Did you know you can download and install a free operating system (free Windows Alternative) from https://www.ubuntu.com/ and use it on your own computer or as a virtual machine?

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Ubuntu is a common operating system on cloud providers AWS or Digital Ocean so cloud server installation so installing it locally is a good idea if you are a developer.

Go to https://www.ubuntu.com/ and click Desktop for Developers menu item.

Then click the Download Button next to Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS.

Choose your donation amount (set nothing if you have donated before or cannot afford it).

Click the take me to the download link.

Wait for the download to start or click download now.

The download is  1.4Gb in size and may take a while. The file format is an ISO format (an ISO is a copy of a CD, burn it with your favourite CD-Burning package).  Burnt ISO CD’s are bootable.

You can either boot and install Ubuntu alongside your existing operating system in a  virtual environment on Mac OS with Parallels or VirtualBox on Windows. Warning you accidentally can delete your existing operating system and files if you are not sure that you are doing.

I decided to run Ubuntu on my Mac inside Parallels as a virtual machine (this used 5GB space and 1GB memory and 2x CPU’s).

Once I setup Ubuntu it booted up and I was presented with a login screen.

I had a link to a FileManager and Control panel on the left. Help for Ubuntu can he found here https://help.ubuntu.com/stable/ubuntu-help/

The Ubuntu desktop has a Word Processor, Spreadsheet and Presentation package.

Installing NodeJS and other development software (Skip if you are not a  developer).

I installed nodeJS by following the instructions here

You can test the development tools by typing

You can install other development software (NGINX, MySQL etc) by reading my guide here.

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Version 1.0 Instal Blog Post