Building a Deep Learning Machine — Part 4: Installing the Ubuntu 18.4 OS

The machine booted successfully using the chassis power button. The initial screen displays that the CPU and RAM are recognized. The image was taken when only the initial 16 GB RAM was recognized before moving the RAM card to another slot.

I decided to install the latest LTS (Long Term Support) desktop version of Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS. I chose Ubuntu over Windows 10 since some machine learning packages like OpenCV can only run on Ubuntu, and some applications like Docker are built on Linux and are easier to install on Ubuntu.

I downloaded the 2 GB Ubuntu 18.04.1 ISO file and burned a bootable ISO file onto a USB flash drive using Rufus. The machine booted off the USB flash drive without changing BIOS boot settings beforehand. I chose default Ubuntu installation options with login credentials required. Installation steps are described here in more detail.

The only installation issue I had was that I could not get past the Ubuntu login screen. After every attempt to login by entering the password, Ubuntu would return to the login screen. No error appeared for an incorrect password since the password was correct. I selected the Use LVM with the new Ubuntu installation option on the first installation. LVM stands for Logical Volume Management and allows the user to add, modify, resize, and take snapshot partitions.

The infinite login loop issue was resolved by reinstalling Ubuntu without selecting the LVM option.

Ubuntu 18.04.1 desktop