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About This Guide

This document is meant to serve as a manual for first-time Ubuntu users. It tries to make as few assumptions as possible about your level of expertise. However, we do assume that you have a general understanding of how the hardware in your computer works.

Expert users may also find interesting reference information in this document including minimum installation sizes, details about the hardware supported by the Ubuntu installation system, and so on. We encourage expert users to jump around in the document.

In general, this manual is arranged in a linear fashion, walking you through the installation process from start to finish. Here are the steps in installing Ubuntu, and the sections of this document which correlate with each step:

1. Chapter 2, System Requirements: Determine whether your hardware meets the requirements for using the installation system.

2. Chapter 3, Before Installing Ubuntu: Back up your system, perform any necessary planning and hardware configuration prior to installing Ubuntu. If you are preparing a multi-boot system, you may need to create partition-able space on your hard disk for Ubuntu to use.

3. Chapter 4, Obtaining System Installation Media: Here you will obtain the necessary installation files for your method of installation.

4. Chapter 5, Booting the Installation System: This chapter describes booting into the installation system. It also discusses troubleshooting procedures in case you have problems with this step.

5. Chapter 6, Using the Ubuntu Installer: Perform the actual installation. This involves choosing your language, configuring peripheral driver modules, configuring your network connection, so that remaining installation files can be obtained directly from an Ubuntu server (if you are not installing from a CD), partitioning your hard drives and installation of a base system, then selection and installation of tasks. (Some background about setting up the partitions for your Ubuntu system is explained in Appendix C, Partitioning for Ubuntu.)

6. Chapter 7, Booting Into Your New Ubuntu System: Boot into your newly installed base system.

Once you've got your system installed, you can read Chapter 8, Next Steps and Where to Go From Here. That chapter explains where to look to find more information about Unix and Ubuntu, and how to replace your kernel.

Finally, information about this document and how to contribute to it may be found in Appendix E, Administriva.

What is Ubuntu?

Ubuntu is a complete desktop Linux operating system, freely available with both community and professional support. The Ubuntu community is built on the ideas enshrined in the Ubuntu Manifesto: that software should be available free of charge, that software tools should be usable by people in their local language and despite any disabilities, and that people should have the freedom to customize and alter their software in whatever way they see fit.

• Ubuntu will always be free of charge, and there is no extra fee for the “enterprise edition”, we make our very best work available to everyone on the same Free terms.
• Ubuntu includes the very best in translations and accessibility infrastructure that the Free Software community has to offer, to make Ubuntu usable by as many people as possible.
• Ubuntu is shipped in stable and regular release cycles; a new release will be shipped every six months. You can use the current stable release or the current development release. A release will be supported for 18 months.
• Ubuntu is entirely committed to the principles of open source software development; we encourage people to use open source software, improve it and pass it on.

Ubuntu is suitable for both desktop and server use. Ubuntu includes more than 1000 pieces of software, starting with the Linux kernel version 2.6 and Gnome 2.16, and covering every standard desktop application from word processing and spreadsheet applications to internet access applications, web server software, email software, programming languages and tools and, of course, several games.

The Ubuntu Project is sponsored by Canonical Ltd. Canonical will not charge licence fees for Ubuntu, now or at any stage in the future. Canonical's business model is to provide technical support and professional services related to Ubuntu. We encourage more companies also to offer support for Ubuntu, and will list those that do on the Support pages of this web site.

System Requirements