Using apt-get

The fit-PC Linux product comes with both Gentoo and Ubuntu 8.10 preinstalled. I won't be using Gentoo and wanted to dedicated the entire drive to Ubuntu. If you think you may need it later or don't need the space you can upgrade Ubuntu to the current release using apt-get. Upgrading to a newer release online is ill-advised with most Linux distros but Ubuntu handles gracefully. It's still a good idea to think before you type and backup any important data just in case.

$ sudo apt-get update

$ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

It took about two hours hours to finish but it was completely automatic and I had no problems using this method.

Using a USB drive

The fit-PC has three USB ports. Two were used by the keyboard and mouse but the third is available and the device can be configured to boot from either a USB CD or flash drive. Flash drives are cheap and readily available. I used an old 1GB pen drive a vendor had given me some time ago.

Preparing a bootable image from an ISO file

If you have other Linux boxes available Google will list dozens of tutorials on how to do this manually. Surprisingly, it's much easier to prepare a bootable image of Ubuntu (or a number of other distros) using Windows and UNetbootin or something similar from Sourceforge.

It'll take about 20 minutes from start to finish to format the flash drive with a bootable image.

Booting and installing Ubuntu 9.04

The fit-PC is a little fussy about changing the boot order. After a couple minutes messing around it liked booting from drive C with the USB pen listed as NAND device but it also wanted the HDD and removed from the boot sequence. (not a problem later, Linux installers are smart). From there the Ubuntu installer will guide you through the rest of the process.

Finishing up

Once you're done don't forget to catch up on any minor updates since the official release.

$ sudo apt-get update

$ sudo apt-get upgrade