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My personal Ubuntu (15.10) experiment just isn't working out; I found out the hard way that I know less than nothing about Linux. I'm completely at sea.

I have a bootable USB with Windows 10 ready to go, and my product key, but how do I get it to actually run? Is there a startup boot menu or something? I've seen posts that suggest holding down Shift or C during startup, but this didn't do anything.

Edit: I got a message that this is likely a dupe of this question, and one the answers suggests downloading Boot Repair. This seems to be what I need to do as I'm trying to boot from a USB, so I followed the instructions to do so through the Terminal, but keep getting an error message after the last command.

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Sionnach Oghma
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Usually one gets to the boot menu by pressing a function key when the system boots. Try F8, F12, F1, <Delete>, <Insert>, etc. It's different on every system. You'll know you have the correct menu when it asks you if you want to boot to the hard drive, the DVD-ROM, or USB (assuming you have a bootable USB thumb drive plugged in). Put your Windows DVD in the drive first of course. Good luck!

rclocher3
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  • F3 got me to the boot menu. Windows 10 now installed. May dual boot Ubuntu later (as I should have done in the first place rather than simply deleting Windows) so I can teach myself how to use it properly without all the panic of it being my only OS and not having a clue what I'm doing.

    Thanks!

     – Sionnach Oghma Mar 16 '16 at 04:10
  • I'm glad that you got everything straightened out. Ubuntu is great, but every new OS has its quirks and I wouldn't recommend that anyone burn their bridges to the old OS unnecessarily. Besides, sometimes there is Windows software that you want to run. You can run Windows software on Linux with Wine, or inside a VirtualBox virtual machine, but Wine doesn't work for all software and VirtualBox can be tricky to get USB devices working; sometimes it's easiest to just boot into Windows. So I'd urge you to not give up on Ubuntu, it really is awesome, just take it in easy stages next time ;) – rclocher3 Mar 16 '16 at 16:47