- 2 days ago
Today, we're installing Ubuntu 26.04 LTS on a laptop! Join me for a walkthrough of the steps to download the ISO, flash it to a USB drive, select it from the boot menu, and install the OS.
Download Ubuntu here: https://ubuntu.com/download/desktop
Download the USBImager utility here: https://bztsrc.gitlab.io/usbimager/
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Download Ubuntu here: https://ubuntu.com/download/desktop
Download the USBImager utility here: https://bztsrc.gitlab.io/usbimager/
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Join the Nerd Club: http://nerdclub.nots.co
Official website: https://nerdonthestreet.com
Discord server: https://discord.nots.co
IRC server info: https://irc.nots.co
Subreddit: https://reddit.com/r/nerdonthestreet
Facebook page: https://facebook.com/NerdOnTheStreet
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E-Mail: jacob@nerdonthestreet.com
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TechTranscript
00:00Hello everyone, I'm Jacob Kaufman, I'm the Nerd on the Street, and today we're installing Ubuntu 26.04 LTS.
00:14Alright everyone, it is April 23rd, 2026, and Ubuntu 26.04 was just released earlier today.
00:21This is an LTS release of Ubuntu, which means it comes standard with 5 years of support,
00:25although that can be expanded to a whopping 15 years with Canonical's paid plans.
00:29Today I'm going to show you how to install Ubuntu on your computer and get started with this very popular
00:34Linux distribution.
00:35Now in order to follow this tutorial, you're going to need three main things.
00:38The first one is a flash drive, we're going to use this to install Ubuntu.
00:41The second thing you're going to need is a working computer to flash Ubuntu onto this flash drive.
00:46And the third thing obviously is a computer that you're going to install Ubuntu on.
00:50Now that can be the same computer if you're say migrating from Windows,
00:53you can use that computer to create the installation drive and then install Ubuntu onto the same computer.
00:58Just keep in mind that the steps I'm about to show you will wipe the computer that we're installing Ubuntu
01:02onto.
01:03So if there's anything you want to save on that computer, make sure to back it up first on a
01:06different storage drive or cloud storage before you start this process.
01:10But that's all the background that we need, so we can go ahead and cut to the desktop to get
01:14started.
01:14Alright guys, and here we are on the desktop.
01:16Now I'm going to show you this on a Windows PC, kind of assuming you're running Windows and switching to
01:21Ubuntu.
01:21But if you're using Mac OS or already using Linux, these instructions should work on any major operating system.
01:27So the first thing we're going to do is open up a web browser and we're going to go to
01:31Ubuntu.com to download Ubuntu.
01:35Now sometimes there's a download button right here on the front page.
01:38Other times, like right now, there's just a press release or a white paper or something.
01:42So when you're on Ubuntu.com, you can always go up to this download Ubuntu section on the top and
01:47click the green download Ubuntu desktop button to go to the download page.
01:51We are downloading Ubuntu 26.04 and chances are you're going to want the Intel or AMD 64-bit version.
01:57If you're using a computer that needs the ARM version, you probably already know that.
02:01So again, if you're not sure, just click the green button for the regular 64-bit Intel and AMD version.
02:07And that will redirect us to this page.
02:09You do not need to sign up for the newsletter. Just wait for the download to start there.
02:13And as you can see, it is a 6.1 gigabyte download.
02:16So you might have to wait a few minutes for that to finish.
02:19All right. And after that's finished, we're also going to need to download a tool to let us flash that
02:23ISO image onto our USB drive.
02:26Now, there are a number of different tools you can use.
02:28If you already have a preferred one, you can use whatever you like.
02:30But if it's your first time doing this and you're not sure what tool to use, I'm going to recommend
02:34one called USB imager.
02:36The link for this will be in the description of the video.
02:38But if you're just following along verbally, you can go to bztsrc.gitlab.io slash USB imager.
02:47And that will take you to the homepage for this tool.
02:49The download button here should recommend a version that will work with your operating system.
02:53Again, Windows, Mac or Linux.
02:55So I'll go ahead and click download for Windows here.
02:57And that's just a zip file.
02:59So I'll go ahead and open up the USB imager zip file.
03:01And I'm going to extract it so that we can run it in a moment.
03:05Once it's extracted, it's inside of this folder.
03:07And it's just a nice little portable application asking for administrative privileges because we are going to wipe the flash
03:13drive we're using in a moment.
03:14And there we have it.
03:15So just to make this look a little cleaner, I'm going to close out of everything else real quick.
