Ryan Paul over at Ars Technica has written a great detailed review of the new Alpha 5 release of Ubuntu Linux 8.04. In it he gives Wubi - a new addition to the Ubuntu Installation - a thorough going over.
One of the most significant new features added in alpha 5 is support for Wubi, a new installation mechanism that makes it easier for Ubuntu and Windows to coexist on the same computer. Wubi provides a complete Ubuntu installer that can be run in Windows from the Ubuntu Live CD. It installs Ubuntu into a folder on the Windows file system and sets up a boot menu so that users can choose between Windows and Ubuntu when the computer starts.
Unlike a regular dual-boot configuration, Wubi doesn’t require users to create a partition on their hard drives for Ubuntu. When Ubuntu is installed with Wubi, it can be uninstalled directly from the Add/Remove Programs utility in Windows.
I tested Wubi on Windows XP with an Ubuntu 8.04 alpha 5 Live CD. The installer is trivially easy to use and works just like a regular Windows installation program. It requests a target drive, the desired size of the drive image, the default username, and the password for the default user. The disk image gets installed in an Ubuntu directory on the root of the target drive. After I finished my tests, I was able to uninstall Wubi without any difficulty.
To read Ryan Paul’s full article visit Wubi Arrives: a look at Ubuntu 8.04 alpha 5
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