luck777jojo
15th April 2007, 03:54
I've been hearing a lot of people talking about WUBI (http://www.cutlersoftware.com/ubuntusetup/wubi/en-US/index.html) lately so thought I'd give it a shot on the only system which I currently don't have running some distro of linux which was my laptop.
I've had many problems in the past with linux running on my laptop basically because I couldn't find a working driver for my wifi card (Intel A/B/G internal wifi card) and generally because it's a Toshiba there were other driver issues (since Toshiba is known for pretty crappy linux support on its laptops).
Now I’ve installed linux many times and configured most of my systems to dual boot both linux and windows in the past and I can’t say it was very hard, but partitioning and uninstalling could sometimes be a real bitch so after my initial failed attempts on getting my Toshiba laptop to properly work under linux I gave up on it.
In addition to that my laptop only has a 60GB hard drive so finding enough space to partition was hard considering that I’m a packrat and hate deleting anything. In fact on my desktops I prefer to purchase a new HD rather than delete some files or uninstall some programs, when I start running out of space.
In any case, I thought I'd give WUBI (http://www.cutlersoftware.com/ubuntusetup/wubi/en-US/index.html) a try since it promised me that I would not need to partition, the initial install would only take about 5GB and it would be extremely easy to uninstall it by simply double clicking an uninstall icon in windows in case something went wrong. Plus WUBI (http://www.cutlersoftware.com/ubuntusetup/wubi/en-US/index.html) is made to install Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/) and I’ve never actually tried Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/) before so I thought this might be a chance to try some new things and hopefully without many problems.
First thing I had to do was actually download the WUBI (http://www.cutlersoftware.com/ubuntusetup/wubi/en-US/index.html) installer. That part was pretty easy; I mean the whole WUBI (http://www.cutlersoftware.com/ubuntusetup/wubi/en-US/index.html) installer is only 10mb so it took me less than a minute to download on my cable connection.
After backing up all my precious porn I decided to give it a shot and double clicked the installer I just finished downloading. WUBI (http://www.cutlersoftware.com/ubuntusetup/wubi/en-US/index.html) presented me with a nice little window where it asked me a few questions such as which distro I wanted to install. There were only 3 choices which were: Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/), Kubuntu (http://www.kubuntu.org/), and Xubuntu (http://www.xubuntu.org/), they’re all slightly different version of Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/) and I decided to go with just ubunu myself.
Now I feel that I should probably jot down in a few sentences the main differences between those 3 options:
Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/) – the original version runs the GNOME GUI environment by default
Kubuntu (http://www.kubuntu.org/) – a modified version of Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/) that runs the KDE GUI environment by default
Xubuntu (http://www.xubuntu.org/) – a “lighter” version of Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/) designed specifically for less powerfull systems such as old Pentium 2’s
After I selected Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/) from the choices I got a nice little “downloading” screen which showed me that the installer was now downloading a 700mb CD image of the distro. I can’t say the download went really fast but I could handle the average speed of 300k/s that means I had the file downloaded in about 45 minutes.
Now all this was happening in the background so I actually just opened up Command & Conquer 3 and played that which this was happening.
When I noticed that the download was finished I saved and quit out of C&C3 and decided to continue on with my experiment. WUBI (http://www.cutlersoftware.com/ubuntusetup/wubi/en-US/index.html) asked me where I wanted to install everything and suggested c:/wubi/ as the default location, I was fine with that so I clicked okay. It then asked me what I wanted to name my default user account and asked me for a password. After I entered all that information WUBI (http://www.cutlersoftware.com/ubuntusetup/wubi/en-US/index.html) started doing some funky install things which it did in the background as well so I decided to listen to some mp3 while it finished up. Unfortunately I didn’t get to listen to too much music because the whole “install” process took less than 15 minutes, after which I was told that I would need to restart to finish up the install.
Now this is the point where I made sure that I had backed up ALL the porn I had on my laptop and thought to myself “okay this is where shit starts screwing up”. Then I said a little prayer to the computer gods, something along the lines of “please don’t let everything screw up TOO bad” and pressed the restart button.
When the computer loaded up this time I saw the familiar black boot selection screen that lets you chose which OS you want to boot into, it had 2 options Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/) and Windows. First thing was first I had to verify that my porn was still okay so I booted into windows this time around and found everything exactly where I left it. At this point in time I was quite happy that at least the automatic installer didn’t screw up my windows install so I restarted again and this time booted into Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/).
