the edge of logic and intuition

As Ubuntu 10.04 ‘Lucid Lynx’ was released a couple of days ago I’ve downloaded it and done my first installation! (honestly, the things I’ll do to avoid working on an Open University assignment…) I already had 9.10 on that computer but decided to overwrite it with a fresh install – there’s an ‘Upgrade’ process available but having had a bad experience with this in the past (flaky internet connection from my ISP dropping halfway through and I had to do a clean install anyway) I’ve always installed from CD (or USB) since then and this also ensures I have a live CD to hand in case of someone asking about Ubuntu, needing to recover files from a Windows system, etc.

Anyway the first part of the installation process is as below – if you are coming to this page via a search then hopefully the below and subsequent posts will be useful.

Before setting up

Having downloaded the ISO disk image and burnt it to a CD (or USB if your BIOS supports it and you don’t want to or can’t use a CD) boot from the CD. It may need the boot order to be changed in the BIOS settings as sometimes hard drive is the ‘primary’ boot and then it will not get a chance to read from the CD. This is different on different machines but accessing the option is usually from one of the function keys (the boot screen will tell you what to press).

If you have any data already stored on the machine in question, make a backup of it before continuing if you are unsure. Even if it’s stored on a separate partition and you don’t intend to do anything to it, it’s possible for some sort of mistake to happen, so be warned!

Initial boot

Once it boots from the disk there will be a screen similar to the below (on some systems there may be a more basic looking menu with options such as ‘Try Ubuntu’, ‘Install’ or ‘Check memory for defects’ with some additional language options etc). Choose either ‘Try’ (I would recommend this option if it’s your first run of 10.04, as this will allow you to check things such as wifi / wireless internet functionality, graphics drivers etc without overwriting anything on your system) or ‘Install’. Select a more appropriate language if the one you want isn’t already selected.

I chose to ‘Try’ as it was my first run of 10.04, so the OS will run from the disk and into RAM rather than install anything from the hard drive.

They’ve made some user interface changes compared to previous versions, the ‘Human’ red and brown is gone and has been replaced with more grey and purple type of colours. Very regal. I’m not sure I’d describe it as an improvement but this is obviously down to personal preference. Anyway, once the OS has booted, the 10.04 interface is as below.

I opened the internet connections dialog (the ‘broadcast’ symbol on the left of the group of icons in the top right bar) and selected my wireless network. The dialog box below is from my wireless connection and doesn’t appear by default but you can see the desktop and icons.

The wifi connected without any problems and with a good signal. This was done using a D-Link wireless USB stick (not a mobile dongle) which I plugged in after booting and it was still recognised.

The above is showing the network connection (also yay for recursion as I have now spotted the previous screenshot on my desktop!)

I played around with a few more of the features checking that everything worked OK then started the install process: icon “Install Ubuntu 10.04 LTS”. LTS = Long Term Support and means security updates etc will be released for 3 years from release date (normally it is 18 months if the release isn’t LTS).

Installation process

The installer now gives a series of screens with various options that need to be input.

Firstly to select a language that the installer will work with and the options will be localised to. You can select a different language from the one chosen on the initial boot – for me English is still OK so I kept this.

Then to choose a location, this controls settings such as the time zone, localisation and software repositories. I am in the UK so selected United Kingdom and checked that the displayed time was correct.

Then select and test a keyboard layout. I have a UK keyboard and it suggested this by default, but another option can be chosen. I always make sure to test characters I know can be problematic, such as the @ and ” characters as these are the other way round on a US keyboard and can produce unexpected results.

Partitioning and formatting the drive(s)

Now we are ready to choose where to install the operating system to. Depending on your exact setup, what you see here will differ a bit from mine. The section at the top shows what you currently have as partitions, what file system they use and their size. The colours aren’t significant other than to distinguish the partitions.

In my case, I already had an installation of Ubuntu 9.10 which is the blue (first) section below. Also a partition for /home (green – 2nd section) and swap (red – last section).

When I installed Ubuntu 9.10 I wiped Windows from the machine and completely reformatted it. Now I want to overwrite the Ubuntu 9.10 and keep /home and swap as they are (one of the reasons I have set up a separate /home partition is so user data and settings can be maintained when I install a new release – I don’t think the installer gives you a separate /home by default but it’s easy to change).

