Installing Ubuntu 11.10

Recently I was working on Windows 7 and the rest of my team was on Ubuntu. Finally I decided to install Ubuntu in my machine too. After reading a bit about installing Ubuntu 11.10, I decided to go with dual boot with separate disk partition for Ubuntu. However there is an option to install Ubuntu in windows partition also.

I have the following options to choose from.

1. Install Ubuntu from Windows 7 in existing partition itself. This is one of the simplest option. However, it has its own pros and cons.
   
2. Create new partition for Ubuntu and install it there. (This is what I'm going to do)
   
3. Boot from Ubuntu CD all the time without installing.
   

Here is what I did.

1. Create an empty partition in your hard drive (if you are working on Windows 7 and do not have free/empty partition, you can shrink the existing drive and that will create empty partition for you). (more)
   
2. Boot from Ubuntu installation disk
3. Install Ubuntu to unallocated space. In my case Ubuntu detected the free partition and installed it on that.
   

Read more here (Ubuntu Documentation)

Few things I like about Ubuntu

1. Installation is quick, I must say its real fast.
   
2. Don't have to think about mounting windows partitions, they are automatically mounted.
   
3. Ubuntu software center is really good.
4. It comes with many applications and utilities.