To my surprise I was faced with a blue linux configuration page which informed me that I needed to enter my username and password that I wish to use. It was a bit strange since I already did that in WUBI (HTTP://WWW.CUTLERSOFTWARE.COM/UBUNTUSETUP/WUBI/EN-US/INDEX.HTML) but it was not something that I found to be totally screwed up, just a minor bug that didn’t bother me too much. What did freak me out a bit was after I entered my username and password I got a little “installing linux” screen that started copying files onto the linux partition. I was a bit concerned that it might copy right over my windows install but there was no turning back now already.
This whole process took about another 15 or so minutes after which my computer rebooted. Fearing for my porn I once again booted into windows and checked that everything was okay. To my great relief everything booted fine and my porn was still there. So again I rebooted into Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/) and was faced with a happy little orange log-in screen which asked me to enter my username and password. I did this and was taken straight to my desktop.
What I noticed first was that my wifi card was detected and was actually working, so naturally I set up my wifi connection first and checked that I could go on the internet. I then proceeded to install a few programs using the extremely easy interface of the add/remove programs application. It worked great simply by downloading whatever programs I had selected to install from the internet and installing them, not once did it even ask me to restart my computer.
After I finished doing that I decided to play around with the cool XGL (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xgl) effects such as the spinning cube for the different workspaces and the wobbly windows when resizing. When I tried to turn that feature on I was told that I would need to install a third party driver for my nVidia card. I clicked okay and the installer did what it was supposed to and within 3 minutes the driver was installed. This time I was asked to restart so I did that, and when I booted back into Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/) everything was working as it should have been working.
I was really happy to find out that Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/) detected my Hard Drive and automatically mounted it even though it is NTFS formatted. So I went into my drive and tried to open up a .wmv video file. As I had expected the video player was not able to play the file straight out-of-the-box but it did pop up a nice little window which asked me if I wanted to download all the appropriate codecs. I answered yes and after a minute of downloading and installing the video was playing perfectly fine just like it had played in windows.
About this time I noticed a little icon in the top right corner of my screen which told me that I had some 368 updates that I should probably install. Still being mesmerized by how problem free and damn easy this whole thing was I stupidly clicked yes. The updated downloaded in about 30 minutes since there was some 400MB of them. And they all installed without a hitch, except when I booted up after a restart I noticed that my wifi card was no longer detected. So I went onto my desktop running SuSe (http://www.opensuse.org/) and after some searching found out that there was a known bug with one of the updates that caused some wifi cards to stop functioning.
I was “happy” to hear that Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/) went the way of Windows in that the updates already have bugs when they’re shipped so that there is always something to fix next time around :P but after rolling back the offending package (which was as simple as uninstalling it) I found that my wifi card worked fine again.
After that little “incident” I played some more with all the programs, downloaded open office, browsed the internet and listened to some music all without any problems. Checked to make sure that I could access my porn through Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/) and was pleased to see everything working as it should. Finally I left my laptop to download some legal torrents using the BT client in Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/), went to my desktop, booted it back into windows from SuSe (http://www.opensuse.org/) and continued playing C&C3.
All in all this was a really damn easy install, it was as simple as installing a program in windows. I always thought that installing a dual boot SuSe (http://www.opensuse.org/) system was easy but this simply blew that out of the water, I mean literally anyone who has ever double clicked an icon in windows could install this and have a dual boot windows/Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/) system.
The entire linux “partition” is basically a 5GB file on my hard drive and deleting the install is as simple as running the uninstall program from windows or removing WUBI (http://www.cutlersoftware.com/ubuntusetup/wubi/en-US/index.html) from the add/remove programs list in windows.
I would seriously recommend that everyone try this. First of all it is always good to have a backup OS to boot into that can easily access all your files just in case your primary OS fails and you need to do backups. Second because linux is cool and WILL get you laid. And finally because if any of you have ever thought about trying out linux but have either hated the idea of using bootable CDs and/or were afraid of doing a full out linux dual boot setup simple because you were afraid that something would screw up, this is a fool proof way of giving linux a shot.
It has all the positives of linux and none of the negatives of possible installation screw ups and partitions.
