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With the release of Ubuntu 11.04, the downloads are going sky high and everybody wants to get a copy. The installation instructions on the Ubuntu homepage are pretty simple and you dont see the difference between each of the installation methods. If you are a newbie to Ubuntu you might even get confused which install method to try out!

Fortunately, you are lucky that you stumbled across this article, because by the time you are done reading this you will be on your Ubuntu shouting out OMG Ubuntu!

First of all, i am making some general assumptions of you such as:

• You are on a Windows machine.
• Have at least 512 MB of graphics memory.
• Have a minimum of 1 GB RAM memory.
• Have a dual core processor, single cores are OK too, but the CPU load induced might be more when running Ubuntu on a single processor.

OK, so i think you are all ready with your prerequisites. Now lets begin the installation procedure.

Download latest version of the Virtualbox here. (Virtualbox is a software which allows you run different Operating Systems inside your current working OS as an application)

Download Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal here (Its a BitTorrent file, make sure you have BitTorrent client installed to start the download)

Now set the Virtualbox settings as described below:

Press the New button to create a new Virtual Machine.

Type "Ubuntu” as your OS.

Set 512 MB as your base memory size.

Select ‘Create New Hard Disk’ and press the Next button.

Choose ‘Fixed-sized storage’ because normally your Ubuntu personal files wont exceed 8GB so there’s no need to create a dynamic drive.

Set your Hard Disk size as 4GB or 8GB as recommended.

Now press Finish. The wizard window will close. Next press the VM ‘Settings’ button. Here make sure CD/DVD-ROM is first in the boot order, atleast for the first time because you will be installing UBUNTU from the CD image file which you downloaded earlier.

Choose the number of processor cores. Higher is better but it would be an idiotic thing to do if you have only one processor. Also make sure to enable IO APIC feature before increasing CPU cores as its a very important feature which is behind multi-core processing. Enable PAE/NX extended features as well.

Here enable Intel VT-x and AMD-v virtualization features. Also enable Nested Paging which is required for virtual memory.

Set your display memory size here. I had recommend to drag the slider to full 128 MB and make sure you check 3D acceleration box too.

Over here, make sure you have added your Hard disk to IDE controller. Attach your downloaded UBUNTU image to the CD/DVD device.

If you need internet enable the Network adapter.

Below are a few screenshots i took of my UBUNTU.

If you had like to know how i got those sleazy looking theme and icons, please drop a comment below and i will get back to you rightaway. Please comment how you felt about this tutorial. If you have other nice views do share’em.