Ubuntu Documentation

This community-written page discusses practical differences between Windows and Ubuntu.

Installing Programs

Windows software comes in .exe files, which you can download from the Internet or purchase from a store. Ubuntu software comes in packages, which are installed and updated through a centralized system, like a more powerful version of Windows Update and Add/Remove Programs.

See the software installation guide for instructions on how to install new programs. Click on the Ubuntu Logo to find all your apps, programs, and shortcuts.

In the same way that Windows runs software only designed for Windows, applications must be made for Linux in order to run on Ubuntu. Most Linux software is available for free over the Internet. The following pages feature a small selection of popular applications available for free in Ubuntu:

Firewalls and Antivirus Software

Ubuntu’s main firewall program is called ufw (click here to install gufw). There are currently very few Linux viruses in the wild, so Ubuntu doesn’t come with antivirus software installed. See Antivirus for more information.

The Terminal

Linux includes a text-based interface like cmd.exe, called the Terminal. Many Linux guides ask you to run commands in the Terminal, which can be launched by typing «Terminal» into the Dash. See Using the Terminal for more information.

Task Manager

Ubuntu’s System Monitor is the closest equivalent to the Task Manager in Windows.

In Unity

You can launch the system monitor by typing «System Monitor» into the Dash.

In GNOME Classic/Fallback

From the panel, click on Applications>System Tools>System Monitor

Where To Put Your Files

Linux doesn’t use drive letters, so there’s no C: drive and no D: drive. You’ll get used to the Linux filesystem gradually, but for now here are the most important locations:

/home/

This is your home folder, which is fairly similar to My Documents in Windows. You can access this folder by clicking Places > Home Folder.
Because this folder is used so often, many programs refer to it as «$HOME» or «

» («tilde», pronounced «till-da». For example, saving a file as

/my-file.txt is the same as saving it as /home/ /my-file.txt

/home

This folder contains everybody’s home folders, and is fairly similar to Documents and Settings in Windows.
The main thing to remember is that despite the name, this is not your home folder. If somebody tells you to go to your home folder, they mean /home/ .

/media

This folder contains CD-ROMs, memory sticks, and other removable media.
Individual drives will also appear in the Places menu item and on your desktop.

/tmp

This folder contains temporary files, and is cleaned out when you reboot.

Safely Removing Drives

When you are finished with a removable drive, right click on the drive’s desktop icon and select Unmount volume or Eject, depending on what type of drive it is.

Dual-Boot

When you are looking to switch to Ubuntu, one option that may make the transition a little easier is to set up a dual-boot. In a dual-boot system, a menu will appear during the boot process that lets you choose which OS to run. This means you can try out Ubuntu while also keeping your Windows installation.

Traditional

In a traditional dual-boot system system, Windows is installed alongside Ubuntu and each OS has its own partition. If Windows is already installed, this option does pose some risk. To allow each OS to have its own partition, you need to edit the partition and this can run the risk of potential data loss.

If data loss is a concern for you, another option is to use Wubi. Wubi is a special installation that will install Ubuntu within Windows, similar to any other program. When installing Wubi, you specify how much of the hard drive to devote to Wubi. With no changes made to the partitions, the risk of data loss is removed.

See Also

Ext2fsd lets you see your Linux drives from Windows (EXT4 Support requested)

How to Make the Switch From Windows to Linux

If you don’t want to upgrade from Windows 7 or are sick of Windows 10, here’s how to finally make the switch to Linux and install apps.

Microsoft is finally ending support for Windows 7 in January, meaning you won’t get bug fixes or security updates anymore. If you’re one of the final Windows 7 holdouts and don’t want to get stuck with an unsafe system, you have a choice to make: upgrade to Windows 10 or switch to something else entirely.

If you don’t like the direction Microsoft has taken with Windows 10, we understand. It’s gotten better (and you can make it feel more like Windows 7 with a few tweaks), but its new approach to Windows as a Service means there will always be more of a focus on embedded advertisements, constant updates, and data collection. If you’ve been thinking about making the jump to Linux, now is the time.

Choose Your Distribution

Unlike Windows and macOS, there isn’t just one version of Linux. Instead, Linux is packaged into many different distributions, or «distros,» each with their own interface and set of features. One may use a Mac-like interface with a dock and an «app store,» while others may use a more minimalist interface and require installing apps from the command line.

