Installing Ubuntu Yourself
August 27, 2026
Welcome back to the BootDrive tutorials. Today, we'll be checking out how to install the Ubuntu operating system yourself. If you purchased or are thinking of purchasing one of our pre-loaded flash drives from us and want to give installing Ubuntu yourself a try, check this tutorial out. We'll go over how to access and change the boot order in your device's BIOS menu and how to install the operating system. Of course, if any of this gets a bit overwhelming, you can also schedule an in-person installation with us if you live in the Pioneer Valley area in Western Massachusetts. If you have already purchased a USB flash drive from us, we will be happy to discount an in-person installation scheduled with us.
Accessing BIOS and changing boot order
Before we do anything, we need to make sure we insert the DIY USB Flash Drive you purchased from us. They can be purchased here. These are USB 2.0 flash drives, so make sure you insert them into a USB 2.0 or 3.0 port on your computer. Now, if your computer is on, make sure to restart it by going into your Windows button either in the bottom left or middle of your desktop toolbar and clicking 'Restart'. If your computer is off turn it back on by pressing the power button on your device. After your computer turns on, quickly and rapidly press either the 'F1', 'F2', 'F10', or 'Del' key on your keyboard to enter the BIOS menu. The key that works for your device is different depending on the manufacturer, so make sure to check online what key is used to enter the BIOS on your device. When you enter the BIOS, it should look a bit like this.
The computer I am using for this tutorial has a newer motherboard, so the BIOS menu here may look drastically different from yours. Functionally, the boot loader is in the same place in almost all BIOS menus, regardless of how new or old your device is. If you don't see it on your BIOS menu, you may need to get out of the Easy View and switch to Advanced View like what I am on. You can see in the bottom right-hand corner of the above image it says "EZMode(F7)", so if I wanted to switch between Advanced and Easy Mode in my BIOS, I would press the 'F7' key. This may be different on yours, but it should say in your BIOS what key you would need to press if your BIOS has an Easy and Advanced mode. Not all BIOSes do have different modes. Now, for the next step, we will navigate to the 'Boot' menu. I can click on it in my BIOS menu, but some older BIOS menus will only respond to using the arrow keys on your keyboard to move left, right, up, and down in the menus. If your BIOS requires this kind of movement, move over to the Boot menu and you may also need to hit the 'Enter' key to enter the Bootloader menu.
Above is my Bootloader menu pictured. You can see boxes for Boot Options here. There are multiple boot options because you can theoretically have multiple operating systems on one device and boot into whichever one you want. This is essentially how you can have for example, Windows running on one part of your computer and Ubuntu on another. We're not going to be taking a look at that, though. Instead, we will be changing the boot order so that our USB flash drive with Ubuntu on it has priority in the boot order. The boot option at the top, Boot Option #1, is always what has priority. On older BIOS menus, it may not say Boot Option 1, but instead just the name of the drive where your current operating system is on.
To change this, we're going to either click in the dropdown box to the right of Boot Option 1 and select our flash drive. I am using my own Rocketfish flash drive for this, which I use for in-person installations, but if you buy a flash drive from us, it will be listed as the above UEFI: General UDisk , Partition 1 (8.0 GB) or on older BIOSes, it may just say General UDisk. If you don't see the USB flash drive in here, it is either because you did not insert the USB flash drive into your dvice's flash drive port before turning on the computer and entering the BIOS or you have it inserted into a malfunctioning USB port. Also, on older BIOS menus where you have to navigate around with your arrow keys instead of the mouse, you may have to change the order in the Boot menu with the 'F5' and 'F6' keys to move the USB drive up or down. Once you have the drive selected, either click it in the dropdown box or proceed to the next step.
The final step before we can begin the installation of Ubuntu is to save our changes and exit the BIOS menu. To do this, navigate to the 'Exit' menu. It might be called 'Save and Exit' on other BIOSes. Then, we just go down to where it says 'Save Changes and Reset' and click our mouse or press the 'Enter' key on our keyboard and the computer will restart again after saving changes to the boot order. During the restart process, it will now read the data on the USB flash drive an boot into the Ubuntu setup.
Installing Ubuntu
From here on out, I will be showing images from the official Ubuntu installation tutorial because I already have an installation of Linux on this device and I don't want to erase the data on my storage drive.
Step 1: Choosing your preferred language
Start by choosing your preferred language for Ubuntu. Ubuntu is localized for about 218 different languages.
Step 2: Choosing accessibility settings
Next, if you require additional assistance with hearing, seeing, typing, or clicking your mouse while using your device, you can change those settings in the Accessibility Settings menu.
Step 3: Keyboard layout and timezone selection
This next section in the installation used to ask just for what type of keyboard layout you prefer, but now it will ask also what timezone you and your device are in. The picture below is what this part of the installation process used to look like. Make sure you select the correct timezone! Choosing the incorrect timezone will create conflicts with your device's internal clock speed!
