So You've heard all about Linux, but don't really know how to download it, install it, or pretty much anything to do with getting started? Well the aim of this tutorial is to make the process a little easier for beginners. Originally I was going to write out a long step-by-step guide, but then I thought to myself videos would probably be much easier to follow. So after searching Youtube for a while I've found a collection of videos that I think will do just fine on explaining how to install Ubuntu. What is Ubuntu you ask? Basically its a distribution of linux. Check out What is Linux? for a slightly more in depth explination. The videos do leave a Few things out, though, so I'll be sure to expand on the topics they cover.
Downloading:
Downloading is pretty straight forward and shouldn't require any more explination. The video does talk about getting an older version with more support, but in my opinion that really isn't needed. The newest version of Ubuntu gets regular updates too, so for me thats not really an issue. I would go with the newest.
Burning to a CD:
This video is using a Windows program called ImgBurn to burn the file onto a CD, but you can use whatever program you like using to do this, like Nero. What we are doing is creating a Ubuntu Live CD. A live CD is basically an operating system on a CD. The entire thing will run off the CD and not touch your hard drive. A huge benefit of this is that you can give Ubuntu a test run without actually installing it or risking messing up anything on your computer. To boot into the Live CD you will need to put the disk in the CD drive after it has finished burning and restart your computer. If all goes to plan, a menu should come up and you will want to choose the option that says something like "Run or install Ubuntu." If you get booted into Windows instead of Ubuntu you will need to change your BIOS settings to boot from a CD. After googling for a bit, I found This site that should explain how to do that if you don't know how. Once Ubuntu has finished loading you are now ready to install.
Installing:
I think this video does a nice job of explaining this step, but I just want to expand on what the partitions mean. If you want to keep your Windows instillation intact then you will want to install Ubuntu to a new partition. What this means is that when you boot up your computer it will ask you if you want to boot into Windows or into Ubuntu. Pretty cool, eh? The installer tool is pretty straight forward. It will ask you how much of your hard drive you want to dedicate to each partition. A safe bet would be to do 50% to each partition, but, again, its up to you.
Thats basically it, but I do have a few concluding remarks. If you are planning on keeping your Windows Instillation, like I just explained ("Dual Booting"), then you will want to defragment your computer first as step one to be on the safe side. Also, as always, it is probably a good idea to back up all of your important data just in case something goes wrong.