Exploring the bevy of Linux distributions out there is a fun part of the hobby, but for your first installation, you will likely want something popular and beginner-friendly, so it’s easy to get help when you need it. That’s why I recommend starting with Linux Mint.

There are a lot of distributions that aim to mimic Windows in layout and functionality, like Zorin OS, but they’re on the smaller side, and you won’t have as big a community to tap as you learn your way around. Ubuntu, on the other hand, is arguably the most popular distro on desktop PCs, but it isn’t very Windows-like at all these days.

Linux Mint is a perfect in-between option: it’s designed for beginners, offers a familiar desktop environment, and it’s based on Ubuntu, so you can make use of the enormous Ubuntu/Mint community when you need help.

You’re free to check out other distros instead, but I’ll be using Mint for the purposes of this guide, and I recommend you do too. It’s not my personal distro of choice, but it’s great for new Windows migrants, and it’s easier to explore other distros once you’ve nailed down the basics on a beginner-friendly system.

Create Your Installation Drive

Head to Mint’s download page and choose the 64-bit «Cinnamon» version. Cinnamon is the desktop environment I recommend for former Windows users, though MATE is also pretty Windows-like, even though it’s a bit less modern. XFCE is ideal for old or low-powered PCs, thanks to its light resource usage.

Mint’s download page provides a number of links depending on where you live. If you use BitTorrent, I recommend grabbing the torrent file, which will download much faster.

The installer will come as an ISO, or disc image file. To install it on your system, you’ll need to burn it to a DVD (by right-clicking it and choosing Burn Disc Image in Windows 7) or USB flash drive. We’re going to do the latter using a tool called Rufus. Install Rufus, open it up, and insert a flash drive that’s 2GB or larger. (If you have a fast USB 3.0 drive, all the better.) You should see it appear in the Device drop-down at the top of Rufus’ main window.

Next, click the Select button next to Disk or ISO image, and choose the Linux Mint ISO you just downloaded. Press the Start button, and if prompted to download new versions of Syslinux, click Yes. Note that this will erase your flash drive, so make sure there isn’t anything important on there before continuing.

When it’s finished, you’ll see a success message and your flash drive will be named LINUX MINT. Back up your data, reboot your computer, and buckle your seat belts: it’s time to install Linux.

Install Linux on Your PC

As your computer reboots, you should see a message telling you to press a certain key to access the Boot Menu (usually something like F12). If not, you’ll see a key to enter Setup (often Delete). Press one of those keys, and look for the option to boot from the inserted USB drive. (If you enter the full setup menu, it’ll be in a Boot settings menu somewhere, and you’ll have to exit the menu to reboot again when you’re done.)

You will then be greeted by GRUB, Linux Mint’s boot menu, where you can choose to boot into Linux Mint. If you run into any errors, you may need to Google around for a fix. I had to enable the nomodeset option for my graphics card, for example. Others may have to tweak or disable Secure Boot in the BIOS.

This installer is what we call a Live CD, where you can actually poke around and use the Linux Mint desktop before installing it. This will give you a chance to see if this particular distro appeals to you without it actually touching your system drive.

Once you’re satisfied, double-click the Install Linux Mint icon and go through the wizard. Be sure to check the box next to Install third-party software, since it contains useful drivers and codecs you almost certainly want.

From here, you have a few options. You can wipe your hard drive entirely, erasing all traces of Windows and using Linux as your only operating system. (Make double sure you’ve backed up your data before doing this.) Alternatively, you can divide your drive up into two partitions and dual boot Linux alongside Windows.

This will allow you to reboot into one or the other whenever you want. Keep in mind that Windows 7 will be left insecure, so you don’t want to spend too much time there. If nothing else, it’s comforting to know you have that safety net during the transition before you remove Windows entirely.

Choose the relevant option from the Installation Type menu, and click Install Now. The process may take a little while, but when it’s done, you’ll get a success message. Click the Restart Now button to boot into Linux Mint and start getting acquainted with your new OS.

Get Acquainted With Linux and Install Some Apps

When you reboot, you’ll be dropped into the Linux Mint desktop once again—only this time, it’s installed on your PC. The basics are pretty familiar: click the button in the lower-left corner to see applications, manage windows from the bottom taskbar, and so on. There are, however, a few things in Linux that work differently than in Windows, with apps being the biggest.

