My Fresh Ubuntu 7.04 Beta Install

I have been just updating versions by changing my sources.list file to the new names. This doesn't allow me to see the new installer options and the such, so I have decided to start clean. My system configuration is basically a AMD Duron 1.8 Ghz, 1.0 GB RAM, 128 MB ATI Radeon 9200, a 30 GB Western Digital primary drive, and a 80GB Western Digital data drive for documents, pictures, and music. My goal is still to dual boot on the 30GB drive with Windows XP, but only allocating 15 GB to Windows as I'm using it less and less. So here we go.

Step 1. Download Ubuntu 7.04 Beta ISO.

Step 2. Burn the ISO to a CD.

Step 3. Restart computer with CDrom set to bootable

Step 4. When menu comes up, select Install (First Option)

Step 5. After the Ubuntu screen comes up, double click the Install icon on the desktop.

Step 6. Choose your language, timezone, keyboard layout

Step 7. Step 4 of the installer is the disk partitioner. There are 3 options but I'm going to select Manual since I want full control of this process and I want to keep my Windows partition intact. The Prepare Partitions screen comes up. First I'm going to resize my Windows NTFS partition. I click on it and click the "Edit Partition" button. I encountered a problem trying to resize my Windows NTFS partition on hda1. I will therefore just check the box to format my existing 8 GB EXT3 partition (hda2) and then try to resize after install is completed. So, I edit the EXT partition and make the mountpoint root (/), click the format box next to it and click the forward button.
If you don't have Windows on the hard disk your going to install Ubuntu on then proceed to use the entire disk.

Step 8. The next step is an optional Migrate Documents and Settings. This will migrate your Windows settings to Ubuntu if Windows is found on your system. You can drop down specific options by clicking the triangle. I'm just going to select Firefox since that's all I want to move over. The fields listed below are for creating an Ubuntu user to migrate the settings to . Fill them in and click forward.

Step 9. Now your going to create your user profile. If you created a user on the previous screen to migrate settings to, then create the same user here. Also, select a computer name for later use on a networked system.

Step 10. Ready to Install! Verify the listed information is correct and click Install. It took me about 15 minutes to install.

Step 11. Click the Restart Now button to reboot. You will see the system shutting down and then a prompt at the bottom of the screen will ask you to remove the install CD from the drive and then click return.

Step 12. When your system restarts a menu will be presented to give the option of which Linux kernel to boot or to boot into other Operating Systems on your computer.

Step 13. Next, the login screen will be presented. Log in with the username and password you entered in the install process.

Step 14. The Ubuntu default desktop will load. If the screen resolution doesn't look correct, then click System > Preferences > Screen Resolution. Select an appropriate resolution and refresh rate and click apply. If the screen looks good, click keep resolution.

Step 15. You will now notice that an orange asterisk shows up at the top of the screen. This means that updates are available. Right click on the icon and select "Show Updates". A menu will appear that shows available updates. Go ahead and leave all check marked and click the Install Updates button. The updated software will now download and install to your system. After the software installs, a blue revolving arrows icon may display on the top panel indicating that you need to reboot. Click the icon and select "Restart Now"

Step 16. One last recommendation after installing Ubuntu is to enable all the software repositories for future updates. This can be done by launching Synaptic and going into the Settings > Repositories. Under the Ubuntu Software tab make sure all boxes have been check marked except for Source Code. Under the "Updates" tab, check mark all the boxes.

The previous steps were the main steps to getting your Ubuntu Operating System installed. Future posts on this blog will address many other aspects of Ubuntu and Linux/Open Source Software details.