Step 4: (Optional) Connect to the Internet
Ubuntu's installation process will ask you if you want to connect to the Internet and what kind of Internet connection you use. The reason I listed this as optional is because you do not have to connect to the Internet to continue installation of the operating system and also because I did have one issue once where connecting to the Internet actually did stall the installation process. The only purpose connecting to the Internet does is installing any firmware and driver updates during the installation process for Ubuntu. This can be done after installing the operating system too through the Software Updater app.
Step 5: Beginning the Installation and/or transferring files from the old operating system
Finally, the installer will ask if you want to Install Ubuntu to replace your current operating system or alongside it. If you need to transfer any files from your old operating system, such as Windows to Ubuntu before you install the operating system, you can do so by choosing 'Try Ubuntu'. Through Try Ubuntu, we can use a stripped-down version of Ubuntu to try out a few apps and navigate through the file explorer, but you can also use it to transfer files from your storage drive to another drive to later transfer over to your new Ubuntu operating system after installation is complete. To do this, insert a storage drive into your computer. The easiest option would be another USB flash drive with enough space for your files. You can alternatively use an external Solid State Drive (SSD) storage drive connected via USB cable. The connected drive will appear on the desktop dashboard. This can be accessed by clicking the button at the top left-hand corner of the desktop view and clicking on the USB icon when the dashboard appears. Your other connected drives including any hard drives or SSDs located inside your device will also appear on the dashboard. Simply just copy (Ctrl key and C key) and paste (Ctrl key and V key) any files you wish to move to the storage drive to later transfer to Ubuntu. Once finished in Try Ubuntu mode, you can just click on the installer again at the top of your desktop dashboard to go back into the installer and continue the installation.
Proceeding with the installation, you'll be shown a screen like the one below.
I recommend choosing the Interactive installation here unless you are installing Ubuntu at your workplace or in an enterprise environment where customized installations are necessary.
We will actually be choosing the Extended selection here on the Applications screen. If you choose the Default selection, it won't come with LibreOffice or Open Office and also GIMP, an open-source photo editor/creation program similar to Photoshop or Paint. By choosing the Extended selection, it will prompt us to choose whether to install the LibreOffice Suite of programs or the Open Office suite. As a reminder, LibreOffice and Open Office are the free and open-source versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint on Ubuntu and Linux operating systems. If you choose the default selection installation, you will have to install either LibreOffice or Open Office from the Software Center (the app store) if you ever need it.
Finally, the installer will ask if you want to erase your storage drive space and replace it with Ubuntu or do a manual installation. I usually choose to erase the disk and install Ubuntu here because if you have been following correctly, you have already backed up all the files you wanted to save onto the USB flash drive you inserted during the Try Ubuntu part of the tutorial. If you actually want to install Ubuntu on one of your drives without erasing the data on it you can certainly do so by choosing the manual installation method, but you will have to partition your storage device or install Ubuntu on a different storage drive if you wish to do that. Doing so, you will also have to make sure that there is enough space on your storage drive to install Ubuntu alongside all of the other data on it.
Before moving on from here, if you want, you can also go into Advanced features and add device encryption for Ubuntu. This makes it so your files cannot be read, accessed, or modified by anyone who attempts to break into the operating system. I would recommend doing your own research into these encryption types if you do this, since I know different people will have different needs regarding device encryption. If you set up device encryption, the installer will also prompt you to create a password. This password is used to decrypt your files every time you boot up the computer into Ubuntu from being turned off. Make sure your write down this password, store it in an easily accessible place for you, and do not lose it!
And after all of this, you can finish the installation of the operating system. It will take a few moments or up to an hour or so depending on the speed of your device's hardware, so please be patient. Take a break for a bit while the installer installs all of the files for the operating system. Once that's done, you'll be prompted with a window like the one below where you can create a password to access your user account (don't worry, this one doesn't require you to connect it to the Internet or anything) as well as your new Ubuntu device's name so it is discoverable by other devices on your network and easily identifiable by you and a name for your account. You can also choose whether or not you want to require your account password to log in to your account or not. You can also check 'Use Active Directory' if you are installing Ubuntu in a workplace or enterprise environment and want it to be discoverable and manageable by your workplace's network systems administrators as well as share files between Ubuntu and Windows devices.
And that's it! At the end of the installation, you'll be prompted to restart your computer by clicking the green 'Restart Now' button and during the restart process, you will be asked to remove the flash drive with the Ubuntu installation on it and press enter. Do so and the computer will restart again and boot you directly into the Ubuntu operating system! If you chose to do a manual installation and installed Ubuntu on another partition or another drive, you may need to go back into the boot loader in your BIOS menu screen and make the partition or drive where you installed Ubuntu to as the top/priority boot option. You can then insert the flash drive or storage drive you transferred files to from your old operating system and move the files to your new Ubuntu device.
Thanks for sticking with us! Hopefully this information helped if you are installing Ubuntu yourself. We hope to potentially introduce more Linux distributions to our store in the future as we get more niche clientele, so keep posted. As always, if there is anything you feel we didn't cover adequately or would like clarification on, please feel free to reach out to us through our Contact form on our homepage. Thanks for reading!
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