Ubuntu Linux, ubuntu desktop, Linux operating system, ubuntu guide

Introduction

In ubuntu one of the biggest problem which people face is installing Softwares/Packages without a working internet connection. Ubuntu’s default installation is very minimal and tries to be a zero-bloat distro.

Before getting started, you need to download all the packages on a computer running Linux. Even a system running in Live environment would suffice, but it would need around 1GB of RAM to accomplish it’s work properly.

Download the packages

The package installation work is actually a 2-step process. First, packages are downloaded and cached in /var/cache/apt/archives folder. Second, they are installed from this archived copy.

You can run a LiveCD of Ubuntu on that system or use it from inside an installed system. Consider the two options.

Live environment

Boot from LiveCD, fire up the package manager, select the packages you want to download and Hit Apply. Packages would be downloaded and installed too. Don’t worry, if they are installed(its temporary session).

From an installed system

If you are at your friend’s place, then instead of downloading and installing the packages, you would prefer to just download the required ones. For this follow the steps.

1. Open Package Manager
2. Select the packages to be downloaded
3. Hit Apply
4. It would ask “Apply the following changes”.
5. Select the “Download Packages Only” checkbox.
6. Click Apply and all the packages are only downloaded to the archive folder

Create the ISO

1. Next download and install the package “aptoncd“.
2. Open it, select Create.
3. APTonCD would search its local cached copy and list you down the package available.
4. Click on Burn
5. Choose the type of Medium,Destination of the image and filename of the iso.
6. Click on Apply.
7. After ISO has been made, it would ask you to Burn it to a CD. If you want to burn it, you are welcome, or you can even carry the ISO in your pen/flash drive.
8. If you don’t burnt the CD, then please copy the aptoncd.deb file from /var/cache/apt/archives to your pen drive along with that ISO.

Installing on your computer

Now we assume two situations,

• one is that you have burnt the ISO to a CD
• another is that you have copied the created ISO and the aptoncd.deb file to your flash drive.

From CD

Just put the CD in your drive, a new popup would show up notifying you that a CD with offline repository has been detected. Do you want to import it? Accept it to import the package index.

From APTonCD ISO

1. Install the aptoncd.deb file from your flash drive by double clicking on it.
2. After installation, open APTonCD from System> Administration> APTonCD
3. select Restore
4. Select the ISO which is to be restored
5. It would show you the list of packages which will be restored
6. Click Restore and everything would be restored, packages are copied back and the index is also imported

Installing Imported Packages

You just need to open the Package Manager and search for the packages which you need to install. Select it and Click Apply. All done.

If you want to install all the packages from the ISO , search for a metapackage and install it