Have Ubuntu on flashsh drive [duplicate]

Question

I have downloaded Ubuntu to a 8 GB flash drive and I am not sure how to load it onto my PC (Acer Aspire z1800 running Windows 7)plus I don't want to lose Windows 7 and I would eventually like to have both on the hard drive but not until I have used Ubuntu for a while.

I'm close to 80 years old and I am not very PC literate. So please can you keep any answers very simple. A step by step instructions would be very nice.

Answer 1

If you would like to just try out Ubuntu and not install it, skip to the last section, otherwise, keep reading.

Here is a step-by-step procedure to set up Ubuntu on dual-boot with Windows. The first thing you need to do is to create free space on your system by shrinking any of your existing partitions.

• Open Disk Management by typing it into the start menu search bar. There you can right click any of your drives and shrink them by any amount which is >= 50 GB. (That is the amount of space I gave Ubuntu on my system, you could have a different configuration too) Once you have done the shrinking, you will see that there is a certain amount of unallocated space listed. This is where we shall set up Ubuntu.

• If you know what a "Live USB"/"Bootable CD/DVD" is and have set one up, skip this step. Assuming that you haven't set up bootable media for your Ubuntu installation, here is a tutorial for that. Just copying the Ubuntu iso file that you have downloaded onto the flash drive won't help. You need to be able to boot via that flash drive. For that, install tool called Universal USB Installer (UUI) from here. After installing this file, set up the live USB by following the on-screen instructions and go on to the next step while you keep the USB plugged in.

• Restart the system, and before Windows loads, press the hotkey particular to your system that takes you to the BIOS setup. It is usually written on the bottom part of the screen.

• Once you're in the BIOS menu, go to boot device options and select the USB flash drive that you have plugged in.

Now you will be presented with two options:

Try Ubuntu and install Ubuntu. Try Ubuntu lets you get the feel of how Ubuntu works without actually having to install it on your Hard Drive. Choose the one according to your need.

Try UBUNTU This option, as stated above will give you a demo of how Ubuntu works.

Install Ubuntu

Here, follow the on screen instructions, until you get the screen where the options look like this:

• Erase Windows and install Ubuntu
• Let the system decide 3.Something else. choose something else here!

• Now click on the free space that is listed (remember the free space that we created in windows), change it to 20480 MiB, Primary, ext4 journaling filesystem, and set the mount point as /

• Repeat the step by setting the memory to the amount of RAM you have,Primary, and filesystem as Swap area.

• Allocate the rest of the area to a mount point called /home (Rest remains same).

Continue with the on screen instructions, let Ubuntu set up your files and be patient. Once done, enjoy your new liberated experience!

Answer 2

First, make sure the USB stick you are using is okay to erase. You will lose all data on the disk.

Assuming you are on Windows, first, you want to download Ubuntu here. LTS versions will be supported longer. Then, you want a tool called Pen Drive Linux. Download and run it, select Ubuntu, and then the .iso file you downloaded earlier. Once complete, turn off the computer and restart it.

If all is well, Ubuntu will load up. If not, you may need to press F12 or Delete on bootup (depending on computer) and select the USB disk as a boot device. When it does load, make sure to select Try Ubuntu. You can mess around in this, and even access files from your hard drive. This will be much slower than an actual install, so keep that in mind, and settings changes will not remain. If you would like to install both, you'll need to do something called dual boot (which I recommend to do with a second hard drive). Here's some more documentation on Dual Boot: link