Running Ubuntu 12.4 from a USB stick and installing it alongside Windows 7

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I just formatted a USB flash drive (USB stick) to run Ubuntu 12.4 on an Acer Aspire 5552 PC with Windows 7 already installed.

After re-booting the computer from the USB stick with Ubuntu, I then installed the Ubuntu 12.4 operating system alongside Windows 7, on an existing partition on the PC, overwriting an older version of Ubuntu.

I did something similar with Ubuntu 9.10 Netbook Remix on an ASUS eee PC 900 a few years back. Only in that case I was replacing a Linux Xandros installation with Ubuntu, and there was no Windows OS and no partitions.

Let me share the steps I took to install Ubuntu 12.4 now, in case it helps anyone looking to do the same:

  1. Download the desired installation from the Ubuntu website (in my case, a file called “ubuntu-12.4-desktop-i386.iso” representing the desktop version), onto your Windows PC.
  2. Insert a USB stick with at least 2GB of memory.
  3. Backup any files from the USB stick that you may want to save, as the stick will be reformatted in the process.
  4. Download the Universal USB Installer from PendriveLinux.com.
  5. Install and run the Universal USB Installer (screenshots):
    1. Select your Ubuntu distribution from the drop-down list.
    2. Select your USB flash drive (USB stick).
    3. Select a Persistence Option for your USB (Optional) – (I actually didn’t select this because I didn’t know what to choose)
    4. At some point you could check a box to reformat the USB stick (recommended).
    5. Click “Install”.
  6. After completion, restart your Windows PC.
  7. (On the Acer and presumably on many other computers:) Press ‘F12′ on startup to display the boot drive options. On some computers it’s the ‘Esc’ key.
  8. Choose the USB flash drive to boot your PC.
  9. Select to ‘Install Ubuntu 12.04 LTS’ either during startup from a dialog box, or afterwards from the Ubuntu desktop.
  10. In case your computer already has mounted partitions (e.g. one for Windows and another for Ubuntu as in my case), unmount the partitions when asked during the installation process.
  11. Select the desired partition when asked. Be careful not to overwrite the partition containing your Windows OS and Windows file system.

That’s about it!