How to Install Pop!_OS 24.04

Nerd on the Street

Pop!_OS 24.04 with the first stable version of the COSMIC Epoch desktop environment has been released! Join me for a quick walkthrough of the installation process.  Download Pop!_OS here: https://system76.com/pop  Download Ventoy here: https://ventoy.net  --- Join the Nerd Club: http://nerdclub.nots.co Official website: https://nerdonthestreet.com Discord server: https://discord.nots.co Subreddit: https://reddit.com/r/nerdonthestreet Facebook page: https://facebook.com/NerdOnTheStreet Twitter feed: https://twitter.com/NOTS_Network E-Mail: jacob@nerdonthestreet.com

Transcript

00:00Hello everyone, I'm Jacob Kauf and I'm the Nerd on the Street and today we are installing Pop!OS 24.04.

00:13Alright guys, Pop!OS is a Linux-based operating system, also known as a Linux distribution,

00:18created by the Denver, Colorado-based computer manufacturer System76.

00:23After several years of work, System76 is finally releasing Pop!OS 24.04.

00:28This is the newest major version of their operating system and it includes the first stable version

00:33of the brand new desktop environment, Cosmic. Now I'm going to make a separate video just talking

00:38about Cosmic, but first I did want to make a quick tutorial showing you how to install Pop!OS,

00:42because based on the view counts of my past videos, this is apparently the part that you guys want to

00:46see most. In order to install Pop!OS, you'll need a working computer that you can download Pop!OS on,

00:52and number two, you're going to need a flash drive. I happen to have one here that's System76 branded,

00:58but any old flash drive will work, it just needs to be at least four gigabytes large to fit Pop!OS on it.

01:03And then you'll need a computer that you're installing Pop!OS onto. The computer that you

01:07download on can be the same computer that you're about to install onto, but do be aware when we

01:12install Pop!OS, it's going to erase all the files on the computer that we're installing onto,

01:16so if you're putting Pop!OS on a computer that you already have some files on, make sure to back

01:20those files up to an external drive or an online cloud storage provider before you do this.

01:25So that's what you'll need before you get started, and without further ado, I'll cut to the desktop,

01:29and we can download Pop!OS. All right, and here we are on the desktop. Now, I happen to have a

01:34Windows 10 PC sitting around here, so I'm going to show you how to create the Pop!OS installation

01:38media from Windows, just in case you're currently running Windows and you're trying to switch over.

01:43No matter what operating system you're starting on, the first thing we'll want to do is open up a

01:46web browser, and we'll go to System76.com slash Pop! That's going to bring us to the Pop!OS

01:52home page, and we'll click the orange download button right at the top here.

01:56Now, we'll scroll down a little bit here, and there are multiple different versions of the ISO

02:00that you can download. If your computer has an NVIDIA graphics card in it, in any capacity,

02:06if it's a single NVIDIA graphics card, or if you have a laptop with multiple GPUs and one of them's

02:11NVIDIA, if that NVIDIA card is a 16 series or above, you're going to want to download the NVIDIA

02:17version of the ISO here. If you do not have an NVIDIA graphics card in your computer, or if it's an

02:22older graphics card, 10 series or below, then you're going to want to download the generic

02:26version of the ISO here under the first section. The computer I'm about to install to has an NVIDIA

02:3230 series GPU in it, so I'm going to download the NVIDIA version of the ISO here. We'll just click on

02:38the orange download button. After that ISO file's done downloading, we'll need to download one more

02:43thing, and that's a tool to flash the ISO file onto a USB drive. Now, there are several tools you can

02:48use out there. Today, I'm going to show you how to use one called Ventoy, so we're just going to go

02:52to ventoy.net, and we'll go here to the downloads section. If you've got a different tool that you

02:59prefer to use, like Etcher or Rufus, you can really use any tool that you like. Ventoy is pretty popular

03:04right now, and I've had some issues with recent versions of Etcher, which used to be my go-to, so that's

03:09why I'm showing you how to use Ventoy here. As you can see, they link to SourceForge for their

03:13downloads, not the prettiest website, but since I'm on Windows here, I'm just going to download the

03:17Windows version of Ventoy, and just ignore all of the fake download buttons elsewhere on the page.

03:24Make sure you get the right link there. You should end up with a zip file that says ventoy-aversion-number.zip,

03:30so I'm going to exit out of the web browser at this point, and we'll just go to my file explorer,

03:35open up our downloads, and we'll go ahead and extract that Ventoy zip file there into a regular

03:41folder, and inside of there, we're going to have a Ventoy to disk utility. We can double-click on that

03:48to launch it. All right, and at this point, I'm going to need to plug in my USB flash drive to the

03:55laptop, so I've got the flash drive here. I'm just going to stick that into the side of the laptop.

