In Part 1, we talked about getting your hands on a copy of Ubuntu. I will assume that the mailman has just dropped off your new Ubuntu CD’s or you have a freshly burned coaster disk in your hot little hands. With this in mind, let’s proceed.
Booting From The Ubuntu CD
To start your Ubuntu installation, you need to boot from the Ubuntu CD. This is will be either the easiest or the hardest part of the entire installation. Start by starting up your computer and putting the Ubuntu CD into your CD-ROM drive. Next, shut down your computer and restart it. If, after a number of seconds you see something like this on your screen, you have successfully booted From The Ubuntu CD.
If you get errors mentioning a missing operating system or if your old computer system comes up, you have not booted from the Ubuntu CD and you need to make some changes to your BIOS. This is often where things start to go off the rails because most users are not accustomed to making changes to the BIOS and many systems are hard to get into the BIOS settings. In fact, each system is different. At this point, I would recommend checking your montherboard manual or computer manufacturer’s website for instructions specific to your system. If you do not have a motherboard manual, you could check for information on this site.
Side Note: If you are new to using the BIOS and would like to get a feel for it, here are some BIOS simulators that are available on the Internet:
Once you are familiar with your computer’s BIOS, set it to boot from the CD-ROM by designating it as the first boot device and saving your BIOS settings. Make sure the Ubuntu CD is still in the CD-ROM drive and restart your system to bring up the Ubuntu boot menu.
Checking The CD For Defects
Once you have booted from the Ubuntu CD, you want to make sure that the CD is free from defects. These defects can occur when the CD is burned or from scratches that can appear over time. Do this by selecting Check CD for defects with your arrow keys.
This will force the CD to go through and check every file on the disk to ensure that they are not damaged.
Starting the Live CD
From the Ubuntu boot menu, select Start or install Ubuntu. This will start the Ubuntu live CD. A live CD is live a demo version of an operating system. It has much of the functionality of the fully installed version of the operating systems but it all runs from the CD.
Note: Because the live CD runs entirely from the CD-ROM drive, it will be very slow. This is normal and is not an indicator of how quickly the operating system will run when it is installed on your computer.
After the CD has whirred away for a while, the live CD desktop will appear. This is your opportunity to play around with Ubuntu before you actually install it on your computer. Anything that you do with the system while running it from the CD is temporary. That means that if you screw something up royally (not that I’ve ever done that!), all you need to do is power off your computer and reboot from the CD. It will return to its initial pre-screwed up state.
To Be Continued…
In Part 2, we went through the process of confirming the CD is not damaged and we started Ubuntu in the live CD state so that we can start to familiarize ourselves with it.
In Part 3, we will start the actual install of Ubuntu onto your computer’s hard drive. This is the point of no return folks. I suggest you take the rest of the day and backup everything on your hard drive so that you don’t lose it because your old system is going to be completely wiped! See you next time.
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March 28th, 2007 at 5:18 pm
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