Easy install and upgrade
Carve up some space for Ubuntu.
Ubuntu has always been one of the easiest Linux distros to anchor to your hard disk. Its Ubiquity installer is one of the easiest to navigate and besides the official Ubuntu spins it’s also been ported to several other distros, including the popular Linux Mint
The Ubuntu installer does a wonderful job of helping you install the distro on your computer. It’ll detect existing installations of other popular operating systems, such as Windows, and resize them automatically to make space for itself. However, if you’re installing Ubuntu on a Windows 8/8.1/10 computer, make sure you turn off FastStartup from the Control Panel in Windows. If you get a signature error when you boot the media containing the Ubuntu ISO image, you’ll have to disable SecureBoot from the BIOS/UEFI and beyond that you can try BIOS compatibility mode.
Partitioning is the most crucial step while installing Linux. If you have an existing Windows installation on the hard disk, the Ubuntu installer will offer to automatically resize it and make room for Ubuntu. If you want greater control over the size of the Ubuntu partition, you can manually slice your disk from within Windows using its DiskManagement tool.
To make room for Ubuntu, launch DiskManagement and right-click on the drive on which you want to install Ubuntu and select the ‘Shrink Volume’ option. In the dialog box that pops up, you can specify the space by which you want to shrink the disk. This will shrink the existing partition and mark the rest of the space as free. You can then point the Ubuntu installer to create a partition for itself from this free space.
Step up
If you’re already using Ubuntu 14.04 and wish to upgrade to the new release, you can do so without much trouble. Although the upgrade process have been refined over the years, there are a few things you need to take care of to ensure that it doesn’t end up breaking your system. First up, while the upgrade process hasn’t failed for us for a long time now, it always helps to spend some time creating a backup of your data. Chances are you are already smart enough to regularly backup your important data using Ubuntu’s built-in backup application. As an additional precaution you can also create a bare metal clone of your disk using Clonezilla which can image your disk and save it to a remote location or to another locally attached disk.
Also, the upgrade process will install newer versions of any proprietary drivers that you’ve installed using the Additional Drivers tool. However, if you’ve manually downloaded and installed proprietary drivers straight from a vendor’s website, then you should first remove these and revert to the open source equivalents before initiating the upgrade process.
If you’re using ATI drivers, to zap them type: sudo apt-get purge “fglrx.*”
Now backup the xorg.conf file and remove the original with: sudo mv /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.backup
Now reinstall xorg with sudo apt-get install --reinstall xserver-xorg-core libgl1-mesaglx:i386 libgl1-mesa-dri:i386 libgl1-mesa-glx:amd64 libgl1mesa-dri:amd64
and then reconfigure it with: sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg
Similarly, Nvidia users can revert to the Nouveau open source drivers by installing them with sudo apt-get install nouveau-firmware
and then reconfiguring Xorg with: sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg
Also, while a majority of PPAs don’t interfere with the upgrade process, some like x-swat and xorg-edges should be removed with the ppa-purge utility, such as sudo ppa-purge xorg-edgers
After taking these precautions, you can safely upgrade to the new release. The existing installation will alert you of the new release. To manually check for new release, type sudo update-manager -d
which will launch the SoftwareUpdater and search for new releases. When it finds one, click the ‘Upgrade’ button to begin the upgradation process.