Links:
WUBI (http://www.cutlersoftware.com/ubuntusetup/wubi/en-US/index.html)
Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/)
Kubuntu (http://www.kubuntu.org/)
Xubuntu (http://www.xubuntu.org/)
SuSe (http://www.opensuse.org/)
XGL (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xgl)
Compiz (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compiz)
I've had many problems in the past with linux running on my laptop basically because I couldn't find a working driver for my wifi card (Intel A/B/G internal wifi card) and generally because it's a Toshiba there were other driver issues (since Toshiba is known for pretty crappy linux support on its laptops).
Now I’ve installed linux many times and configured most of my systems to dual boot both linux and windows in the past and I can’t say it was very hard, but partitioning and uninstalling could sometimes be a real bitch so after my initial failed attempts on getting my Toshiba laptop to properly work under linux I gave up on it.
In addition to that my laptop only has a 60GB hard drive so finding enough space to partition was hard considering that I’m a packrat and hate deleting anything. In fact on my desktops I prefer to purchase a new HD rather than delete some files or uninstall some programs, when I start running out of space.
In any case, I thought I'd give WUBI (http://www.cutlersoftware.com/ubuntusetup/wubi/en-US/index.html) a try since it promised me that I would not need to partition, the initial install would only take about 5GB and it would be extremely easy to uninstall it by simply double clicking an uninstall icon in windows in case something went wrong. Plus WUBI (http://www.cutlersoftware.com/ubuntusetup/wubi/en-US/index.html) is made to install Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/) and I’ve never actually tried Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/) before so I thought this might be a chance to try some new things and hopefully without many problems.
First thing I had to do was actually download the WUBI (http://www.cutlersoftware.com/ubuntusetup/wubi/en-US/index.html) installer. That part was pretty easy; I mean the whole WUBI (http://www.cutlersoftware.com/ubuntusetup/wubi/en-US/index.html) installer is only 10mb so it took me less than a minute to download on my cable connection.
After backing up all my precious porn I decided to give it a shot and double clicked the installer I just finished downloading. WUBI (http://www.cutlersoftware.com/ubuntusetup/wubi/en-US/index.html) presented me with a nice little window where it asked me a few questions such as which distro I wanted to install. There were only 3 choices which were: Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/), Kubuntu (http://www.kubuntu.org/), and Xubuntu (http://www.xubuntu.org/), they’re all slightly different version of Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/) and I decided to go with just ubunu myself.
Now I feel that I should probably jot down in a few sentences the main differences between those 3 options:
Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/) – the original version runs the GNOME GUI environment by default
Kubuntu (http://www.kubuntu.org/) – a modified version of Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/) that runs the KDE GUI environment by default
Xubuntu (http://www.xubuntu.org/) – a “lighter” version of Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/) designed specifically for less powerfull systems such as old Pentium 2’s
After I selected Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/) from the choices I got a nice little “downloading” screen which showed me that the installer was now downloading a 700mb CD image of the distro. I can’t say the download went really fast but I could handle the average speed of 300k/s that means I had the file downloaded in about 45 minutes.
Now all this was happening in the background so I actually just opened up Command & Conquer 3 and played that which this was happening.
When I noticed that the download was finished I saved and quit out of C&C3 and decided to continue on with my experiment. WUBI (http://www.cutlersoftware.com/ubuntusetup/wubi/en-US/index.html) asked me where I wanted to install everything and suggested c:/wubi/ as the default location, I was fine with that so I clicked okay. It then asked me what I wanted to name my default user account and asked me for a password. After I entered all that information WUBI (http://www.cutlersoftware.com/ubuntusetup/wubi/en-US/index.html) started doing some funky install things which it did in the background as well so I decided to listen to some mp3 while it finished up. Unfortunately I didn’t get to listen to too much music because the whole “install” process took less than 15 minutes, after which I was told that I would need to restart to finish up the install.
Now this is the point where I made sure that I had backed up ALL the porn I had on my laptop and thought to myself “okay this is where shit starts screwing up”. Then I said a little prayer to the computer gods, something along the lines of “please don’t let everything screw up TOO bad” and pressed the restart button.
When the computer loaded up this time I saw the familiar black boot selection screen that lets you chose which OS you want to boot into, it had 2 options Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/) and Windows. First thing was first I had to verify that my porn was still okay so I booted into windows this time around and found everything exactly where I left it. At this point in time I was quite happy that at least the automatic installer didn’t screw up my windows install so I restarted again and this time booted into Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/).
