Introduction to installing Ubuntu on a mini PC

(Image: SJVN Credit: www.zdnet.com)

With Ubuntu 18.04 (Bionic Beaver) soon to be released I thought I'd document a couple of features that will be available and how to install the release both as a dual boot (e.g. along side Windows) and as an entire disk (single boot) installation.

Your starting point will be to download the official Ubuntu ISO (http://releases.ubuntu.com/bionic) and you will need the 64-bit desktop ISO (ubuntu-18.04-desktop-amd64.iso [TBA] ubuntu-18.04-beta2-desktop-amd64.iso [current]).

Depending on your device it may be first be necessary to respin the ISO using my isorespin.sh script in order to boot and install (see Customizing Ubuntu ISOs: Documentation and examples of how to use 'isorespin.sh' for full details).

Once you have your ISO it is necessary to write it to an USB to create an installation USB often known as a LiveUSB as not only can you install Ubuntu from it but you can also run Ubuntu for diagnostic, testing and fixing and existing installation.

There are several ways to write the ISO to USB however I recommend using Rufus on Windows:


or dd on Linux:

dd if=ubuntu-18.04-desktop-amd64.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=4M

(where 'ubuntu-18.04-desktop-amd64.iso' is your ISO and  'sdX' is the USB drive)
(using 'ls -l /dev/disk/by-id/usb* | head -1 | sed "s?.*/??"' to determine this) 

Typically you will either want to:

• Install Ubuntu along side Windows (i.e. dual boot)
• Replace Windows (and anything else currently installed) with Ubuntu (i.e. single boot)
• Install Ubuntu on a new device (i.e. single boot)
• Upgrade an existing Ubuntu

and I've written a post for each.

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