First of all, the desktop Ubuntu and Kubuntu install images don’t support full disk encryption. So get the Alternate ISO from here (Kubuntu users this way, please). Then create a bootable USB drive using UNetbootin.

Ready? Then boot your netbook from the USB drive, and proceed with the installation using this guide. You will be able to select your country, keyboard and configure your network. Then the installation will fail, because the installer won’t find a CD-ROM drive. Yuck.

Okay, if there is no CD-ROM drive we just have to mount the installer ISO. For this we copy the alternate installer ISO to a second USB stick, plug it into the netbook and give the system a few seconds to recognize it. Then we use alt+F2 to switch to a command line and hit so we can enter commands. First, we should make sure that both USB drives are there:

ls -la /dev/sd*

should return something like this:

/dev/sda
/dev/sda1
/dev/sda2
/dev/sdb
/dev/sdc

/dev/sda is your hard disk, /dev/sdb is the USB drive you booted from, and /dev/sdc is the second USB drive containing the installer ISO file (unless you have a second hard drive). Use mount if you are not sure if and/or where your USB drives are mounted to.Now you can mount the second USB drive to /mnt and the ISO image to /cdrom:

mount -t vfat /dev/sdc /mnt
mount /mnt/ubuntu-10.04-alternate-i386.iso /cdrom/
exit

Next, hit alt+f1 to return to the install menu and select “Detect CD-ROM”. The installation will proceed as described in the blog post above.

Have fun with Ubuntu 10.04!