I have been a big admirer of Ubuntu, the light weight & open source Linux based operating system from past few years. It’s a well known fact that Ubuntu is one of the most popular & also probably most successful Linux distributions compared to all other distro’s available in the market.
Till recently, I was using an older version of Ubuntu which I had installed on my desktop long time back. Yesterday, I had a requirement of installing the latest version of Ubuntu (9.04) on my laptop which was powered by Windows Vista. Though we can easily install Ubuntu by creating a new partition & by using an ISO image, I was looking for a much simpler installation process which doesn’t even demand a separate partition in the file system. As part of this hunt, I stumbled upon a Software called ‘Wubi’ which matched all my requirements.
What is Wubi?
Wubi is an officially supported utility for installing Ubuntu on Windows machines just by the click of a button. With Wubi, the process of installing/uninstalling Ubuntu Linux will be similar to how we install/uninstall other windows based applications. Wubi currently has support for Windows 98/2000/XP & Vista.
Steps for Installing Ubuntu using Wubi
- Download the ‘Wubi’ installer from the official Wubi web page to your Windows Machine.
- Run the Wubi installer exe file. This will pop up a screen where you have to enter the username & password for your Ubuntu account.
Default values are provided for all other pull-down boxes by the installer itself. If those default values are as per your requirement, you can simply click on the Install button. That’s it. The installer will take care of the rest of the steps including downloading the latest version & basic configuration of the OS after the installation. In between installation & configuration, it will just ask you once to restart the machine.
In case, if you have already had a downloaded ISO image of the Ubuntu, Wubi can speed up your installation process by directly making use of the downloaded image. For this to work, you just need to place the OS image in the same directory as that of the installer before even running the Wubi.
The whole installation process worked fine for me without even a single glitch. I believe Wubi surely comes in handy for people who choose to stay away from Linux distro’s mainly due to the complex installation procedures.
