Step-by-step beginner's guide to installing Ubuntu alongside windows.

First, you will need a windows OS using  pc with a blank drive or space of minimum 15 GBs. and, a Ubuntu booter.
It’s easy to install Ubuntu from a DVD. Here’s what you need to do:
Put the Ubuntu DVD into the DVD-drive.Restart your computer. You should see a welcome screen prompting you to choose your language and giving you the option to install Ubuntu or try it from the DVD.

or

with a  USB drive-Most newer computers can boot from USB. You should see a welcome screen prompting you to choose your language and giving you the option to install Ubuntu or try it from the CD.

If your computer doesn’t automatically do so, you might need to press the F12/ F11 key to bring up the boot menu, but be careful not to hold it down - that can cause an error message.

Ensure you have a network cable connected, restart your computer, and boot from the CD drive.
The LiveCD will load up, and you'll be presented by the following box:



For the purposes of this guide, we will assume you've already tried Ubuntu and want to proceed with an installation, so click "Install Ubuntu."
You'll be greeted by the "Preparing to install Ubuntu" screen, exactly as below:



I recommend you select "Install third-party software" as I have done in the screenshot above. I prefer to do system updates once up and running, but if you have the extra time you can also select "download updates while installing" as well. Then click continue.
The next screen you will see is "installation type," what you see will be dependent on whether you have an existing Windows installation or not. 
 Select "something else" and manually create your partitions 

Having selected the "something else" option you will be presented with the following window:



Linux recognizes and assigns IDs to drive in a different manner to Windows. In the above image, you can clearly see my hard disk in the list. It is identified by "/dev/sda." Linux recognizes drives in the following way: 
• Sda = 1st drive
• Sdb = 2nd drive
• Sdc = 3rd drive and so on 

Partitions are also shown after the drive letters. So if I had 2 partitions on my first disk, they would be identified as:
• Sda1 – 1st drive, 1st partition
• Sda2 – 1st drive, 2nd partition

You will not see the common Windows C: label in the disk menu in the above list. You do, however, have key things to help you recognize your Windows C: drive. Both of these can be used to identify which is your Windows disk.
• The size of the disk is shown
• The name of the drive is shown

This is your current partition layout for your hard disks. If you have more than one disk, they will show up as /dev/sda, /dev/sdb etc.

Firstly, identify your Windows installation. In my case, it's sda1 (which is my first hard disk, first partition). What you see depends on how you created the extra space. I just resized the Windows partition from within Windows, and left the free space ready to install Linux. I recommend using Windows or a free utility from within Windows to resize your partition as most beginners will understand it more.

Therefore, we now need create a minimum of two partitions:

Click "Add" and the following box will appear:


You will notice I have already filled out the example above to create a 10GB root partition.

You can have a maximum of 4 primary partitions, or 3 primary partitions and 1 logical (which allows for another 64 partitions)
The size above is 10.00GB. e.g 1,000 = 1GB 10,000 = 10GB (Remember to leave enough free remaining space to create your SWAP partition!)
Location for new partition: e.g. do you want it at the start or end of the free space. Select beginning.
Use as: Ext4 is the recommended file system for Ubuntu, much the same as NTFS is Windows. SWAP is for SWAP space.
Mount point: This is where you want the partition to mount. E.g. we need a root partition, which in Linux is denoted by a "/".

Click OK once you have finished setting the partition information and you will return to your partition screen, now showing the root partition you just created. Using the same methods as before, create a SWAP partition. 

I recommend you set the size of your SWAP partition to at least the size of your available RAM. If you have plenty of hard disk capacity I would suggest you use double the size. So if you have 2GB of RAM, set it to either 2GB or 4GB. For best performance it is recommended you have your SWAP partition at the beginning or end of your drive.

Once you have done that, you should be looking at something like below.


So to re-cap the above, (in my example) we have the following:

• /dev/sda1 is your Windows partition.
• /dev/sda2 is your new root partition (Windows equiv. of C:\
• /dev/sda3 is your SWAP space.

Once you are happy with the changes you have made, click install now and proceed to the next step.

Select your location

If you are connected to the internet, this should be done automatically. Check your location is correct and click’Forward’ to proceed. If you’re unsure of your time zone, type the name of the town you’re in or click on the map and we’ll help you find it.

TIP: If you’re having problems connecting to the Internet, use the menu in the top-right-hand corner to select a network.

1. 
2. 
   
   Click on the language option you need. If you’re not sure, click the ’Detect Keyboard Layout’ button for help.
3. Enter your login and password details
4. 

5. Learn more about Ubuntu while system installs

6. That’s it.

   All that’s left is to restart your computer and start enjoying Ubuntu!