How To Install Ubuntu Along With Windows

Last updated November 12, 2020 By Abhishek Prakash 179 Comments

Brief: This detailed guide shows you how to dual boot Ubuntu with Windows legacy BIOS systems. If you are not sure, read this to know if you have BIOS or UEFI system.

Continuing my experimentation with different Linux distribution, I installed Xubuntu last week. Xubuntu is a variant of Ubuntu with Xfce desktop environment instead of the default Unity. Light on resources, Xubuntu can be a good Linux alternative of Windows XP.

I prefer to install Linux in dual boot with Windows. I hardly use Windows but it gives me sort of back up if I mess up with things. Dual booting Linux with Windows is always suggestible for the beginners. In this tutorial, we shall see how to install Ubuntu in dual boot mode with Windows.

This guide covers system with BIOS. You can read this article for dual booting Windows 10 and Ubuntu with UEFI.

Ubuntu, Xubuntu, which one is it? Don’t be confused. The steps given here are equally applicable to Ubuntu, Xubuntu or even Linux Mint.

Before we see how to dual boot Ubuntu with Windows, let me give you some important details.

First, I had Windows 7 installed with 3 partitions on it. Later I installed Linux on it in dual boot mode. I changed the partition and kept around 100 GB of total 320 GB for Linux installation. In the course of time, I upgraded to Windows 8 and subsequently to Windows 8.1. I never had to face the problem of Windows 8′s secure boot thingy. It is just to clarify that this process does not show you how to deal with UEFI .

Install Ubuntu in dual boot with Windows 10 & Windows 8

Follow the steps below to install Ubuntu in dual boot with Windows:

Step 1: Create a live USB or disk

Download and create a live USB or DVD. In Windows, my favorite tool to create a live USB is Universal USB Installer.

Step 2: Boot in to live USB

Plug the live USB or disk in to the computer and restart the computer. While booting the computer press F10 or F12 function key (defers from computer to computer) to go to the boot menu. Now, choose the option to boot from USB or Removable Media.

Step 3: Start the installation

It will take some time to boot in to the live USB or disk. Once booted, you will be immediately provided with option to either try Ubuntu or install Ubuntu. Even if you choose to try, you can find the option to install on the desktop:

First few screens are pretty straight forward. Just choose press continue:

Step 4: Prepare the partition

This is the most important part of the whole dual boot installation. Where to install Ubuntu? Windows is already installed here, so, we’ll prepare a new partition for Ubuntu. In the Installation Type window, choose Something Else:

As you can see, I have 3 NTFS and some ext4 partitions. If you don’t have ext4 partition, don’t worry, we don’t need that. As you can see in the picture below, one of the NTFS partition consists of Windows installation. This should be untouched if you want to keep your Windows installation safe.

I presume that you have more than one NTFS (or FAT 32) partitions (i.e. Drives in Windows term) on your hard disk, with one of them consisting of Windows installation (usually C drive). What you need to do here is to delete a NTFS or existing ext4 partition and create some free space. This will delete all the data in that partition and this is why I asked you to verify if you have Windows installed in a different partition.

Click on the desired partition and press the – to delete the partition.

Step 5: Create root, swap and home

Once you have some free space on your hard drive, its time to install Ubuntu on it. Now, there are several ways to do it. But I prefer to have a Root, a Swap and a Home.

The root should be at least 15 GB for a comfortable use. If you have more disk space, increase the root size. Suppose you have 100 GB of disk space. You can easily devote 30 GB of space to root.

Create a root partition first. Choose the free space available and click on +.

Here, choose the size of root directory (keep it 20 GB or more), choose ext4file system, and mount point as / (i.e. root):

Next step is to create swap partition. It is advised by many that Swap should be double of your system’s RAM size. You can choose the swap size accordingly.

The next step is to create Home. Try to allocate the maximum size to Home because this is where you’ll be downloading and keeping the files.

Once you have created Root, Swap and Home partitions, click on Install Now button.

Step 6: Follow the trivial instructions

If you successfully created the partitions as mentioned above, you have almost won the battle. Rest is just some trivial steps to follow. You will be taken through a number of screens to select options like keyboard layout, login credentials etc. You don’t have to be a genius to figure out what to do here afterwards. I have attached screenshots for reference purpose here.

Once the installation is over, you will be presented with the option to keep trying live version or to restart the system.

And that’s it. On next boot, you will see the option of Ubuntu in the grub screen. And thus you can enjoy the beautiful, beginner friendly and world’s most popular Linux distribution. I hope you found this guide to dual boot Ubuntu with Windows helpful. If you need, you can change the boot order easily to make Windows your default OS. Since you have just installed Ubuntu 14.04, you can check out things to do after installing Ubuntu.

If you have questions, suggestions or a word of thanks, feel free to drop a comment.

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How To Install Ubuntu Alongside Windows 10

Brief: This detailed article shows you how to dual boot Ubuntu with Windows 10, step-by-step, accompanied with proper screenshots.

