Linux, mhm. Options

[emberfly]

What is it? Yes, it's an operating system, but what's special about it?

How do you download it? What happens once downloaded? Any side effects?

I saw everywhere i looked that it was free, but that's basically all I could find out :(

Could you please explain more? Research has failed me.

[HeartOfPandora]

Before you do anything, defrag Windows and run the Disk Cleanup (I actually prefer CCleaner as it's way more thorough but the standard cleaner works fine for this). This is just to make sure your PC is running as smoothly as possible.

First off you'll need a fresh rewritable disc with at least 700MB of usable space. Navigate to the download page, pick your mirror and choose to Save the ISO to your desktop. You'll also need a CD burner and programme, which you open the ISO with and burn the image to the CD on the slowest, most thorough setting possible (to be super specially careful nothing goes awry).

After the image has been burned - keeping the CD in the disc drive - power down your computer. Start it up again and if your computer is set up correctly the CD should take over and you'll be directed to the menu where you can set up Ubuntu. If it boots straight into Windows, you'll probably need to change your boot order, and you can read up quickly on that here (you'll need the table on that page to know how to get to the menu).

After you've changed the boot order (if necessary), power down and back up again and you should get the Ubuntu menu. I strongly recommend running the test to see if your CD in perfect working order. You can do the memory test if you like, but it's not necessary and I did it once and it took nearly 4 hours, so... If you like, you can also view the environment without installing to see if you even like it or not. You'll need about 384MB of RAM for that to run smoothly, so if you have a slightly older computer I don't suggest it.

Go ahead with the installation and follow the prompts until you are asked "How do you want to partition the disk ?" From here you can choose to partition the harddrive automatically, but I suggest "Manually edit partition table." The next screen will list all of your current partitions.

• Select the partition you want to resize (usually the largest one which is the Windows default partition, don't touch the FAT32 partitions) and press Enter.
• Select "Size:", press Enter.
• Select Yes, press Enter.
• Type in a new size in Gigabytes for your partition, it's recommended you free up AT LEAST 10 GB of free space for your Ubuntu install.
• Press Enter when you are happy with your changes.
• It may take some time to apply the changes.
• Create a swap partition of at least your amount of RAM (if you don't know, 2000 MB is a good value).
• Create a partition for your Ubuntu installation, at least 10 GB.
• Select "Finish partitioning and write changes to disk".

Finish installing and when you reboot, take out the Ubuntu CD before your computer can detect it (but not before you power down).

Now, in order to get the grub menu I mentioned (allows you to select which OS you want to boot in to), you'll need to go here after you've installed Ubuntu and change around the system file as it tells you. If you don't add this line of code, it'll automatically boot you into Ubuntu every time so remember this bit!

This site has images from the actual install process and shows what to expect when you're installing, so if you want to take a look I'd just skim through the article or simply look at the pictures and read their captions. Your menus will look a teensy bit different (the tutorial is for the previous version), but all the words and information will be exactly the same.

If you have any other questions, feel free to PM me or whatever, other contact info is on my profile. I'll also lurk here just in case. :)