03:18And what we're going to do here is click the three dots and we're going to open up the Ubuntu
03:23image that we just downloaded right here.
03:26Ubuntu 26.04.
03:27So I'll open that.
03:28After we've selected the image, the next thing we need to do is connect the flash drive we're going to
03:32use to install Ubuntu.
03:35I'll go ahead and plug this one in here.
03:37Now, once again, this is going to completely wipe the flash drive.
03:40So if there's anything you want to save on it, go ahead and move it off at this point.
03:45But now that that's detected, I can go ahead and come into our dropdown box here in the USB imager
03:52program.
03:52And I'll just select my flash drive out of the list.
03:54Once that's done, I'll click the right button and it's going to immediately start flashing the drive.
03:59As you can see, it's telling me right now it's going to take about 30 minutes.
04:03This completely depends on the speed of your flash drive and the USB port that you've got it plugged into.
04:08The Ubuntu installation images are a little on the large side and this is a pretty slow flash drive.
04:13So that's why it's going to take so long for me.
04:15So I'll go ahead and come back when that's done.
04:18All right.
04:19And as soon as that's complete, you'll see this done message.
04:22And depending on your operating system, you might also get another pop up about the flash drive.
04:27You can just exit out of any of that.
04:29But once the USB imager app says done there, you can close out of it and we can go ahead
04:34and unplug the flash drive.
04:35Now at this point, if you're installing Ubuntu on the same computer, you're just going to want to go ahead
04:41and shut it down.
04:42If you're installing Ubuntu on a different computer, though, this would be the time to take that flash drive,
04:47go to that other computer that you're going to put Ubuntu on.
04:50So here I've switched to a different computer.
04:52This is the one I'm going to install Ubuntu on and we'll go ahead and plug that flash drive that
04:56we just imaged into this computer.
04:58Now, once again, this process we're about to go through is going to completely wipe this computer.
05:03So if you have any files that you wanted to save from this, turn it back on, copy those to
05:07an external disk or to cloud storage.
05:09But I've gone ahead and backed everything on this one up. So I'm ready to install Ubuntu on it.
05:13I'm going to click the power button. And after that, I'm going to start repeatedly pressing the escape key.
05:18Now, the specific instructions here are going to vary based on the brand of your computer and also the specific
05:24model.
05:25In my case, this is a System76 computer.
05:28So there was a menu option there for just a moment that said press escape to access the boot menu.
05:33For a lot of computers, that's going to be a different key like F2 or F10.
05:38So just watch the splash screen when your computer boots up, see if it suggests a key.
05:42If not, try some of those common function keys like F2 or F10 or maybe escape or delete.
05:48It's going to be one of those to get into your computer's boot menu.
05:52If you can get into the BIOS menu, that also might let you perform this next step.
05:55I'm going to adjust the lighting on my camera for a moment so you can see the screen a little
05:59better.
05:59And if I select boot default, that's going to boot whatever OS is already installed on this computer.
06:04I want to go to one time boot and I'm going to look for the name of my flash drive.
06:09This one happens to be called Inovera.
06:11So again, find your computer's boot menu, look for your flash drive in it and press enter.
06:16That's going to start booting Ubuntu.
06:18Now there's a couple of options here.
06:20There's a safe graphics option.
06:22If you try to boot Ubuntu and you find that you get just a blank screen or maybe you find
06:27that the screen freezes very quickly,
06:28you can try this safe graphics option.
06:31I think we're going to be okay with the default drivers for this particular laptop.
06:35So I'm going to just select the first option in this menu which says try or install Ubuntu.
06:39I'll press enter on that.
06:43And after a moment, we'll get this loading spinner.
06:45You might also see your computer's brand displayed above that.
06:49And again, depending on the speed of your flash drive, after a few seconds or a few minutes,
06:54we'll see the wallpaper for Ubuntu come up here.
06:57Ubuntu 26.04 is codenamed Resolute Raccoon.
07:00So we saw the little raccoon there in the background for a second.
07:03But pretty quickly after that, we'll have the installer pop up that says welcome to Ubuntu at the top.
07:10And there we have Ubuntu's little startup jingle.
07:12Now I'm going to reconnect my capture card real quick here just to better show you guys what's going on.
07:18And here we go.
07:19We've got the nice high quality screen recording back.
07:21So the first page of the Ubuntu installer is going to ask you to select your language.
07:26I'm just going to keep the default language of English and I'll click next at the bottom right.
07:30Now, most of this installer is very self-explanatory.
07:33If you've got any special needs aside from what I'm going through, such as these accessibility options,
07:38you of course can pick out what you need and select them.