In Linux, it’s less common to download apps from the web. Instead, each distro has its own repository—kind of like a free app store, with a directory of popular apps. You can install an app from the repositories in one of two ways: from a graphical software manager (again, which looks like an app store) or from the command line.

To open Linux Mint’s Software Manager, click the menu button in the lower-left corner and head to Administration > Software Manager (or just start typing «software manager,» like you would in Windows). From here you can download plenty of free, open-source apps.

Some are Linux versions of their Windows counterparts, like Steam and Spotify, while others are open-source alternatives to common apps (Banshee is a music player similar to iTunes, Gimp is an image editor akin to Photoshop). You can browse here or search for apps using the bar at the top.

How to Install and Uninstall Apps

If you know what you’re looking for, it’s generally faster to install apps from the command line. And while it may seem intimidating at first, Linux still relies on the command line for various tasks, so it might behoove you to get comfortable with it. To install an app—let’s say the open-source media player VLC—open a Terminal window and run:

Sudo apt update

sudo apt install vlc

Let’s break that down: sudo tells the system to run the command as root (or, as it might be called in Windows, as an administrator), apt is the name of Linux Mint’s package manager, and update ensures the list of available apps is up to date.

The second command, which includes install vlc, is self-explanatory. You should run sudo apt update before installing any app, and you can replace vlc with the name of any app you want to install. If you aren’t sure what the repository calls it, you can run sudo apt cache search vlc to see what comes up.

To uninstall an app, just run:

sudo apt remove vlc

This will remove the app, but not your configuration files, so if you decide to reinstall it later, your settings will still be there.

If you want to remove configuration files too, you can instead run:

sudo apt purge vlc

How to Update Apps

You’ll also want to periodically update those apps, so you have the latest versions. You can do this, again, in two ways: from the graphical tool or from the command line. For the graphical tool, click the shield icon in the lower-right corner, which opens the Update Manager app. You can then click the Install Updates button to update all your software.

Alternatively, you can open a Terminal and run two commands:

sudo apt update

sudo apt upgrade

Again, the update command checks for new versions of your software, and the upgrade command actually upgrades all your apps. You’ll want to run these two together, just like you do for installing new apps.

Those are the most crucial things to know right now, but take some time to browse around Mint’s interface and its settings to see what it has to offer. The Welcome window that appears at startup can be a big help—its First Steps area will show you how to choose different desktop layouts, install multimedia codecs you might want, and install necessary drivers for your hardware.

You’ll get the hang of the basics pretty quickly, but the Mint and Ubuntu forums are always there to help if you get stuck. Just be sure to search around, since there’s a good chance someone before you has had the same question.

How do I switch between Windows 10 and Ubuntu?

I have installed Ubuntu on a Windows 10 PC, but how do I switch between them? When I start the computer it just starts in Windows automatically as if nothing has happened. I haven’t seen any boot menu saying Ubuntu after installing and rebooting.

1 Answer 1

I am posting this as an answer because there are already 14 comments. First, uefi is the new «bios» — see https://www.howtogeek.com/56958/htg-explains-how-uefi-will-replace-the-bios/ At any rate, you need to select which OS to boot from within the uefi or bios menu.

legacy boot will not help as both windows and ubuntu are designed not to boot in legacy mode. You can reinstall or configure ubuntu to boot into legacy mode if you wish, but you can sometimes break windows.

At any rate see Installing Ubuntu Alongside a Pre-Installed Windows with UEFI There is a long first answer and at the bottom there is a section troubleshooting

YOUR COMPUTER BOOTS DIRECTLY TO WINDOWS

This is a common problem and if you do not get a GRUB menu , re-installing or repairing grub will NOT HELP

Every bios / uefi interface is different, so we can not tell you exactly how your works. As you boot you may have to hit F9 or F12 to get a «boot menu» which will select which OS to boot. You may have to enter your bios / uefi and select which OS to boot. Look in the location where you selected to boot from the USB.

For example, one on my laptops, I can only switch between OS by hitting F9 as I boot and selecting an OS. Grub will boot Linux, but not windows, and I can not boot Linux when I select windows. There is no option in the bios to select an OS.

So start going through your bios / uefi menu and try to find the boot menu where you select an OS. You may need to update your bios / uefi . You may need to contact your manufacturer.

You can try to run boot-repair — it will give you a url at the end and post the url here, it will give us a lot of additional information and may give an error messages