How To Install Linux To Windows 10 Without Admin Password
Table of Contents
In this article, I want to tell you how to install Linux in Windows 10 without an admin password, but it is not a virtual machine. It is a system, and it will run almost like a normal program.
Windows 10 has a new feature for developers, the Ubuntu Bash shell, which allows you to run, and install Linux applications and use bash scripts directly in Windows 10, all called “Windows Subsystem for Linux.” There are already three Linux distributions available for installation with the Windows 10 1709 Fall Creators Update. All require a 64-bit system to install.
This tutorial is about installing Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, or SUSE Linux Enterprise Server on Windows 10 and some use cases at the end of the article. Note that there are some restrictions when using bash on Windows: for example, you can’t run GUI applications (although workarounds are reported with X server). Also, you cannot run Windows programs with bash commands, despite having full access to the OS file system.
Preparing To Install:
Before you install Linux, you must first write in Power Shell. To do this, you must open it in administrator mode.
In the Windows search engine, we type the word “power” this program appears, right-click on it, and select “Run as administrator.”
We type in the command:
Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux
After you run this command, all you have to do is type in the letter “Y,” then, after booting, your computer will reboot itself, and that’s it.
Now a few notes to help you with the installation:
- You can install multiple Linux distributions at once.
- When downloading distributions of Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server in the English-language store, Windows 10 noticed the following nuance: if you just enter the name and press Enter, the desired results in the search do not appear, but if you start typing and then click on the tooltip that appears, you automatically get to the right page. In case, direct links to the distributions in the store: Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, SUSE LES.
- You can also run Linux from the command line (not just from the tile in the Start menu): Ubuntu, OpenSuse-42 or Sles-12.
Installing Linux:
Well, that’s easy. You type in “Linux” in the Windows 10 store. There you will already have a bunch of Linux distributions to choose from, from the usual Ubuntu to Kali Linux, choose which one you want and install it.
As you can see, there are a lot of them, and that’s not all.
After installing, start the Linux distribution, it will take a while to figure it out, and that will be it, and in most cases, you will be asked for a password and a name.
I also recommend installing the Windows Terminal program. It is a normal terminal, but you can customize it, and in one terminal, you can work with different Linux systems simultaneously. You can install the usual Windows command line or Power Shell through the Linux store.
Installing Bash In Windows 10 1607 And 1703
To install the bash shell, follow these simple steps.
- Go to Windows 10 settings – Update and security – For developers. Enable developer mode (be connected to the Internet to download the necessary components).
- Go to Control Panel – Programs and Features – Enable or disable Windows components, check the “Windows Subsystem for Linux.”
- After installing the components, enter “bash” in the Windows 10 search box, run the application’s suggested version, and perform the installation. You can set your username and password for bash or use the root user without a password.
Once the installation is complete, you can run Ubuntu Bash on Windows 10 via search or by creating a shortcut to the shell wherever you need it.
One More Way – How To Install Ubuntu
There have been many articles on installing Ubuntu. Still, they all seem to be incomplete because pure Ubuntu is not suitable for work, and it needs to be supplemented with programs and configured. I wanted to write an article about how to install Ubuntu and then configure it, but I had no time. Read it and repeat it after me.
I want to say that I will do everything according to my needs, but still, the main points will be useful to everyone, especially newbies. I wrote an article a long time ago on installing Linux, but the article is a little out of date and is not complete either. Where do I start?
And you should start by going to the website of Ubuntu and this wonderful distribution. Which version of Ubuntu should we choose: x32 or x64?
It’s easy: if your computer has 2 GB of RAM or less and you are not going to upgrade it, you can download and install the 32-bit version. It will fly faster on your old hardware because 32-bit packages use less memory.
If you have a powerful computer, it is better to use the 64-bit version. This is because nowadays, many programs are produced only for this configuration.
Once you have downloaded Ubuntu, you need to burn it to a disk or, better yet, install it on a flash drive.