04:01Once it's plugged in, Windows might tell you you need to format the disk. I'm just going to click

04:05cancel on that because Ventoy is going to do that for us. I'll click on the refresh button within

04:10Ventoy, and Ventoy is going to detect my flash drive. If you have multiple flash drives plugged in,

04:15make sure you're selecting the right one based on the size and the name. Once again, this is going to

04:20completely wipe the flash drive that we're installing Ventoy onto. I've only got the one flash drive,

04:24and that is the correct one, so I'll click on install. It's warning you this will be formatted,

04:28all the data will be lost. Click on yes, and it's double-checking. Click on yes again.

04:35All right, and that has been successfully installed, so now we have Ventoy on that flash drive.

04:40So now all we have to do is go back to our downloads folder, and I'll go ahead and copy

04:44the PopOS ISO that we just downloaded, and then I'll come into my Ventoy drive here,

04:50and we just have to paste it right in there. And since we used Ventoy in this tutorial, you can

04:55actually keep the same flash drive and just paste other ISO files in here later if you want to try

05:00out a different Linux distribution, or if you want to update the PopOS ISO version that's on the drive

05:05later. I do still prefer the simplicity of Etcher, but like I said, I've actually had issues using it,

05:10and Etcher does have kind of an odd amount of analytics and stuff built in for such a simple

05:14utility. If you're on Mac OS, you can usually just flash the ISO to a USB drive using disk utility,

05:21and if you're already on Linux, you can use an app like Popsicle, which is the one that comes built

05:25into PopOS, but is also available for other distributions in order to flash the drive.

05:29But for Windows here, Ventoy is going to be one of the easiest ways to do this as of today,

05:34so we'll just wait for that to complete. All right, and once that's finished,

05:38that's all we have to do to use Ventoy. We don't have to do any sort of special preparation,

05:41you just have to copy the ISO file into the Ventoy drive. So I'm going to right-click on the Ventoy drive

05:47and click Eject just to make sure that that is all written properly. Currently in use. Okay,

05:53let me cancel that. Let's navigate somewhere else, then try to eject it. There we go. All right,

06:01so once the Ventoy drive disappears from Windows here, I can unplug my flash drive, and at this point,

06:06I'm going to switch over from the Windows computer to the other laptop that I'm actually going to

06:10install PopOS on. Again, if you're trying to install onto the same computer that you just used to

06:15create the installation drive, that's totally fine. Just turn this computer off at this point,

06:20assuming that you've already backed all the files on it up. I'm just going to shut this thing down.

06:28And I'll unplug my capture card here, and just move that laptop out of the way. And here's the

06:33one that we're installing PopOS onto. So at this point, you want to connect the PopOS installation

06:37drive to the computer that you're installing PopOS onto. So I'll go ahead and do that. And now we can

06:43turn this computer on. I'm going to hold the escape key when I do this, because you'll see

06:48when the screen turns on, it'll say press escape for boot options and settings. Depending on what

06:54computer you're using, that key will probably be different. A lot of computers, it's a key like F10

06:59or F2. And a lot of times it will say when you're booting up, press this key to enter the boot menu.

07:05Sometimes if you get into the BIOS menu or the UEFI menu, it will let you choose a boot device there as

07:10well. But on this computer, it was escape. So I'm in the very simple UEFI menu here, and I'm going to

07:15select one time boot and then go down and select the flash drive that we just put Ventoy and PopOS

07:20onto. Again, these menus will look different depending on what computer you have. Once we enter here,

07:25though, you'll see the Ventoy menu and we'll just press enter to select the PopOS file. Inside of there,

07:31we can just boot in normal mode. So press enter again. And then here on the PopOS try or install screen,

07:37once again, just press enter for a third time. And once we do that, we'll get a splash screen and

07:41PopOS will start to boot up here. As you can see, my capture card is currently getting something

07:46different from my built-in screen on the laptop here. But we can see that PopOS is booting because

07:50the flash drive is flashing. Looks like the display is mirrored to the capture card now. And this can

07:55take a minute depending on the speed of your flash drive and the speed of the USB port on the computer.

07:59So just be patient there while it all boots up. All right. And we've got our installer here.

08:06I'm going to take just a moment. My capture card's resolution is just a little bit off there.

08:11That's a problem with the capture card more than PopOS. It just advertises a weird resolution.

08:15So I'll go down to 1080p just to make that look a little bit better here. But as you can see,

08:21when you boot into the PopOS install disk, you should see the installer pop up by default. If it

08:27doesn't, then the installer should be pinned to the dock on the far right side. And this is actually the

08:31same PopOS installer that was present for the last PopOS release, 22.04. System76 didn't quite get

08:38around to rewriting their installer in Rust yet. So it's still just the same GTK-based installer,

08:43actually written in Vala, which is a language kind of spearheaded by elementary OS,

08:48at least as far as the front end is concerned. The back end was already Rust and still is.

08:52So after selecting our language, I'm just going to click on Clean Install. If you've already got a

08:56PopOS installation on the computer, it will give you the Refresh Install option. And you can select

09:01the Custom option if you want to use a different partition layout or file system format than what's

09:06going to be present by default. But I'm just going to click on Clean Install because I want to use the

09:10full disk encryption, which is currently only available with the default partition layout. On the Select a

09:15Drive screen, you're going to see the USB drive that you're installing from. It will not be selectable.

