RM Jones’ Adventure

This is a step by step installation for beginners (like me).

I have been “playing” with Linux off an on for the last two or three years. I put it in, have problems, and take it back out. I don’t like Windows Vista so I am a little more determined this time. I believe that Ubuntu / Kubuntu 8.04 “Hardy Heron” is ready for the average person so I am writing this for the complete beginner. Please remember, there are a lot of ways to do what I am doing here. This is my way. I am a beginner and am making this as much as a record of what worked for me as I am to provide you with information. Please remember, this is what I did to set up my HP Pavilion a1140n computer. It may be a little different for you but probably not much. I wrote this step by step as I was doing the procedures on the computer I was setting up. I hope this helps.

1. Do not enter the ” ” when you are told to enter information.
2. Download Ubuntu 8.04 at http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download . You want the “8.04 LTS Desktop Edition”. You can also buy a CD for a small price if you prefer.
3. You now have to burn a CD and this is different from one burner to another. What you want to remember is you want to “Burn an image” not the normal procedure you would do to copy a file to a CD.
4. Make sure you have as much free space on your hard drive as you can get if you are going to duel boot.
5. Open the CD drive door and then turn off the computer.
6. Insert the Ubuntu 8.04 CD into the drive and close the door.
7. Restart the computer.
8. Select your Language.
9. Select “Try Ubuntu without any change to your computer”.
10. Double click on “Install”.
11. Select your language.
12. Using the map (which is kind of touchy) or the drop down list, select your city.
13. Select your Keyboard layout and test it in the box if you want.
14. The partitioner will now start and it takes a short while so be patient.
15. Now come the part where you have to make a decision. I have had problems in the past trying to get my external drives working the way I want them to. I found that if I used the “Manual” installation instead of the “Guided” I could avoid this problem. The “Guided” is pretty straight forward but the “Manual” is easy if you understand it and since this is the only way that meets my needs this is what I will detail here.
16. Select “Manual” in the “Prepare disk space” window and click “Forward”.
17. Wait while it Scans the disks. I recommend that you set up at least three partitions. One is for the “Root” partition, one for the “Home” partition and the last is the “Swap” partition. This will allow you to keep your data and other files free from the main program area and allow you to protect it if you re-install later. Since I am not going to duel boot I now deleted all partitions on the drive. This won’t be complete until you tell it to so you can undo any decisions up to the time you make the “final” decision to complete the installation.
18. Here you have to do a little calculations. You must know the size of the hard drive you are going to use and how much RAM that you have. Just about everyone will have a different way to do this. This is my way and works for me. I have 2 GB of RAM so I want a “Swap” of two times that amount. I will use “4000″ megabytes for my Swap so I subtracted that from my hard drive size. Then I decided to use about one third of the remaining disk space for the “Root” partition so I will set that to 82000 megabytes and my “Home” to whatever is left.
19. Click on “free space” for the drive you want to use, mine is under device “/dev/sda” then select “New partition table”. In the window that opens select “Primary” then enter the size of the “Root” partition that you want to create. Select “Beginning” . Make sure that “Use as” is set to “Ext 3 journaling file system” and select “/” as the “Mount point” and make sure that the “Format the partition has a check mark in it so the drive will be formatted. Click “OK”.
20. Click on “free space” again and go through the same as above except this case enter the size of the “Home” partition that you want and select a mount point of “/home”.
21. Now it’s time to set up the “Swap” space and it is a little different.
22. Click on “free space” again and this time leave the “New partition size” at whatever it is. Mine is 39999 megabytes. Select “Logical” for the “Type for the new partition” and set the “Use as” to “swap area”. You will not have to set a mount point this time. Click on OK.
23. If you have any other internal disk drives they will be shown on the list. I recommend setting them up now to save a LOT of work later.
    1. Click on your first internal drive. It will have a device name of something like “/dev/sdb1″ and a type of “ntfs” or “fat32″. Make sure you select the partition (with the number at the end) and not the drive which in my case would be “/dev/sdb” (doesn’t have a number at the end).
    2. Select “Edit partition” and in the window that opens don’t change the partition size. Select a “Use as” that is the same as the original “type” on the previous window. Mine is “ntfs”. In the “Mount point” enter the mount point you want to use. I used “/media/Data” since this is going to be my “Data” drive. I like to keep my data on a totally separate drive. This mount point will make the partition easy to access later. IMPORTANT; make sure that the “Format the partition” IS NOT checked if you don’t want to format the drive. Click “OK”.
    3. Repeat for all of you other internal hard drives but make sure to change the name of the partition when entering the mount point. For example you may want to use “/media/Backup” or whatever. Just make sure to start it with “/media/”.
    4. Repeat the procedure for all of your external drives as well.
24. After you have all the drive information completed click forward. The changes won’t be made yet so you don’t have to worry about that.
25. The next window will allow you to put in your full name, the name you want to use to log in (I wouldn’t advise using capital letters for the log in name), a password (don’t forget it) and a name for your computer. Then click “Forward”.
26. WARNING; On this screen you will be shown what is about to happen. Make sure it is what you want. When you click “install” it will complete the installation. Make sure it is correct.-
27. Select to “Restart” the computer when the installation is completed.
28. Remove the CD and press “Enter’.
29. You Ubuntu is installed and will reboot into the Ubuntu system.

That is enough for now. I’m going to post part 2 in a few minutes so check it out also. Thanks for stopping by.

Bob Jones