This is perhaps the most error-prone bit of the installation so by paying attention to what it is telling you and showing you it should be possible to avoid any mistakes here, the moral of this one is to check and double check what you are doing!

The option I want (format and overwrite the Ubuntu 9.10 partition and keep the others) doesn’t come up by default so I choose ‘Specify partitions manually’.

Obviously if the option you want (install alongside an existing OS (Windows would come up here if it detected an installation of Windows) or completely overwrite) is available then you don’t need to ‘Specify manually’ but still can, e.g. to create a separate /home partition.

The next screen shows the current allocation of the partitions and and option for changing or deleting them. In the screenshot below, /dev/sda is the physical hard drive (sda1, sda5 and sda6 are logical partitions on it) and /dev/sdb is a removable USB thumb drive which is not part of the installation – it’s just a storage device. If you have any memory cards or USB sticks etc plugged in which you don’t need for the installation, you could remove them to be sure of not corrupting any data.

By selecting each partition (on sda) in turn and choosing ‘Change…’ I set it up as below. I want to format the sda1 (currently Ubuntu 9.10) and mount it as root (/) which is where the OS will be stored. sda5 is my home partition which I want to keep (not format) but isn’t mounted by default so I select to mount it as /home. sda6 is swap space which is recommended especially for systems with less RAM. This particular PC is an older Pentium 4 with a relatively small RAM so I chose to have a separate swap partition, you don’t have to.

The dialog to edit a partition looks similar to the below. The partition size, file system, whether to format (**this will erase any data already on the partition**) and where to mount it to are selected here.

In this case I have a 20GB partition for root (basically OS installation) and do want to format it first. I chose 20GB (out of a 80GB drive) to allow plenty of room for installed programs that are additional to the main install and so I can potentially split this partition later (possibly to put Ubuntu 10.10 there??)

For home partition I selected the options as below.

Once all the options have been set I have a summary as below.

Setting up a user

Once the partitions are decided on, the next step of the installer is to set up a user. It asks for name (obviously you can put anything you like, it doesn’t have to be your actual name), username, password, name to identify the computer (e.g. Janeway or Laptop or whatever you like) and how you would like login to be handled.

It doesn’t specifically state this in the user interface, but if like me you have a previous installation of Ubuntu and a separate /home partition you may want to set up a username that corresponds to the existing one on /home so that the ‘old’ user on /home will apply directly to the new user you set up (i.e. when you log in, you will ‘automatically’ become the user you were before with all your associated files etc). This is a huge timesaver if you had programs installed that use profiles etc in your home directory, such as Mozilla Thunderbird, as it means you can usually just install and open Thunderbird and your email and accounts will be there. Same for Firefox and browsing history etc.

The installer will then give a summary of the locale, language, disk formatting and partition changes etc and a warning that the partition changes you have set cannot be undone if you made a mistake, once you commit the changes. So ensure the summary is correct for what you want to do (I learnt this the hard way a long time ago – note to self – don’t drink and install!)

Installing to disk

Once you hit the Install button, the installer will then run through the process committing the changes to disk (and formatting etc where necessary). Depending on your computer it can take a little while to run the installer, mine took about 20-25 minutes to copy all the files. During the installation it will display a progress bar and some information screens about the various features. (quality of the ’screenshot’ below is not too good as it’s actually a photo of the screen, by this point I did not do an actual screenshot so as not to interfere with the install process). At the time of taking the photo the info screen has some text about F-Spot photo manager.

Once it’s copied all the relevant files etc it will then produce a dialog box confirming it is complete and asking you to reboot. Remove the disk and restart as normal. Depending on what you selected for login options (go straight to your user, prompt for a password, or whatever) the login manager will respond accordingly. I selected prompt for password so upon booting from the hard drive it then gave the user selection and password box.

I’m now into the installed version of Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx!

It’s really quite straightforward (if you have reasonably normal hardware etc especially) to install particularly as the Live CD gives the option to try things out before committing yourself and does have some improvements over the previous versions of Ubuntu including newer versions of some of the programs, user interface ‘tweaks’ and perhaps the most noticeable an increased integration of social features such as Twitter, Facebook and Flickr into the OS.

Next post on Ubuntu: new features and user interface / GUI exploration.