Wubi, crazy pet rock name or rocking Linux installer for Windows?

If you don’t think you would have a desire for either one then you can stop reading now, if you are curious you can read on.

While browsing the net the other day at work for alternative operating systems to install in VMware I ran across a beta version of a Windows installer for Debian. I’ve used Debian in the past and its a decent distro of Linux, very stable and well suited for web/file serving, its also the base for Ubuntu. I tried this installer out and it didn’t work very well, it ended up having some issues part way through the install because it wanted part of the hard drive partitioned for itself. Since this is a work computer I didn’t want to take that leap, then I read about Wubi. Wubi is a Windows based installer for Ubuntu, its not officially supported by the folks at Ubuntu but its making good headway and those who have tried it are almost all fans it seems. My last brush with Ubuntu was Kubuntu and it really didn’t impress me, it seemed so dumbed down that it made me feel stupid looking at it, then I installed MEPIS on the machine to try and access some storage arrays that needed a software that I couldn’t seem to access with Kubuntu.

Anyways, so I grabbed the Wubi installer, it only weighs in at 10Mb so it wasn’t too hard on the poor T1 at work. I ran it and got a registry error, but clicking OK a few times gets past that (I think the virus scanner at work was being overzealous). You choose which version of Ubuntu you want (Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu) enter your username and desired password and then it starts downloading the latest ubuntu ISO (7.04). This took me a couple days because I didn’t want to tie up and bog down the internet for the rest of the office but I’ve heard on a good line it can take as little as 45 minutes. After it gets it all downloaded it lays out the directory where Wubi will be installed.

After the reboot you can choose Ubuntu from the boot options menu and this continues the installer. It then extracts the CD contents and makes a virtual partition to install Ubuntu in and copies all the files to it. A short while later it finishes and you can now reboot into your new Ubuntu install. Log in and if you are connected to the internet Ubuntu should tell you there are some updates available. You can grab them since they are probably security/stability updates, after that feel free to explore as its a full and complete Ubuntu install, you can add/remove programs using the shortcut on the menu. And that’s it, you got a full Linux distribution sitting beside your Windows data without partitioning or messing with any of your files, if you are working in Ubuntu and need to open something from your Windows drive its fully accessible since there is an NTFS driver preinstalled in Wubi’s Ubuntu.

This entry was posted on May 23, 2007 at 10:28 am and is filed under Software, Technology, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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