Installing Ubuntu 20.04 LTS alongside Windows 10 (Step by step tutorial)

Tutorial to install Ubuntu along with Windows in your system to get maximum advantages of both operating systems.

Image source: http://www.iiwnz.com/ubuntu-20-04/

Steps before going forward:

• Turn off fast start-up in Windows control panel. (Go to control panel -> Hardware & Sound -> Power options -> On left panel, Go to Choose what power button do). Here you can find fast start-up. Untick that option(ignore if already done).

Turn off fast start-up option

• Create some free space for Ubuntu using disk management software in Windows. You can free up some space from volume in which you want to install Ubuntu. Just right click on volume and select shrink volume and in the wizard you can select the size which you want to allocate for Ubuntu.

Required files and devices:

1. A USB pen-drive with minimum 4GB storage
2. Download latest Ubuntu 20.04 LTS ISO file (download link: Download-Ubuntu)
3. Rufus (for making a bootable USB drive) (download link: Download-Rufus)

Note:

All the data on USB pen-drive will be erased to create a bootable pen-drive. Make sure to take backup of the data stored in pen-drive. Also, try to take backup of your data stored in system in case of any failure (even if this method has large success rate ratio over failures or any errors).

Steps:

1. Create a bootable USB pen-drive

you need to take are of some constraints to make bootable pendrive:

• Select file system as FAT32 (so that pen-drive can be detected in boot menu. Because NTFS file system is not recognized in boot menu, So we will not be able to install OS using bootable pendrive with NTFS file system.)
• Select boot partition as GPT for UEFI.
• Now select your downloaded ISO file from the file picker given in Rufus.
• After selecting ISO file, make sure above constraints are selected as the options.
• Then simply click on start to start the process of creating bootable USB pendrive.

Rufus with selected required options

2. Opening boot menu in system

• After creating a bootable USB pen-drive, you need to restart your computer with USB pendrive attached.
• When black screen appears, click the relevant key for entering into boot menu. Here is the list of keys required to open boot menu for different major companies computer.

For example, in Dell computers, you will need to press F12 several times when your system is starting to enter in boot menu. Here is the list of keys you will need to press to enter in boot menu.

Boot menu keys for different systems

In boot menu, you will be able to see bootable USB pen-drive’s name under UEFI boot. Select pen-drive from the list.

3. Booting up Ubuntu from USB pendrive

• Now, your pen-drive will load setup files for Ubuntu, and from here you can simply install Ubuntu in your system. But, there are several steps remaining so that you can install Ubuntu.
• When you are setting up Ubuntu, setup screen will provide you 3 options:

1. Install Ubuntu along side Windows (level - Beginner): Here, Ubuntu will automatically take care of how it should be installed in which partition. You don’t get to control in which partition, Ubuntu will be installed. (If you want to select this option, then skip other options and notes provided below. This option is simplest one.)
2. Remove Windows and install Ubuntu (level - Beginner/Intermediate): This will delete all the files on operating system disk and Windows OS to install Ubuntu.
3. Custom installation (Something else)(level - Advanced): In this option, you can choose in which partition you want to install Ubuntu. You can select partition, create new partition and delete any existing partitions to install Ubuntu. Here we need to perform some steps to create partitions for /root, /swap and /home for Ubuntu which are automatically create in option (1) given above.

Notes:

• /root partition is where all your applications will be installed for Ubuntu. You can provide your preferred size to this partition.
• /swap partition is used for paging. Generally, we should create /swap partition with the size of at least half size of system’s RAM and at most double the size of RAM.
• /home partition is where all your files, folders, documents will be stored. All the remaining empty storage is given to /home partition.

After setting up your installation mode, you will be directed to next screen for setting up languages, user credentials, and region for date and time when Ubuntu is being installed in background. After completing setup, restart your system.

screen after completing installation(Image credits: phoenixnap.com)

After following this tutorial, you have installed Ubuntu in your system along with Windows OS. This method is called dual-booting. When you start your system, now it will ask which operating system you want to load up.

I hope you find this tutorial helpful.