Previously I had written about dual booting Ubuntu Linux with Windows 7 and 8, but those tutorials did not cover systems that come with Windows 10 pre-installed. The newer systems that come with Windows 8 or Windows 8.1, have UEFI instead of BIOS. This makes thing a little different from the conventional way of dual booting.

In this tutorial, we shall see how to install Ubuntu with Windows 10 already installed.

This tutorial is performed on a newly bought Dell Inspiron 7437 that has Core i7 fourth generation processor, 256 GB SSD, 8 GB RAM and built in 1 GB Intel graphics. I’ll cover all the steps you need to do in order to successfully dual boot Linux with Windows 10 UEFI. If you have already done some of these steps, just skip to the next one. If you have a fresh system, even better.

The steps mentioned here are applicable to other Ubuntu based Linux distributions such as Linux Mint, Elementary OS etc. Cutting the chit-chat, let’s see how to dual boot Linux on a UEFI secure boot enabled Windows 10 system.

Dual boot Ubuntu with Windows 10 and Windows 8.1:

Though I have used Ubuntu 14.04 here, it is applicable to all versions of Ubuntu, be it Ubuntu 15.10 or Ubuntu 16.04. There are various prerequisites to install Ubuntu on a UEFI system. I’ll list them for easier read here:

• Ubuntu ISO burned to a USB or DVD (we’ll see it)
• Windows backup (optional)
• Windows 10 bootable USB (optional yet recommended as it will save your day if anything goes wrong)

Let’s see the steps of installing Ubuntu along side Windows 10.

Step 1: Make a backup [optional]

It is always nice to make a back up, just in case if you mess up with the system. There are numerous articles on the web to show you how to backup your system. You can follow this tutorial here.

Step 2: Create a live USB/disk of Ubuntu

The next thing you need to do is to create a live USB or disk. I recommend Universal USB Installer to create a live USB of Linux OS in Windows.

Step 3: Make a partition where Ubuntu will be installed

Assuming tat you have a fresh system, the first thing we need to do is to make a partition to install Linux. The 256 GB in my system was already had several partitions from manufacturer but mainly for backup and other purposes. Main partition was C drive, of around 220 GB, where Windows 8.1 was installed.

If you have just one partition like this, you need to make some free space out of it for Linux. If you have several partitions of considerable size, use any of them except C drive because it may erase the data.

To make a partition in Windows 8, go to Disk Management tool. You can find disk management tool by searching for ‘disk’ in Control Panel.

In the Disk Management tool, right click on the drive which you want to partition and select shrink volume. In my case, I shrank the C drive to make some free space:

You can leave the free space as it is. We shall use it while installing Ubuntu.

Step 4: Disable fast startup in Windows [optional]

Windows 8 introduced a new feature called “fast startup” for quick boot. While it is not mandatory, it would be better to have it disabled.

Go to Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Power Options > System Settings > Choose what the power buttons do and uncheck the Turn on fast startup box.

Step 5: Disable secureboot in Windows 10 and 8.1

This is the most important step. The new secure boot feature of Windows 8, originally intended for security feature for rootkit viruses, prevents dual booting of Windows with Linux. To dual boot Windows 8 with Linux, we must disable secure boot in UEFI.

Step 6: Installing Ubuntu along with Windows 10, 8.1

Once you have disabled secure boot, it’s time to install Ubuntu. I hope you already created the live USB as mentioned in step 2. Plug in the USB and boot the system from it.

To boot from USB, will have to choose boot from USB option from within Windows itself. Either with PC Setting (like for UEFI) or pressing shift key while clicking on Restart.

Once you have booted in the live USB, you will be presented with option to try or install Ubuntu. Click on install. You will be presented with few screen options to choose the language. It will then do some checks on available space, power and internet connection etc. Just click on Continue.

The main screen which you should pay attention to is Installation Type. Choose Something else here:

Remember we had created some free space beforehand? We shall use the free space to create Root, Swap and Home. Select the free space and click on the + sign.

It will provide you with option to create Linux partition. We are creating the Root partition. Any thing above 20 GB is more than sufficient for it. Choose the size, select Ext 4 as file type and / (means root) as the mount point.

Clicking on OK in previous step will bring you to the partition screen. Next we will create swap. Like previously, click on the + sign again. This time use the file type as Swap area. Suggestible swap size is double of RAM.

In similar fashion, create a Home partition. Allocate it maximum space (in fact allocate it rest of the free space) because this is where you’ll save music, pictures and downloaded files.

Once you are ready with Root, Swap and Home, click on Install Now:

Well, you have almost won the battle. You can smell victory now. Next you will be asked to set username password etc. Basically, you just need to click next now.

Once the installation is completed, restart the computer, you should be welcomed by a purple grub screen. Enjoy Ubuntu along with Windows 10 in dual boot mode.

Note: If after installing Ubuntu, you boot directly in Windows, check in UEFI settings for changing the boot order.

I hope this guide helped you to dual boot Ubuntu with Windows 10 UEFI. If you want to reverse the process, follow this guide to remove Ubuntu from dual boot with Windows. Though this article is written for Ubuntu, it should be helpful for other Linux OS as well. Any questions or suggestions are always welcomed.

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