To my surprise I was faced with a blue linux configuration page which informed me that I needed to enter my username and password that I wish to use. It was a bit strange since I already did that in WUBI (HTTP://WWW.CUTLERSOFTWARE.COM/UBUNTUSETUP/WUBI/EN-US/INDEX.HTML) but it was not something that I found to be totally screwed up, just a minor bug that didn’t bother me too much. What did freak me out a bit was after I entered my username and password I got a little “installing linux” screen that started copying files onto the linux partition. I was a bit concerned that it might copy right over my windows install but there was no turning back now already.
This whole process took about another 15 or so minutes after which my computer rebooted. Fearing for my porn I once again booted into windows and checked that everything was okay. To my great relief everything booted fine and my porn was still there. So again I rebooted into Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/) and was faced with a happy little orange log-in screen which asked me to enter my username and password. I did this and was taken straight to my desktop.
What I noticed first was that my wifi card was detected and was actually working, so naturally I set up my wifi connection first and checked that I could go on the internet. I then proceeded to install a few programs using the extremely easy interface of the add/remove programs application. It worked great simply by downloading whatever programs I had selected to install from the internet and installing them, not once did it even ask me to restart my computer.
After I finished doing that I decided to play around with the cool XGL (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xgl) effects such as the spinning cube for the different workspaces and the wobbly windows when resizing. When I tried to turn that feature on I was told that I would need to install a third party driver for my nVidia card. I clicked okay and the installer did what it was supposed to and within 3 minutes the driver was installed. This time I was asked to restart so I did that, and when I booted back into Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/) everything was working as it should have been working.
I was really happy to find out that Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/) detected my Hard Drive and automatically mounted it even though it is NTFS formatted. So I went into my drive and tried to open up a .wmv video file. As I had expected the video player was not able to play the file straight out-of-the-box but it did pop up a nice little window which asked me if I wanted to download all the appropriate codecs. I answered yes and after a minute of downloading and installing the video was playing perfectly fine just like it had played in windows.
About this time I noticed a little icon in the top right corner of my screen which told me that I had some 368 updates that I should probably install. Still being mesmerized by how problem free and damn easy this whole thing was I stupidly clicked yes. The updated downloaded in about 30 minutes since there was some 400MB of them. And they all installed without a hitch, except when I booted up after a restart I noticed that my wifi card was no longer detected. So I went onto my desktop running SuSe (http://www.opensuse.org/) and after some searching found out that there was a known bug with one of the updates that caused some wifi cards to stop functioning.
I was “happy” to hear that Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/) went the way of Windows in that the updates already have bugs when they’re shipped so that there is always something to fix next time around :P but after rolling back the offending package (which was as simple as uninstalling it) I found that my wifi card worked fine again.
After that little “incident” I played some more with all the programs, downloaded open office, browsed the internet and listened to some music all without any problems. Checked to make sure that I could access my porn through Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/) and was pleased to see everything working as it should. Finally I left my laptop to download some legal torrents using the BT client in Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/), went to my desktop, booted it back into windows from SuSe (http://www.opensuse.org/) and continued playing C&C3.
All in all this was a really damn easy install, it was as simple as installing a program in windows. I always thought that installing a dual boot SuSe (http://www.opensuse.org/) system was easy but this simply blew that out of the water, I mean literally anyone who has ever double clicked an icon in windows could install this and have a dual boot windows/Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/) system.
The entire linux “partition” is basically a 5GB file on my hard drive and deleting the install is as simple as running the uninstall program from windows or removing WUBI (http://www.cutlersoftware.com/ubuntusetup/wubi/en-US/index.html) from the add/remove programs list in windows.
I would seriously recommend that everyone try this. First of all it is always good to have a backup OS to boot into that can easily access all your files just in case your primary OS fails and you need to do backups. Second because linux is cool and WILL get you laid. And finally because if any of you have ever thought about trying out linux but have either hated the idea of using bootable CDs and/or were afraid of doing a full out linux dual boot setup simple because you were afraid that something would screw up, this is a fool proof way of giving linux a shot.
It has all the positives of linux and none of the negatives of possible installation screw ups and partitions.
Links:
WUBI (http://www.cutlersoftware.com/ubuntusetup/wubi/en-US/index.html)
Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/)
Kubuntu (http://www.kubuntu.org/)
Xubuntu (http://www.xubuntu.org/)
SuSe (http://www.opensuse.org/)
XGL (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xgl)
Compiz (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compiz)