Is WUBI worth it?

[monkeybrain2012]

IMHO a Live CD is insufficient to try an operating system as it does not allow to install any apps and live CD gives just a sneak peak .

I was not impressed by the live CD at all until I went through a wubi installation and downloaded some apps.

Make a live usb with persistence. Live CD is good only for installation.

[sudodus]

Wubi might be an alternative, when the Windows installation already occupies all four partitions of an MBR partition table.

Before a new Ubuntu user is ready to wipe one of those partitions to allow for an extended partition, it is a good idea to try wubi. But it is important to let her/him know that it is not as stable or efficient as a standard or dual boot installation of Ubuntu onto a real partition.

Persistent USB is also a good alternative, but wubi is faster. A drawback with persistent USB is that it is slower than standard live sessions due to the very slow reading of many small files via USB. And if you unplug the pendrive too early, it gets corrupted.

[verzx]

I highly recommend using anything but WUBI for the simple reason that every time I try to install using it, there are always problems which then lead to other problems.

[mJayk]

I think WUBI provides the first actual method of somebody with no technical skills installing and trying ubuntu.

Yes Live-on-cd's are brilliant and usb sticks which are boot-able are neat. But they require some "technical" knowledge to create, can go wrong, and things can get alot more scary for someone who doesn't know what they are doing if they do go wrong.

[Frogs Hair]

I started with Wubi and may not be here without it. I know four people who use it to sample the latest releases without problems. Windows 8 and Wubi has been a problem for computers with preloaded Windows 8.

My friends use Wubi because using Linux operating systems is not a viable option for work. This is due to company policies about using unapproved software including 3rd party Win software. The bottom line is they don't want to commit to a traditional dual boot, but still want to experiment with Ubuntu.

[lykwydchykyn]

Scenario: I'm a less-techy user newly from Windows. I'm not happy with Windows because my system seems to be slower all the time from fragmentation, crufty registry, service bloat, etc, but of course, as a non-techy, I don't know that those are the causes. I try out Ubuntu because I've heard that it runs faster, is more reliable, etc. But the first thing I do, and totally unbeknownst to me is, I install my Ubuntu system on this horribly fragmented NTFS partition. The file is not only spread and fragmented all over heck's half-acre, but the double-journaling overhead is killing performance still further. One day, Ubuntu doesn't even start, or worse, starts but acts wonky. This is due to file corruption caused by a bad write or shutdown from that new Windows game that crashed on me. But I don't know this. It doesn't occur to me that a Windows issue could affect Ubuntu. Conclusion: Ubuntu/Linux is slow, wonky and totally unreliable. All marketing hooey.

That's certainly a significant downside to wubi; then again, the less-techy user who tries to set up a dual boot and ends up blowing Windows away is none too pleased either. I know that because we see a fair amount of that happening here too. Is there a perfect solution?

[DuckHook]

...the less-techy user who tries to set up a dual boot and ends up blowing Windows away is none too pleased either.

Yes, very valid point.

Is there a perfect solution?

What about a working installation on USB stick/disk? I'm not talking about persistent USB and all its associated restrictions, but a real working install: only with journaling, swap, all write-intensive activity turned off? Just tried one of those (thanks to instructions/recommendations from @oldfred) and it's not bad. In fact, it works pretty well. If the install CD offered such a choice, possibly with caveats about how much slower such a system would be due to USB limitations, etc. I bet lots of people would choose it instead. Also has the advantage of not being blamed on Ubuntu if stick fails.

[JKyleOKC]

Scenario: I'm a less-techy user newly from Windows. I'm not happy with Windows because my system seems to be slower all the time from fragmentation, crufty registry, service bloat, etc, but of course, as a non-techy, I don't know that those are the causes. I try out Ubuntu because I've heard that it runs faster, is more reliable, etc. But the first thing I do, and totally unbeknownst to me is, I install my Ubuntu system on this horribly fragmented NTFS partition. The file is not only spread and fragmented all over heck's half-acre, but the double-journaling overhead is killing performance still further. One day, Ubuntu doesn't even start, or worse, starts but acts wonky. This is due to file corruption caused by a bad write or shutdown from that new Windows game that crashed on me. But I don't know this. It doesn't occur to me that a Windows issue could affect Ubuntu. Conclusion: Ubuntu/Linux is slow, wonky and totally unreliable. All marketing hooey.

Did I get something wrong? Am I painting an unrealistic scenario? I suspect it's pretty common, especially the slow file-system issues.

I think you're right on the money. Unfortunately, that user would have had even worse problems had he tried to install alongside Windows, and might easily have wiped out his (not backed up) Windows system and all his precious data. In such a case, wubi seems to be the least of possible evils, with no good solution available.

On my 2005-era HP laptop, I wasn't able to install Xubuntu alongside WinXP Pro even after explicitly making room for it on a second physical drive. For some reason, the box would not read the entire CD although the CD tested okay and installed properly on other boxes. As a compromise, I installed via wubi and that worked. It wasn't noticeably slower than native installs on older, slower boxes, and let me experiment a bit on the laptop. Just before I gave the laptop to a son's family, after cleaning it of all personal files and the wubi installation, I did manage to get a side-by-side installation of 12.04.1 working properly so that they could get a taste of Xubuntu if they desired to do so, and it was not noticeably different in feel from the old wubi 8.04 installation.

I think wubi has a place, despite the problems associated with it. However I don't plan to try it again.

[sidzen]

No.

If dual-boot is too hard, use two hard drives (even in a laptop, time will be used more efficiently than fooling with WUBI)!

[monkeybrain2012]

Yes, very valid point.

What about a working installation on USB stick/disk? I'm not talking about persistent USB and all its associated restrictions, but a real working install: only with journaling, swap, all write-intensive activity turned off? Just tried one of those (thanks to instructions/recommendations from @oldfred) and it's not bad. In fact, it works pretty well. If the install CD offered such a choice, possibly with caveats about how much slower such a system would be due to USB limitations, etc. I bet lots of people would choose it instead. Also has the advantage of not being blamed on Ubuntu if stick fails.

That is actually the best solution. I am now typing from Ubuntu 12.04 installed in an external hard drive actually ( the partition is 150G ext4, the rest of the hard drive for other Linux distros and storage), it is for all intents and purposes my working OS right now(I have Ubuntu 11.04 on my internal drive, haven't get around to update it and plan to do it during the holidays) It is fast and smooth and performance wise it is as good as an internal install, moreover I can boot it off different machines so it is portable, I even use it at work!

Installation in a flash drive is not as good though because it is a lot slower and flash drives tend to wear out with a lot of writing and rewriting.

If you want to do this just be careful that you install Ubuntu in the right drive and put the bootloader in the same drive (the external one)

To answer your original question, no, I don't think WUBI is worth the troubles for something limited and is essentially just a little more than a demo, the knowledge you gain from trouble shooting WUBI probably doesn't transfer. I never used it. I started using Ubuntu with a real dual boot on a old machine, I used manual install instead of "Install along side" as I have more control that way. One month later I wiped Windows XP. 6 months later I wiped WIndows from my main machine as well after I have gained enough experience with Ubuntu on the old machine.