07:41I'm just going to proceed with most of the default options here.
07:44Default keyboard layout.
07:46I will go ahead and connect to a Wi-Fi network.
07:48I would recommend doing that just because Ubuntu might be able to download some updates
07:52if there are any available while you're installing.
07:54So you can save time installing them after you're done with the initial installation.
08:00So I'll go ahead and connect there.
08:03And that's finished.
08:04I'll click next.
08:05Now on this try or install Ubuntu screen, if you want, you can actually try out Ubuntu just from the
08:11live disc
08:11and that won't wipe anything off of your computer.
08:14If you just want to give Ubuntu a try, you can do that.
08:16It will be quite slow, once again, depending on the speed of your flash drive.
08:20And anything you do while trying Ubuntu is going to be erased when you shut the computer down
08:25because everything you're doing right here is just going to be loaded into your computer's RAM.
08:29It's not actually saved anywhere.
08:31So we want to install Ubuntu so that it persists on this computer.
08:35So I'll just keep that selected and click next.
08:37And the type of installation we're doing is interactive because we're clicking on the installer here.
08:42By default, Ubuntu these days is going to install the smaller set of applications and then you can go and
08:47install things that you need afterwards.
08:49If you want a little bit more installed by default, more applications, you can select this extended selection.
08:56Once again, though, you're probably going to have to update a lot of those anyway after you're finished installing.
09:01So personally, I just stick with the default selection and then use the app store after you're done.
09:05Use the software center to install anything that you do want that's not included in that default selection.
09:10So I'll click next on that.
09:11On this proprietary software screen for most computers, I would go ahead and recommend selecting both of these.
09:17This is going to make sure that your graphics card works as well as it can.
09:21And it's going to make sure you can play as many video and audio codecs as it can.
09:26It's just going to minimize the amount of tinkering you have to do after installation.
09:29If you are specifically trying to only use free software, open source software, then you can choose to leave these
09:36deselected.
09:36It just might be a little bit more work later on if you find out you do need some of
09:40those.
09:40So I'd recommend just checking them and we'll click next.
09:44And now we have our disk setup page.
09:46Now, I keep saying that the way I'm showing you how to do this is going to wipe your computer
09:50completely clean.
09:51Depending on what OS you have installed, you might see an option to actually install Ubuntu alongside something else.
09:58In this case, I already have pop OS installed on this particular computer so the Ubuntu installer is offering to
10:04resize it.
10:05If you have Windows, the installer might offer to do that.
10:08Do be aware that there's always a risk when you're repartitioning things.
10:11If something goes wrong during that repartitioning, then you could end up losing whatever's on your computer anyway.
10:16I'm not saying that to try and scare you, just a reminder that you do still want to back up
10:20what's on your computer if possible before you do something like this, even if you are going to use that
10:25alongside option.
10:26Now, in this case, like I said, I just want to install Ubuntu on this computer.
10:30I want to wipe out whatever OS is already on there and I'll only be using Ubuntu.
10:34So in order to do that, I'm going to click the erase disk and install Ubuntu option.
10:39I'll go ahead and click next after that.
10:41On the next page, we have the option to enable encryption.
10:44If you have a computer that supports it, you can use hardware backed encryption.
10:48On any computer, you should be able to encrypt with a passphrase.
10:51And for a laptop like this, it's a really good idea to do that.
10:54So I'm going to go ahead and select encrypt with a passphrase.
10:57If you're using a desktop computer or you're not really worried about somebody stealing your computer and you just want
11:01to not worry about the extra hassle,
11:03the extra complexity of encryption, you can absolutely just select no encryption.
11:07I've actually never used Ubuntu's boot time passphrase option before, so I'm going to try that one out.
11:12Down here under advanced options, there are a few more combinations of disk formats with and without encryption that you
11:18can select from.
11:19But if you don't know what those are, you probably don't need to worry about that.
11:22So just select whichever option you want and click next.
11:24And here we're being asked for our encryption passphrase.
11:27So like I said, this is a good idea on laptops because if you lose your laptop, if it's not
11:32encrypted,
11:32somebody can just use a live disk to access all of your files.
11:36If your laptop is encrypted, if somebody boots a live disk, they would still need to know your passphrase in
11:41order to access your files.
11:43So you're just protecting things a little bit more.
11:45I've entered in my very secure passphrase here.
11:47As the installer notes, if you lose this passphrase, you're going to lose all of your data.
11:51There's no way to reset the encryption passphrase.