After installing Ubuntu on a flash drive, you need to boot from it. How to do this is written in the article about installing Linux from a flash drive.
And now you have successfully booted from a flash drive and saw your future OS – UBUNTU!
Preparing To Install Ubuntu
Before installing, you should prepare the distribution kit – burn it on a disk or a USB key (flash drive). You can install Ubuntu from a bootable flash drive (if your BIOS supports booting from a USB stick) or from a CD/DVD.
All preparatory processes are described:
- download Ubuntu.
- Burn iso image to disk – for installing from CD/DVD. Writing an iso image to a USB key (creating a bootable USB flash drive) – to install Ubuntu from a flash drive.
- Preparing the disk in Windows before installing Ubuntu – this item should be done only if you already have Windows installed and want to install Ubuntu next to it.
- Setting up the BIOS to boot from a disk or USB drive.
- Running Ubuntu without installing it on your computer (LiveCD).
This guide covers the installation process of Ubuntu 12.04. Other versions of Ubuntu are installed in the same way. Updated: Ubuntu 18.04 installs similarly. Feel free to use this guide.
The first thing you do is download the Ubuntu distribution, then burn it onto the media you want (flash drive or disk). If you want to install Ubuntu next to Windows, you allocate free space on the disk beforehand. Then you reboot your computer, configure your BIOS, and boot from the disk (or flash drive).
You can either boot into a LiveCD system (a system that runs without installing on the computer directly from the disk), or you can run the installation process without booting the LiveCD system. Let’s look at the entire installation process step by step.
Suppose you install Ubuntu for the first time and do not have enough experience. In that case, it is highly recommended to make a backup of important data (copy it to another medium). Of course, this applies if you are not installing Ubuntu on a clean computer.
Creating A Ubuntu Bootable Flash Drive
Visit the Universal USB Installer bootable flash drive creation utility website when the operating system is booted. Download the EXE file of the program (for Windows).
Insert the USB stick into the USB port of your PC. Run Universal USB Installer. You do not need to install the program. Read the license agreement and accept it by clicking “I Agree.”
In the utility window:
- Select the distribution: Ubuntu.
- Specify the path to the previously downloaded ISO image.
- Assign a drive letter for the bootable flash drive.
- Click the “Create” button and wait for the bootable USB flash drive to be created.
Next steps:
- Disconnect the flash drive from the PC.
- Turn it off.
- Insert the bootable flash drive into the USB connector.
- Turn the computer back on.
Start Installing Ubuntu
Suppose you have already inserted a flash drive or a disk and turned on your computer. The installer should start loading. You should see the following screen (let’s call it the splash screen).
The not very informative keyboard icon at the bottom of the splash screen means that you get to the menu if you press any key on the keyboard.
If you don’t press anything, the download continues, and the next window appears. On the left side of the list, you can select a language (this is the language the LiveCD will use) – choose English.
If you press an arbitrary key while the splash screen is displayed, a language selection menu will appear. Use the arrows to select English and press Enter.
A menu will appear, where we choose the first option Run Ubuntu without installing it on your computer.
. This will boot into the LiveCD system and start the installation. If for some reason, the LiveCD does not start, then we can choose the second option and start the installation immediately.
When you boot into the LiveCD, you should double-click on the Install Ubuntu icon on your desktop.
How To Download Ubuntu
Go to the project’s main web page and click “Get Ubuntu.”
Ubuntu applies as well:
- For servers.
- In the Internet of Things (IoT) technologies.
- Cloud technologies.
Go to the “Ubuntu Desktop” link because you need the operating system for your desktop or laptop.
Choice Of Language And Initial Settings
The first thing we should do is choose the language of the future system (this is also the language in which Ubuntu will be installed). Choose English
and press the Continue.
