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iTWire Technology Feature - Virtualisation
Technology news and Jobs 
The Linux distillery Ubuntu 8.04’s Wubi makes for universal desktop
The Linux distillery Ubuntu 8.04’s Wubi makes for universal desktop | Ubuntu 8.04’s Wubi makes for universal desktop |
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| by David M Williams | |
| Wednesday, 23 April 2008 | |
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Page 2 of 3 Wubi’s goals are to assist a Windows user unacquainted with Linux in trying Ubuntu out without risking any loss of information, because although the hard disk will be written to there is no disk partitioning or formatting involved. The existing hard drive configurations, and Windows installation, are not affected in any way.They can see if all their hardware works or if something is not right. They can try out the applications like Open Office and Firefox. At worst, if you don’t like it, uninstallation is a snap and your computer is left as it was. Now, talking about Wubi is one thing but actually stepping through it is another. Let’s fire it up. I have the latest Ubuntu release candidate burned to CD in my ASUS Lamborghini laptop CD drive. I’ve booted into Windows Vista and I’ve put the disc in. Vista dutifully asks if I wish to run umenu.exe or browse the disc in Windows Explorer. I select umenu.exe and get three choices. The first instructs how to run the Live CD, the third leads you to online help but the second is the one we’re interested in - “Install inside Windows.” This option reads on, “Install and uninstall Ubuntu like any other application, without the need for a dedicated partition. You will be able to boot into either Windows or Ubuntu. Hibernation is not enabled in this mode and disk performance is slightly reduced.” I opt to install inside Windows. The menu closes and another program on disc takes over, wubi.exe. We’re now in Wubi. It instructs us we’re about to install Ubuntu-8.04 and looks and feels like any regular Windows app. The installation options are the hard drive to use, the language, the installation size, a username, the desktop environment and a password which must be entered twice. The installation size defines how large the emulated hard drive should be; for the purposes of this test I’m going to use 8Gb. This will make an 8Gb disk file on my laptop and won’t harm Windows at all. The username is prefilled with my current Windows username but can be changed to something else. The desktop environment only gives me one choice (namely Ubuntu.) If I had used different installation media I’d have other choices available like Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Edubuntu and UbuntuStudio. An Accessibility button turns on visibility and mobility aids if required. Apart from that the only actions available are to go ahead and install or cancel. I click Install and Wubi flies into action. Two progress bars show how far the Ubuntu installation has gone along, and how much movement it’s made towards creating the disk image. Although I allowed for a hard disk of 8Gb my installation will only be 723.2MB full. This reflects the fact I’m using a CD version of Ubuntu; a DVD version will come with more features available. The installation proceeds smoothly. But how do you use it and what’s it like? Please read on. CONTINUED
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