11:54You can reset a user account password using a live disk in Linux, but you cannot reset an encryption passphrase
12:01because the entire point, once again, is that nobody can access or tamper with the files on your drive
12:06unless they know that passphrase.
12:07So keep that in mind.
12:08Maybe write your password down if it's one you might not remember.
12:11I'll go ahead and click next again.
12:13And here we'll actually create our user account.
12:15So I'll type in my name here.
12:17I'll type in the computer's name.
12:18I'll just say Ubuntu for the computer's name.
12:21And then for my username, by default, it looks like Ubuntu is recommending your first name dash your last name.
12:27I personally like to just have my first name as the username.
12:31So I'll enter that in.
12:32Your username is going to be all lowercase.
12:34That is the only restriction there.
12:36And here we'll enter in our user password.
12:40The user password can be the same as your encryption password if you want.
12:43It doesn't have to be.
12:45This is the password that you'll enter at the login screen of your computer.
12:48It's what you'll enter when you lock and unlock your computer.
12:51And it's also what you'll enter when you're doing administrative tasks like installing software.
12:55If you are using boot time encryption like I am here,
12:58then you can uncheck this require my password to log in box.
13:02It'll automatically log you in after your computer boots,
13:05which would still require the encryption password.
13:07I'm going to keep this checked so that I do see the login screen.
13:10But that does mean I'll have to enter the password twice when the computer boots.
13:13You'll see what that looks like in just a moment.
13:15So completely up to you if you want to auto log in or not.
13:18I'll click next.
13:20And next we'll select our time zone.
13:22It looks like it's detected it from my internet already.
13:26And finally, we'll get a summary screen.
13:28It says ready to install and we can just scroll through everything that we've selected here.
13:33All of these unchanged partitions are the ones on our flash drive.
13:37And then our SSD, this NVMe drive here, it's going to format it as we've requested.
13:42And with that, I'll click the green install button.
13:46So here while it's installing, we'll get a little slideshow of Ubuntu.
13:50You can wait for that to proceed or you can click through the different pages.
13:53Ubuntu is just featuring some different apps that are available to install from their software center
13:59in lots of different categories.
14:01And if you've ever installed a Linux distribution before,
14:04a lot of these slideshows tend to look really similar after a while.
14:07But if you're just getting into Linux, this will definitely open your eyes
14:11to the whole world of software you have available.
14:13Here on the last page, we've got links to documentation,
14:17the Ubuntu discourse forums, and the Ask Ubuntu forums.
14:20You can actually click on these and they will open up here in our live environment.
14:25It is going to be a little bit slow once again,
14:27because it's got to load Firefox off of that flash drive.
14:30But as you can see, I clicked on Ask Ubuntu,
14:32which is a question and answer website, and it loaded that right up here.
14:36So that's nice that you can browse that while you're waiting.
14:38One other thing we can do is click on this little terminal icon.
14:40In the bottom right, and that'll actually show us behind the scenes what's going on here.
14:45You can see it's running some crypt setup commands,
14:47some disk formatting commands,
14:49and you don't have to type anything here.
14:51If this looks scary, you can just close that terminal again.
14:54I just like to kind of see what's going on in the background out of curiosity.
14:59Some of what I can see happening in the background here
15:01is some of those proprietary media codecs and proprietary graphics drivers
15:05like the Nvidia driver here being installed since we selected those options.
15:08And I could see earlier some URLs popping up since we did connect to the internet like I said.
15:13The installer is fetching the latest versions of some of those packages
15:16that might be a little bit newer than what's on the flash drive image.
15:20And finally, after all of that's finished,
15:22we'll have this message that Ubuntu is installed and ready to use.
15:25So as you can see, you can continue testing if you'd like,
15:28and you'll keep running off of the flash drive.
15:31However, like I said, anything that you do right now
15:33is not going to be saved when you reboot the computer.
15:36So you should probably go ahead if you're ready here
15:38and click the green restart now button.
15:42So I'll cut back to the camera here as the computer starts to shut down.
15:46And eventually we'll have this message,
15:48please remove the installation medium, then press enter.
15:51The installation medium was our flash drive.
15:54So I will remove that and then I'll press enter and the computer will restart.
15:58So when the computer restarts, you'll see your normal splash screen.
16:02Next, you'll see the grub boot menu.
16:04And after about 30 seconds, it will automatically continue into the first option.
16:09We don't need to wait for it though.
16:10We can just press enter to boot right into Ubuntu.
16:13And here we have the decryption prompt.
16:15Since we chose to encrypt our computer and have that pass phrase that we have to enter,
16:20this is where you decrypt it while you're booting up.
