Dual Boot Ubuntu 20.04 And Windows 10: Step By Step Tutorial With Screenshots

Many of us want to use Windows and Ubuntu both on the same computer but dual booting does not seem easy to everyone. In this article, I’ll show you how you can dual boot your computer with Windows 10 and Ubuntu 20.04.

I assume that you’ve already installed Windows. First of all, save all of your important files so that any mishappening does not cause data loss. Save data either in pen drive or any external hard drive or whatever source you use to save your data just save it. Now our first step starts with inserting Ubuntu bootable DVD/Pendrive. If you have pen drive then make sure you’ve set your system boot from Pendrive. If you have not set it up then open BIOS setup (Press Del while system startup). From BIOS, go to the Boot tab and select boot preference, and select your pen drive at primary boot. Now save settings and reboot your system (F4).

Dual Boot Ubuntu 20.04 And Windows 10

The system should boot up from Ubuntu Bootable Pendrive. Just wait until you get an option to “Try Ubuntu” or “Install Ubuntu”.

Click Try Ubuntu and you will be booted to Ubuntu Live. Here you can test several features and look and decide further to install it or not. Now you see an icon on the desktop “Install Ubuntu”, click it.

A setup window will pop up asking for language selection. Select your preferred language from the left sidebar and click ‘Continue’. The next screen shows a couple of options to select. If you are connected to the internet, click the checkbox ‘Download updates while installing’. This option downloads and installs all available updates (skip this step if you want to download & install updates after Ubuntu installation). Click the second checkbox ‘Install this third-party software’. This option installs third-party software such as codecs and more. Although you can install codecs after installing Ubuntu if you install here then you can play everything just after installation is done. Now click Continue.

Select your preferred language

Download & Install updates

It is the most important step. You have three options available first is ‘Install Ubuntu alongside Windows’, the second is ‘Replace Windows with Ubuntu” and the third option is “Something else”. If you want the system to partition the hard disk and install Ubuntu alongside Windows then select the first option. If you want to remove Windows completely and install Ubuntu then choose the second option and the third option that we are going to select in this tutorial is “Something else”.

Essential partitions for Ubuntu installation

This is a very convenient option. I can partition the hard disk as I want without removing Windows. Choose ‘Something else’ and continue. The following screen would have all the partitions available on your disk, including the Windows partition and free space. (Be very careful before you select any partition). Select free space and click ‘+’ (plus) sign below the left side of window. Now it’s the main part but before that let me tell you what partitions are needed to install Ubuntu. We need to create a minimum of three partitions namely ‘/’ (root), swap, and /home.

Root ‘/’

root is the partition that contains all of your system and application files. For example, when you install any application, the related files are stored into root partition. Nothing from this partition can be deleted without root user permission. root partition is symbolized as ‘/‘.

root partition should be more than 25GB. This size will not cause trouble for you in the future. You can easily install large applications.

Swap

swap is the partition that is used as RAM (Random Access Memory). In case your RAM is full, the system will use swap as RAM. swap is also used when the user hibernates the system. The hibernate session is saved in swap. swap size should be double the size of RAM but if your RAM is 8GB or more then keep swap 8GB. It’s should be enough.

/home

/home is the partition that contains all users’ data. Like in Windows users have different partitions to store data and one partition has OS. /home is like the partitions that contain all users’ data, such as, documents, music, movies, games setup, etc. You can specify any size for /home depending on your use. If you have a large number of files then make it large.

Now that we know what root ‘/’, swap, and /home partitions are, let’s move on to the main step. First, create root partition where we’ll install our Ubuntu. Enter size in MB (1024MB = 1GB). Click ‘Primary’ and click ‘Begining of this space’. Choosing Beginning of this space creates this partition first and the rest of other after. From the drop-down choose ‘Ext4 journalizing file system’. There are a couple of other filesystems but Ext4 is faster and works perfectly fine with Linux. In last, choose Mount point as ‘/’ root from the drop-down menu. And click ‘OK’. You’ve created root partition.

Create the last ‘/home‘ partition in the same way as the above partitions were created. Select free space and click ‘+‘ sign and enter the size of /home partition. Jump to ‘Use as’ and select ‘Ext4 journalizing file system, select ‘Mount point’ as /home, and click OK. You’re all done! Click continue and it will give the last prompt to check if all the partitions are okay. Click Continue if everything is fine.

Select the rest of the free space again and click ‘+‘ (plus) sign. You’ll get the partition creation window. Enter the size for swap and select the rest of the options and select ‘swap area’ from use as a drop-down menu. This selection will hide the last option ‘Mount point’. Click OK and you’re done.

If you followed everything correctly you should get to select Time Zone. Select Time Zone and continue.
Select the Keyboard layout and click Continue. Complete all fields in the next window. Your name, Your computer’s name, username, password (twice) and select if you want to log in automatically or require entering a password to log in. Click Continue and installation will start. It should not take much time. Just 5 minutes or so. If you’re downloading updates then this may take more time depending on your internet speed. If you want to skip downloading, expand the status bar and click ‘skip’ multiple times.

When the installation is completed you’ll get a popup to restart Live Ubuntu to Ubuntu or Continue Testing. Click Restart and you’re all done. Plug-out Pendrive or eject DVD and now whenever you boot, the grub menu will give you two operating systems to select, Windows and Ubuntu. Select Ubuntu and you are done. Congratulation! You now have two operating systems installed. Select anyone from grub menu and work without any problem. Please take this poll!