Technical requirements

A modern desktop PC or laptop is required; Ubuntu Desktop specifies the following as recommended system requirements for installation and usage of the distribution:

  • 2 GHz dual core processor or better
  • RAM
    • Running on a physical host: 2 GB or more system memory
    • Running as a guest: The host system should have at least 4 GB RAM (the more, the better and smoother the experience)
  • 25 GB of free hard drive space
  • Either a DVD drive or a USB port for the installer media
  • Internet access is definitely helpful

We recommend the reader use one of the following Linux distributions (can be installed as a guest OS on a Windows or Linux host system, as mentioned):

  • Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Desktop (Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Desktop is a good choice ...

Get Hands-On System Programming with Linux now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.