16:22So I'll just type my password in here and I'll press enter.
16:27After you do that, most of the real boot process will begin.
16:33After a few moments, we'll get our login screen.
16:35So this is where you would enter that second password that we set up on the screen with your name.
16:40Again, it might or might not be the same as your decryption password from before.
16:44And this is the part that you can skip if you unchecked that box to require your password to log
16:49in.
16:49But since I didn't do that, I will go ahead and log in normally here.
16:54And once again, we'll have the Ubuntu desktop.
16:56Once again, here is that Resolute Raccoon.
16:59You can view the release notes for Ubuntu 26.04 if you want.
17:02This version, in my opinion, is a pretty iterative release.
17:05We get a new version of the GNOME desktop environment,
17:08a lot of small tweaks in the default applications here or there,
17:11but not necessarily a lot of brand new Ubuntu-specific stuff,
17:14at least that a regular user would notice.
17:16But if you are interested in exactly what's changed in this version,
17:20that is where the release notes can be found.
17:21Clicking next here, we have the option to enable location services.
17:25Sometimes websites and things will request that.
17:27Totally up to you if you enable it or not.
17:29I'll click next.
17:30And you can choose to share your system data with Ubuntu,
17:33give them some statistics about what kind of hardware people are using Ubuntu with.
17:37You can also choose whether or not to share error reports with the Ubuntu team.
17:40Once again, totally optional to do any of that.
17:42It all defaults to off.
17:44It looks like it just turned itself off after I tried to enable it there.
17:47So I'll try that one more time and I'll click next.
17:50And we've got a little bit of style preferences right off the bat here.
17:54Pretty neat that we've got some customization right out of the box these days.
17:58You can select a dark theme if you'd like,
18:00or you can keep the default sort of mixed dark and light theme.
18:03You can also change the accent color,
18:05which is a pretty nice way Linux distributions and desktop environments have landed on
18:09to let you add a little bit of customizability, a little bit of personalization
18:13without having as much risk of breaking the appearance of apps
18:17like some of the older Linux theming systems did.
18:19I'll stick with this orange color.
18:21I think that was the default.
18:22I'll click next.
18:23And finally, we have a link to open the app center.
18:25So once again, if you do want to look for any of those third party applications,
18:30things that aren't installed in this pretty minimal default install,
18:32you can go in here, search for things, browse, ton of software in here.
18:38I'll go ahead and close that for now and I'll click finish.
18:40And then you'll just be left at your desktop to do whatever you want to do with your computer.
18:44If you've never used the GNOME desktop environment before,
18:46it's pretty easy, especially here on Ubuntu.
18:49Ubuntu is going to have this left sidebar with some of your basic applications.
18:52And in the top left of the screen,
18:54clicking this line here is going to open up the activities menu.
18:58This is where you can search for the apps you have installed.
19:00You can also see them all by clicking show apps in the bottom left.
19:04And you can also switch between different virtual desktops.
19:07If you've never used this kind of system before,
19:09it's very handy to open up different applications at the same time
19:13without having to compete for your screen space.
19:15At this point, even Windows has this kind of functionality,
19:17but Linux actually had this before anyone else.
19:20Looking over here on the camera,
19:21I'm actually just swiping four fingers to move between virtual desktops there.
19:25Just some very basic navigational tips
19:27in case this is really your first time using Ubuntu.
19:29But from there, it's all up to you what you do with your computer.
19:32But you will have Ubuntu 26.04 installed now to play with.
19:36If you guys have any questions about Ubuntu,
19:38feel free to visit my website at nerdonthestreet.com.
19:41You can leave a comment on this video.
19:42I've also got forums that you can talk in.
19:45Also feel free to join my Discord server.
19:47I've got an IRC server.
19:48Links to all that stuff are in the description below.
19:51If this video was helpful to you,
19:52feel free to comment on whatever website you're watching this on.
19:55If you're watching on YouTube,
19:56please also subscribe and stay subscribed.
19:58I've been making videos,
20:00many of which are about Linux,
20:01for almost 14 years now.
20:03And I'm trying to make YouTube send me one of those silver play buttons.
20:06So subscribing is free,
20:07and it helps me work towards that goal.
20:09You can also visit nerdclub.knots.co
20:11if you're interested in helping me make more content,
20:13and keep the content I've already made online.
20:16Absolutely no pressure with that though.
20:17And that is everything I had to talk about in this video.
20:19So I'm Jacob Kaufman,
20:20I'm the Nerd on the Street,
20:21and I'll see you guys in the next one.
20:23Bye.
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