Need help installing Ubuntu Mate

Support & Help Requests
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Hello UM Community,

I’m new to the world of Linux. I’ve never tried any distros before. I was looking for way to re-use my old Dell WinXP tower and a friend suggested installing Ubuntu-Mate. He gave me a copy of the live disc to test. After trying it out, I’m sold! Great job Mate team! I actually can’t wait to use it :grin:

I don’t really have a need to keep XP and I already backed up my files so I can completely erase the disk. I was reading wolfman’s beginner’s guide to installing UM, even the suggested GParted guide to partitioning, as well as other "install" guides, but I’m still kind of lost. I thought about using the second option “Erase Disk,” but I didn’t find a guide for it and wasn’t sure if it would automatically create 3 partitions for me as recommended. Does it?

I’d rather be safe than sorry so here I ask. Please bear with me.

Here are my system specs. It shows that the architecture can support 64-bit. Should I install the 64-bit UM instead?

System Spec.png802×581 66.5 KB

I have two HDDs installed. Here’s the original one (boot disk). This is where I plan to install Mate unless otherwise suggested.

1st HDD.png800×700 133 KB

Here’s the 2nd one which I installed a few years later. I was using this for DAW purposes and I set it up to dual boot so only I can use it. I created two partitions back then, one for back up (MainStorage) and the other for my DAW files (DAW Storage). I can get rid of the DAW Storage if I need to.

2nd HDD.png800×700 129 KB

Here’s the GParted breakdown of the first HDD. This is where I got stuck (and scared). How should I proceed from here? If you can give me step by step procedure, that would be awesome! Other recommendations are welcome as well.

GParted View.png777×529 58.3 KB

I apologize if this is kind of similar to other posts, but I just couldn't proceed confidently with the others that I've read.

Thanks guys!

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Hi @PointMan

It creates enough that you have a working system after that. It's the easiest install option.

Yes, seeing as you have 4Gigs of RAM.

Easiest if you really want to have a separate home is to not use gparted but the installer's partitioning tool.

When it ask you what you want to do (example: Erase disk and install...) choose "Something Else".

Select your /dev/sda drive, then click "New Partition Table".

Create the following partitions:

MountPoint  Type    Size

/           ext4    40GB
            swap    8GB
/home       ext4    [all remaining space]

Be careful: the unit used by the installer is MB, not GB so 40000MB for "/", etc...
Then click "install"

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If you want to follow a video tutorial on how to do this; (It works the same even if he’s showing it on Unity)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kL4DG31tgRM
ext4 / for your boot drive.
swap on either boot or storage drive.
ext4 /home for your storage drive.

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You can create separate partitions for boot, home and swap. But I’ve never used a separate swap partition. Whenever necessary I created a swap file. So, it is really up to you. Best practice is to create the following partitions:

/ - 40Gb - Ext2, Ext3 or Ext4 filesystem
/home - the rest of the drive with any filesystem you want (I use Ext4).

But as you use 2 drives what I would do is the following:

/dev/sda (1st drive)
A 60Gb partition for root ( / ) with an Ext4 filesystem, which leaves a 90Gb partition for /home

/dev/sdb (2nd drive)
Remove the DAW storage and format it as Ext4 (or btrfs) and mount it as /data. You can then use that partition for backups, data or whatever. So when you want to install another distribution or re-install UM, you don’t loose that data. As you can mount the MainStorage and move the data over to the new data partition. Which leaves you with a partition where you could than install yet another linux distribution. Just to play with it.

I even encrypted my /data partition so only someone with the right key (a.k.a. me) can read the data.

My setup

/boot        412Mb - ext2
/            50Gb - ext 4
/home  (the rest) Ext4
/data     1Tb Ext4 Encrypted

On my second drive there is an 88Gb partition which now contains an Arch version.

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Thanks @ouroumov! Your guide plus the video from @WhyAreLess definitely helped. Mate installed! :grin:

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Thanks @WhyAreLess! This video and the author is awesome!

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Thanks @wizd3m! I received your response after the installation. I will keep this in mind or I might actually try it. After successfully installing my first Linux distro, I now feel confident in trying another one. Thanks to you guys :+1:

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See also:

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