writing, from the site below. www.ubuntu.com/download
or click the link to download now: Ubuntu.com/download
Create your ISO CD or DVD Boot disk, If you do not know how, then search the web for it using GOOGLE, BING, or your favorite search engine. Next boot from the Ubuntu media (CD or DVD etc.) - If when you reboot the computer it does not boot to the CD or DVD, then you must set your BIOS to boot from the CD or DVD drive - you will need to search the Internet for that, for your particular computer if you do not know how. When you boot from your Ubuntu CD, you will see a screen asking for install options such as install along with windows, install Ubuntu as only the OS etc. or Do something else. Choose the "Do something else option". Now the partition tool will open. You can see the unallocated space on the hard drive. Select that space by clicking on it and click on Add. Add the SWAP partition - Give the swap partition space about 1 or 2 GB, I chose 2000 MB (close enough, if you want to be exact use 2048 MB. If you have over 3 GB of RAM, a 1GB swap file may be large enough. Select SWAP in file system dropdown.Press "OK". Next you may want to add a BOOT partition (for faster speed of good practice [Google it if in doubt], Adding the boot partition - When selecting the "boot" space, select the unallocated space, Click, Add, use approximately 4 GB, 4000 MB is close enough, you can allow more if you have plenty of hard drive space. If you have over 250 GB hard drive, it would not hurt to allow approximately 5 GB for the boot partition. Select, file system as the latest (fastest) "ext4" and the mount point as "/boot" from the drop down menu. Finally you will need to add the Ubuntu user space partition. For the final partition, select the remaining space Select filesytem as ext4 and mount point as /. Once you have set up the partitions, Click on Install. The install only takes a few minutes, depending on if you choose 3rd party apps. For a faster install don't enable downloading of 3rd party apps and updates I chose to install the 3rd party apps but received an error, your outcome may vary. I hope you have a good Ubuntu installation experience should you be ready!
If you don't have any blank CD's, here is a link to Office.Max.Com - CD's. Verbatim - 50-Pack 52x CD-R Disc Spindle 96164