On the next window, “Preparing to install Ubuntu,” you are prompted to check the two checkboxes “Download updates during installation” and “Install this third-party software.” If you check the “Download updates during installation” option, all fresh updates will be automatically downloaded from the Internet and installed (as well as localization files) during the installation.
Note that in this case, the installation will take longer. If you have no internet connection at the moment, you will be able to update the system after the installation. The second checkbox means that you agree with some closed source components to be installed (e.g., MP3 codecs and FLASH). I advise you to tick both checkboxes, then click Continue.
Make Space For Linux On Your Hard Drive
To install Linux together with Windows 10, it is necessary to allocate a certain amount of disk space. For modern platforms like Ubuntu, Mint, ROSA, or openSUSE, it is recommended to reserve at least fifty gigabytes to use the full functionality provided.
The easiest and fastest way to allocate disk space with Windows is to take the required free space using the standard “Disk Management” snap-in.
For example, on a 1 terabyte disk, the OS and the data it needs take up 200 gigabytes. Accordingly, you can use some of the remaining 800 gigabytes of unused disk space for Linux.
To open the Disk Management window, do the following
- Right-click on the “Start” menu button or press the Win + X key combination.
- Select Disk Management in the list that appears.
Only users with administrator privileges can work with disks.
After starting the utility, you will be briefly analyzed. Then in the lower part of the window, the system will display a map of available hard discs with their partitions marked and a list with the total number of logical partitions (or volumes) and free space (actual and percentage of total volume) shown in the upper part. Now you need to “separate” space from the existing partition for the new operating system, and a few simple steps can achieve this:
- Click on the desired partition (volume) at the bottom or top of the window.
- You will see a context menu where you should select “Compress volume…”.
- In the dialog window that opens, in one of the fields titled “Size of compressible space (MB),” you should enter the required volume – in this case, 50000 (50 gigabytes).
- Check the value in the “Total size after compression (MB)” field – it is automatically calculated by the system, and it is the remaining amount after compression.
- Press the “Compress” button.
You cannot allocate more space than there is free space on the partition to be modified!
A new partition with the comment “Unallocated” will appear on the disk map next to the partition you want to change. This will be where you will install Linux together with Windows 10.
Partitioning The Disk
We arrived at the hard drive partitioning (hard disk), which is the most troublesome partitioning for new users. I will try to briefly describe some basic principles of partitioning hard disks.
Each hard disk can be divided into several parts. These parts are called partitions (or partitions). For example, if you use Windows, you may have just one partition – your C drive, or for example, your hard drive may be partitioned into two parts – two C and D drives (two partitions).
Ubuntu Linux should be installed on a separate partition of your hard drive. The Linux file system has a specific directory structure. The root of the file system is denoted by “/” (slash), all user data are stored in the /home directory (to make an analogy with Windows, it is sort of like the My Documents folder), and the boot loader is in the /boot directory and so on. And you can put /home on a separate hard drive partition, /boot on another, and the rest of the file system “/” (aka system partition) on a third. In the simplest case, you only need to create one partition on the hard disk for the root “/.” There is also a special type of hard disk partition that Linux uses, which is a swap partition. A swap partition is an area on the hard disk that Linux can use when it runs out of RAM or needs to dump the operating system (hibernate).
In the simplest case, you only need to create one partition, as I have already written. However, it is better to have at least three partitions. The first is a root partition (somewhere between 30-50G), the second is a /home partition (usually maxed out), and the third is a swap partition (usually of the same size as the RAM). In this tutorial, I will make three partitions.
For reference: 1Gb = 1024Mb, not 1000Mb. For simplicity, I consider that 1000Mb is 1G during the installation, so the size I specify is a multiple of 1000. The installer itself slightly adjusts them.
There are three types of partitions: primary, logical, and extended. An extended partition is simply a union of several logical partitions.
For the MBR partition table, there may be as few as 4 primary partitions per hard disk (including extended partitions). There can only be one extended partition. There can be as many logical partitions as you like. Windows is usually already installed on the primary partition, but combining Linux partitions into one extended partition is a good idea. To do this, simply specify that each partition type is logical. During installation, Ubuntu will automatically put them into one extended partition.
