5. Dual Booting Ubuntu with Windows

Ubuntu, just like most Linux distributions, will happily co-exist on a hard disk drive with just about any version of Windows. This is a concept known as dual-booting. Essentially, when you power up your PC you will be presented with a menu providing the option to boot either Ubuntu or Windows. Obviously you can only run one operating system at a time, but it is worth noting that the files on the Windows partition of your disk drive will be available to you from Ubuntu regardless of whether your Windows partition was formatted using NTFS, FAT16 or FAT32.

During the installation process the Ubuntu installer will detect the Windows installation on the drive and provide the option of deleting it and using the entire disk for Ubuntu, or sharing the disk with Windows. In the latter case you will be able to specify the percentage of the disk to be used for Ubuntu.

According to the Ubuntu documentation, a minimum of 25 GB of disk space is required for a full Ubuntu Desktop Edition installation, and more space to store any files you may subsequently create. Once the disk space for Ubuntu has been selected, the installer will resize the Windows partition (without destroying any data) and use the remainder of the disk for Ubuntu.

This chapter will demonstrate how to set up a dual boot system with Ubuntu and Windows 10, change the system that boots by default when the computer system is powered on, and outline how to access files located on the Windows partition of the disk from within Ubuntu.

Within this chapter the assumption is made that the steps outlined in the previous chapter have been followed to create a bootable Ubuntu installation USB drive using the Ubuntu Desktop installation image, and that the system has been configured to boot from the USB drive when started.