Some of the latest laptop and netbooks manufacturers don’t use a CD/DVD drive in their models in order to achieve a thinner compact device. In such cases, you will have to depend on USB to install Ubuntu. If you are trying to install Ubuntu on an older system, you need to check if the system allow booting from USB. If not, you will have to install Ubuntu the old way, by installing from CD/DVD drive. Requirements to make Ubuntu bootable. Download a CD image or.iso image of. A USB flash drive with a minimum 2GB space.
After you have got your installer media, you can use ubunut's built-in utility Startup Disk Creator to make a bootable USB. SO, open dash and search for Startup Disk Creator and open it. Follow the on-screen instructions or refer to this document from ubuntu.
There should not be any files inside the flash drive as the drive needs to be formatted while making it bootable. The.iso file that I downloaded for this tutorial is 753MB. Download and Install Steps to make USB bootable Ubuntu. Connect the USB drive to your computer. Run Universal-USB-Installer.exe that was downloaded. Click I agree on license agreement.
Under Step 1, select Try Some Other Live Linux ISO. Under Step 2, browse to the location where.iso was downloaded. Under Step 3, select your Pen Drive or Flash Drive. Also check the option “we will format as FAT32”. Click Create. The entire process takes few minutes to format and copy the installer files inside the pen drive. Once the process is complete, safely eject the drive.
Label the drive and keep it safe to prevent accidental usage and losing the drive. How to boot Ubuntu from USB. Turn on your computer. As soon as the computer is turned on, press Delete, F2 or ESC button (depends on manufacturer) to enter BIOS. Check for an entry which says Boot Configuration or something related to booting (This entry differ depending on the manufacturer of the device). Go to the boot options or boot order and select USB as the first boot device (Usually it will be CD/DVD or Hard disk). Press F10 to save the changes made to.
(Usually it Is F10. It might be different for a different manufacturer or model). Restart computer. On restarting computer, you will be taken to a purple Ubuntu boot screen. If not, you may not have configured the BIOS correctly or the file inside the pen drive is not bootable. How to check if the Ubuntu inside pen drive is bootable Connect the pen drive to your computer.
If Auto play window open up automatically, the Ubuntu inside is bootable. Some computers have auto play disabled for better security. Those cases, you can right click on pen drive and click Auto play option. If the window pops up, the Ubuntu inside is bootable. Use the comment section for any queries.
1. Overview With a bootable Ubuntu USB stick, you can:. Install or upgrade Ubuntu, even on a Mac. Test out the Ubuntu desktop experience without touching your PC configuration.
Boot into Ubuntu on a borrowed machine or from an internet cafe. Use tools installed by default on the USB stick to repair or fix a broken configuration Create a bootable Ubuntu USB stick is very simple, especially if you’re going to use the USB stick with a generic Windows or Linux PC. We’re going to cover the process in the next few steps. Apple hardware considerations There are a few additional considerations when booting the USB stick on Apple hardware. This is because Apple’s ‘Startup Manager’, summoned by holding the Option/alt (⌥) key when booting, won’t detect the USB stick without a specific partition table and layout. We’ll cover this in a later step. 2. Requirements You will need:.
A 2GB or larger USB stick/flash drive. An Apple computer or laptop running macOS. An Ubuntu ISO file. See for download links 3. Prepare the USB stick To ensure maximum compatibility with Apple hardware, we’re going to first blank and reformat the USB stick using Apple’s ‘Disk Utility’. But this step can be skipped if you intend to use the USB stick with only generic PC hardware.
Launch Disk Utility from ApplicationsUtilities or Spotlight search. Insert your USB stick and observe the new device added to Disk Utility. Select the USB stick device and select Erase from the tool bar (or right-click menu).
Set the format to MS-DOS (FAT) and the scheme to GUID Partition Map. Check you’ve chosen the correct device and click Erase. Warning: Disk Utility needs to be used with caution as selecting the wrong device or partition can result in data loss. 4. Install and run Etcher To write the ISO file to the USB stick, we’re going to use a free and open source application called. After downloading this and clicking to mount the package, Etcher can either be run in-place or dragged into your Applications folder. By default, recent versions of macOS block the running of applications from unidentified developers.
To side-step this issue, enable ‘App Store and identified developers’ in the ‘Security & Privacy’ pane of System Preferences. If you are still warned against running the application, click ‘Open Anyway’ in the same pane. Tutorials: Create a bootable Ubuntu USB stick on macOS 5. Etcher configuration Etcher will configure and write to your USB device in three stages, each of which needs to be selected in turn:.
Select image will open a file requester from which should navigate to and select the ISO file downloaded previously. By default, the ISO file will be in your Downloads folder. Select drive, replaced by the name of your USB device if one is already attached, lets you select your target device.
You will be warned if the storage space is too small for your selected ISO. Flash! will activate when both the image and the drive have been selected. As with Disk Utility, Etcher needs low-level access to your storage hardware and will ask for your password after selection. 6. Write to device After entering your password, Etcher will start writing the ISO file to your USB device. The Flash stage of the process will show progress, writing speed and an estimated duration until completion. This will be followed by a validation stage that will ensure the contents of the USB device are identical to the source image. When everything has finished, Etcher will declare the process a success.
You now have Ubuntu on a USB stick, bootable and ready to go. Warning: After the write process has completed, macOS may inform you that ‘The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer’. Don’t select Initialise. Instead, select Eject and remove the USB device.
7. Boot your Mac If you want to use your USB stick with an Apple Mac, you will need to restart or power-on the Mac with the USB stick inserted while the Option/alt (⌥) key is pressed. This will launch Apple’s ‘Startup Manager’ which shows bootable devices connected to the machine.
Your USB stick should appear as gold/yellow and labelled ‘EFI Boot’. Selecting this will lead you to the standard Ubuntu boot menu.