For the GPT (GUID Partition Table), there is no concept of logical and extended partitions. Only primary partitions are created on disks with a GPT table. You can create 128 partitions on one drive with a GPT table.
Hard disks in Linux are named sda, sdb, sdc, etc. Each partition on the disk is named sda1, sda2, etc.
If your disk uses an MBR partition table, the first four digits represent the primary partitions, and all others are used for logical partitions. For example, you can partition your disk as follows: sda1 – primary Windows partition sda2 – extended partition: – sda5 – logical / partition – sda6 – logical /home partition – sda7 – logical swap partition
Each hard drive partition can be formatted to a specific file system. Under Windows, you will normally use either the Fat32 or NTFS file systems. For Linux, there are several file systems, but at the time this tutorial was written, the best was Ext4, so I will format all Linux partitions with Ext4.
Below are two ways to install Ubuntu. The first way is to install Ubuntu on a blank hard drive when you have a completely blank or new hard drive. The second way is to install Ubuntu on a hard drive with installed Windows. In the second case, when you start your computer, a menu (GRUB menu) will appear, in which you can choose which operating system to run.
Installing A New (blank) Hard Disk
Installing Ubuntu on a blank hard drive is one of the easiest because you don’t risk corrupting important data or accidentally formatting existing partitions on the drive. If you have a new and empty hard drive that does not contain any other operating systems, you will see the following window in front of you. You can choose the first option, then the installer will do everything automatically, but we will choose the second option and partition the disk ourselves the way we want. So choose the “Other option” option and click on Continue.
You will see a window with a list of disks and partitions. Since there are no partitions on the new hard drive, the list will show your /dev/sda hard drive. The first thing we need to do is to create a partition table. Note that you may already have a partition table created, and you can skip this point. Click on the
New Partition Table.
A warning will be displayed. Click Continue.
A new partition table will be created, and the disk partitioning window will look like the screenshot below. Note that you can now see the current capacity of the disk (free space). We will now create three partitions (root /, home, and swap). To create a new partition, click on the “free space.
“and click on the Add button.
As I wrote above, we will create three partitions. The first will be the root/partition with a size of 30GB, the second a home partition with 218GB, and the swap partition with a size of 2GB. When creating the partitions, we will specify that all partitions should be logical. The installer will automatically create an Extended partition and put our three logical partitions into it.
So that brings us to the Add New Partition window. I put the partition type Logical, size in megabytes 30000MB. I put the partition location at the Beginning. The file system is Ext4, and the mount point is / (root partition). After making all the settings, click OK.
The window with the list of disk partitions will now contain our root partition. This will reduce the amount of free space. Now, create the home partition. Click on the free space item in the list
and then click on the Add button.
In the new partition window, select the Logical partition type again. I reserve the maximum amount of space for the home partition, so since I decided to leave 2GB under the swap, the size of the home partition is defined as the current free space minus 2GB. In my case, that’s 218GB. Specify a home location with an Ext4 file system and the mount point as /home.
This will add the home partition to the partition list. All that’s left is to create a swap partition. Select the free space option from the list
and click on the Add button.
In the partition window, you will again specify type Logical
partition type, its size 2000Mb (all remaining free space), and location Start. In use as select: swap partition. The mount point does not need to be specified.
As a result, we have three partitions on the hard disk. Now we just have to choose the device on which the bootloader will be installed (in the list “Device to install the bootloader” at the bottom of the window). In our case, we choose /dev/sda (the bootloader will be installed on our hard drive). The partitions have not yet been created or formatted. We have only made a list of actions for the installer so far. Note that the Formatting column
checks the checkboxes in the Formatting column to be placed against the root and home partitions. Check one last time to ensure that you got it right, and then click on Install Now.