09:20And then hopefully you'll see the internal SSD or hard drive that is inside of your computer.

09:25Once again, if you've got multiple SSDs in your computer, make sure you select the right one,

09:29because this is about to wipe whatever we select, as you can tell by the fact that the button is red

09:34and says Erase and Install. So we'll click on that. And PopOS will ask us just a few questions about

09:39the user account we want to set up. I'll type in my name here. I like to customize my username to make

09:44it just my first name. Makes it a little easier when I'm doing certain things on the command line.

09:49So I'll click on Next. I will set a very secure password here. And I'll click on Next. And the driving

09:55encryption screen is where you can select if you want PopOS's full disk encryption enabled or not.

10:00I'm going to enable it. This will basically make it so that if somebody ever steals the laptop,

10:04as long as it's turned off when they steal it, they will not be able to get any of your files without

10:09knowing your password. If you don't select this option, then somebody can just boot a Linux live

10:14disk and copy all of your files off, so quite a bit less secure. Totally up to you though if you want

10:19that extra layer protection or not. If you're worried about forgetting your password or having to recover

10:23things yourself, then maybe you don't want it. I'll just click the green encrypt button here,

10:26and we are going to use the same password that I used for the main user account, just to keep

10:31things simple. And after that, PopOS will start installing. The USB flash drive started flashing

10:36a little bit there as it was copying some files off of the drive and onto the internal SSD. We've got

10:41this nice little rocket animation in the installer. If you want, you can click on the little terminal

10:45icon here, and it'll open up a terminal screen. You got to scroll up until you see the actual output.

10:51But now we can kind of follow along with what PopOS is doing. No interaction necessary at this point

10:56though. We're just sitting back and letting the system install itself. All right, that just took

11:01a couple minutes. And after the installation is complete, we'll just click on the green restart

11:06device button. Anything we do in this live environment before we reboot into the actual

11:10system will be lost when we reboot into the actual system. So I'd recommend just restarting as soon as

11:15it's done. We'll see the live system shut itself down there. And once the system reboots,

11:20once you see your biosplash screen again, you can unplug the flash drive at any point.

11:24Now, if you don't unplug it fast enough, the system might try to reboot back into the flash drive.

11:29So you might just have to power off and do that. But here we have the decryption screen,

11:34you can see the icon has been updated a little bit in PopOS 24.04. If you were familiar with what

11:39it used to look like, I'll go ahead and type in my decryption password there and press enter.

11:44And once again, after a moment, we'll get our login screen. So I'll type in my password one more time

11:52and press enter and that will log me in into the brand new cosmic desktop environment. And here we

11:57have the cosmic initial setup wizard. So this will just walk us through some basic configuration.

12:02The first page is some accessibility and screen options. This is a very simple laptop and I don't

12:07need any of those options. So I'll just click on next on the next page. If you'd like, you can connect

12:11to a Wi-Fi network so that you'll have internet right off the bat. I'll go ahead and do that.

12:15We'll click on next again and you'll be able to select a language and keyboard layout. Those will

12:20default to English US. The next page is the time zone. This one will not default to anything. PopOS

12:25doesn't have any kind of tracking where it would be able to automatically determine this. So I'll just

12:30search for Denver and we'll go ahead and select that and continue on. And the next few pages are more

12:35optional appearance personalization. If you just want to be done with the wizard at this point, you can

12:40skip this and close it immediately. But just to show you this new cosmic desktop environment is

12:44meant to be very customizable. We've got six different color palettes that we can choose from

12:49right off the bat. Of course, all of these colors are even more customizable later once you're through

12:54the wizard. I'm going to stick with the default cosmic dark color scheme to start out and I'll click

12:59next. The next page is your panel layout. Once again, they provide you with several different layouts

13:04just right off the bat here. There is a bottom panel layout if you're coming from windows 10 or 11.

13:09It's not going to work quite the same way. It's really the same buttons that you'll get on the

13:13other panel layout, but visually this will look a little bit more like windows. I'm going to stick

13:17with the default top panel and bottom dock layout that visually looks a little bit more like macOS.

13:22And I'll click next. And the last few pages are just an informational slideshow explaining a little

13:27bit about how to use the cosmic desktop environment. Once again, I'll make a separate video just talking

13:32about cosmic because it's not even specific to PopOS anymore. But once we're through all of that,

13:37I'll click on finish and there you have it. We now have PopOS 24.04 with Cosmic Epoch 1 installed

13:44on your computer, ready to go. So I hope this video was helpful to you. If it was, feel free to leave a

13:49comment, leave a like on whatever platform you're watching this on. If you're watching on YouTube,

13:53please subscribe and stay subscribed. Help me make YouTube send me one of those silver play buttons.

13:58You can also go to nerdclub.knots.co if you'd like to pitch in just a few dollars a month to help me make

14:03more videos. But for now, that's PopOS 24.04. I'm Jacob Kaufman, I'm the Nerd on the Street,

14:08and I'll see you guys in the next video. Bye.

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