Installing Ubuntu [Linux] - A tutorial for Newbies

The first step to install Ubuntu was to creat a partition on my existing hard drive. There are two ways how you can do it in vista:

1. In built 'Shrink Disc' feature in Vista
2. Use a disk partition software to do it for you.

Ubuntu or Mint comes with an inbuilt disk partitioner. What is required is a unallocated free space on your hard drive so that it can be partitioned while installing Ubuntu.

1. Making Space using "Shrink Disc" feature in Vista:
a. Log on to Vista.
b. Right-Click on "My computer" in the main menu and select "Manage"
c. It will ask for administrator password, enter it and click "allow"
d. Click on Disc Management.
e. There is will show the available partitions and external storage devices if any
f. Right Click on the disc partition you want to shrink and select "shrink volume"
g. Vista will assess how much space can be made free.
h. It will suggest the value which can be made free. Be sure that this is at least 10-15 GB. If you dont have this space, you will have to delete some data to make space for the partition.
i. Then select "shrink"
j. Vista will shrink the volume and show the new freed space as "unallocated" space.
k. After this close the window. You are done with shrinking

2. Making Space using a Disk Partition software:
a. I had problem that vista used to say "access denied" when I tried to shrink the main C: Drive (I had only on partition )
b. So I used a Free Disk Partition Software to shrink the space.
c. You can use the following software: EasyUS partition Master-Home Edition which you can download here: http://www.partition-tool.com/
d. Using this it is easy to create space for a new partition.
e. Using the above program, select the partition you want to shrink/resize
f. Using the "Resize" tool you can shrink the volume and the rest of the space would be shown as "unallocated space"
g. Apply the changes and you are done

The next step is to install Ubuntu

1. You will need to download the latest ISO for Ubuntu or Mint from here:
http://www.linuxmint.com
http://www.ubuntu.com

2. You will need to burn this ISO image on to a CD (700 MB or more).
3. For burning this ISO you will have to use an ISO burning software. One such free software is: Free ISO burner: http://www.freeisoburner.com/
4. Be sure to burn the ISO image at a very slow speed. This extra time spent will help you install Linux trouble-free.
5. When the disc is ready, restart the computer. Be sure that in BIOS setup the CD drive is above the hard disc in boot priority.
6. Once restarted the disc will boot before the hard disc.
7. In the menu that is displayed, select "run installer" and follow the instructions.
8. Once you have selected language, Location and Keyboard configuration....the disk partitioner of ubuntu will run and show you various options as to where Ubuntu should be installed.
9. Select "Largest continuous free space" as this will select the "unallocated space" that we have created in the earlier step.
10. After this follow the next instructions to complete the installation.
11. The installation will prompt you to import the settings from Vista. If you want do import these.
12. I preferred not to import as it will copy the documents from Vista partition to the new partition of Ubuntu and just eat up the partition space. You can always access the vista documents from Ubuntu as Vista partion will be shown as a hard disk in "My computer".
13. Complete the installation. It will prompt to restart the computer. Do so.
14. After restart, the menu will show Ubuntu and Vista a dual boot OS and now you are free to choose the OS you want to load.

Using Windows software on Linux

This is the first question and hence a hurdle in people switching over to Linux. I would like to specify that...yes most windows products work on Linux

the only thing you will need is WINE...more here: http://www.winehq.org/

Wine is a sfotware for Linux which acts as a "think layer" to help run Windows softwares without letting them know that they are working on Linux

Wine creates a C: drive which is absent in Linux and installs and runs these programs on this C: drive (this is the best I can put in Layman's language.)

How to install WINE?

1. Installing programs is not as on Windows. There is a dedicated application as in Windows "add/remove programs" wherein you can install and uninstall the programs on Linux.
2. The detailed procedure to install WINE on Ubuntu is specified here:http://www.winehq.org/download/deb (If you have any trouble installing WINE...let me know...I will try to guide you)
3. Once you have installed WINE, installing EXE files is easy as on Windows.
4. Right Click on any EXE file you want to install and select "open with 'wine windows program loader'". This will install the program as in Windows.
5. Not all programs might run but most do!
6. After Wine is installed, a menu for WINE is visible in the main applications Menu. All the programs installed with WINE are visible under this sub-menu.
7. You can also uninstall any Windows program from this WINE sub-menu.

The programs I have till now installed using WINE and working fine are:

1. MozBackup
2. Firefox
3. Thunderbird
4. AutoCAD

why I installed FF and thunderbird using WINE is another story...coming up in next post

Some softwares...the way I installed those and made mistakes and installed in the proper way:

Thunderbird/Firefox:

I use thunderbird as my email client. I had more than 2000 emails in my thunderbird with lot of extensions and customizations.

Same with my firefox browser....had lot of extensions with hell lot of customizations.

My problem was to import all this into ubuntu from vista. I had a thread here in Technical help wherein I was seeking the way to backup these mozzila softwares. I came across Mozbackup (google for more info)

So before I installed ubuntu and partitioned by HDD I mozbackuped by TB and FF.
After the successful installation of Ubuntu by the above mentioned procedure...it was time to cofigure my TB and FF.

The problem was...Mozbackup doesnt work with Linux! So I installed it using WINE as mentioned above. But it did not recognize the FF and TB already present on Ubuntu. I was stuck

Os I decided to do smthing which was very stupid of me ...but nonetheless it worked wonders for me! I installed the Windows version of FF and TB in ubuntu using WINE . Here after installation, Mozbackup detected FF and TB and I was able to configure FF and TB exactly as on vista.

But the problem was, it being a wine program was a bit slow. I could not directly open any attachments as not all programs were configured in WINE to open the filetypes (remember WINE system and Linux are totally different worlds when operating the programs installed under those!). I had to save the attachments in a specified directory before I could open those.

Nonetheless I had been using FF and TB this way for almost 15 days with some loss of functionality but still much better than working on Windows Vista



But then again...couple of days I back I was goggling to make my life easier with the above issue...and came to know the following procedure to configure the Ubuntu installed FF and TB the way it was on Vista and without using WINE

There is a HIDDEN folder for both the application in the \home\ directory. one each for FF and TB. All you have to do is COPY all the files from the "profiles" sub-directory of your similar folder in VISTA (user\application data\) and replace all the files when it asks to SKIP/REPLACE the existing files. (Be sure that TB and FF is not running when you copy these files). Ones you are done with this, your FF and TB installed on Ubuntu will work like the counterparts in Vista...absolutely nothing is different. You may have to re-configure some extensions. The directory paths in the extensions (like 'save image as' and 'download sort') to the folders will be different in ubuntu compared to Vista.

This was so simple and I was using a more difficult way to backup my TB and FF