Ubuntu is a popular operating system which is open source and has easy installation. It is quite flexible thanks to its unlimited customization options and it highly secure in nature. For many developers, journey on Linux begins at Ubuntu which is why today we will give you a tutorial on how to install Ubuntu 18.04 along with Windows 10.

Pre-Requisites

Following are the pre-requirements of Ubuntu 18.04 LTS installation:

1. Connect your machine to a power source

2. Make sure that you have enough space in your disk i.e. a minimum of 5GB

3. You must have the version of Ubuntu you want to install in a USB drive

4. Have a backup of your data

How to install Ubuntu alongside Windows 10 [dual-boot]

First of all, make a backup of your Windows 10 operating system. Because this is a risky process and any error during installation may leave your system into an inconsistent state.

Creating a backup of the Windows 10 operating system is an optional process but it is highly recommended. Once the backup is completed, it’s time to prepare the Ubuntu for installation alongside Windows 10. To make a backup of whole Windows 10 system, you can use windows default backup utility through which you can create a backup and restore it in case of any error.

Following are the high-level steps for installation which we will cover in detail in this tutorial:

• Download Ubuntu ISO image file. In this tutorial, we are installing Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Desktop version.

• Create a bootable USB drive to write Ubuntu image file to USB.

• Shrink the Windows 10 partition to create space for Ubuntu.

• Run the Ubuntu live environment and install it.

We will cover these steps one by one in detail.

Download Ubuntu ISO

1. Open your browser and enter the following URL:

1. https://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop

2. Once the URL is opened, click on the “Download” button to start the download.

1. Once the download has been completed it is the time to create a bootable USB drive.

Create a bootable USB Drive

To create a bootable USB drive, we will use a tool called “unetbootin”. We will see how to download, install and use this tool to make a bootable USB. Before running this tool make sure that your USB drive is formatted in FAT32 format. If it is not formatted in FAT32 format, then format it.

Before formatting, take a backup of the USB drive because during formatting all data will be erased.

To format your USB drive to FAT32, perform the following steps:

1. Plugin your USB Drive.

2. Open “This-PC” and right click on the USB Drive.

1. Click on Format and a pop-up dialog will appear

1. If the File system is not FAT32, select the FAT32 from the dropdown list and click on Start button.

1. Once the format has been completed your USB drive is with the FAT32 file system.

Once the USB has been formatted with the FAT32 file system, now download the tool “unetbootin” to make the USB bootable. Following are the steps to download and install the unetbootin tool.

1. Download the tool from this URL (for windows)

1. https://unetbootin.github.io/

2. Once the tool has been downloaded, you need to install & run it.

3. Select the option “DISK IMAGE” and then browse & select the downloaded Ubuntu ISO path. In addition to this, also select the USB drive in which you want the Ubuntu setup to be installed. Once done, Click OK.

1. The setup will start making the bootable USB and will start to notify once the process has been completed.

Once the USB drive is ready, it’s time to make some space to install the Ubuntu. To do this we will use the windows disk management utility to shrink up space for the Ubuntu.

Shrink space for Ubuntu

The tool we will use to shrink space for Ubuntu is “Windows Disk management tool”. Following are the steps to use this tool.

1. Start “Disk Management” tool by doing a right click on the Windows start button on the bottom left on the screen and select the “Disk Management” option.

2. A window will appear like this displaying all of the available drives.

1. Right click on the drive usually “C:” which has the biggest free space and select the “Shrink Volume” Option.

2. A window will appear, showing up the best possible size.

1. Adjust the size as per requirement and click on “Shrink”.

2. The shrinking process will be started and a new unallocated partition is created once the shrinking process has been completed. This partition will be used to install the Ubuntu.

Once the shrinking process has been completed its time to run the Ubuntu live environment and then install it.

Run & Install the Ubuntu:

The first step to install Ubuntu is to run the Ubuntu live environment. To run the Ubuntu live environment, we have to reboot our PC and load the boot-up menu. Usually, in most of the machines the boot-up menu comes from “F12” shortcut key, however, in some machines, the boot-up menu appears from “ESC”, “F2”, “F10” key as well. For the actual confirmation, refer to the user manual of your machine.

1. Once the boot-up menu appears, select the option to boot from “USB FLASH DRIVE” and press enter.

2. The booting process will start and once the booting process has been completed you will have an option of how you want to use Ubuntu.

3. Select the “Try Ubuntu” option and press enter.

4. The Ubuntu live session has been started. You can try the Ubuntu live session but this live session will be destroyed once you restart your machine so to keep it persistent and we have to install the Ubuntu in our hard disk drive.

To install the Ubuntu in our hard disk drive, double-click the “Install Ubuntu” option that is located on the desktop as shown in the screenshot below.

1. After clicking the Install Ubuntu option, a wizard will appear and the Ubuntu installation process has been started. 

1. Select the language and then press continue.

2. The next screen asks “Do you want to install latest updates from Ubuntu server” Select this option if you have a decent internet connection else skip this option and press continue.

1. The next screen will ask, “How do you want to install the Ubuntu”. Select the option to install the “Ubuntu alongside windows boot manager” and click on “Install Now”.

1. A window will appear showing what will happen to your disk. Press continue to proceed with the installation.

1. Now the Ubuntu personalization wizard will be started and will ask your location. Select your location and then press continue.

1. Select your keyboard layout and press continue.

1. Next, it will ask the computer name, username and the password to create a default user. Save this password as you will require it in future to use this system. Enter the computer name, username and password and press continue.

1. The setup will start and copy the files from a USB drive to the actual hard disk drive.

1. Once the setup has been completed, it will ask to reboot the system.

Once the system has been rebooted, you can see that the bootloader will ask which operating system you want to start. Select windows or ubuntu as per your requirement.

Conclusion

So, this was our take on how to install Ubuntu alongside Windows 10 [dual-boot]. The whole procedure is quite simple if all the steps are followed. Let us know how helpful was this tutorial in the comments below.

References:

https://vitux.com/how-to-install-ubuntu-18-04-along-with-windows-10/

http://dailylinuxuser.com/2018/01/how-to-backup-windows-10.html

https://askubuntu.com/questions/800261/how-to-backup-clone-windows-creating-a-recovery-image-using-ubuntu

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5QyjHIYwTQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJcqHY7YbmA