Wubi

[Brendan Kidwell]

On 3/5/08, James Kramer <kramerjm at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The X31 that I own does not have a CD rom which you need to boot
> Ubuntu in order to install it.  Wubi eliminates the need for the CD
> rom.  But you do need a working version of Windows on the computer.
> Also you eventually need to move the installation to a separate
> partition.  If you don't move it to its own partition.  You need to go
> into windows periodically and defrag the hard drive. But, I guess if
> you never use windows, than you don't need to defrag the hard drive.


You can always boot from an external CD/DVD drive (easy) or USB thumbdrive
(somewhat harder, but doable).

I think I used an external CD drive to bootstrap the Ubuntu installer on my
X41.

Wubi looks like a good tool to get Ubuntu installed to try it out, but if
you start using Ubuntu exclusively, you might want to change your setup. If
I understand correctly, Wubi installed Ubuntu in a virtual disk stored in a
file stored in your Windows partition (that's why it doesn't need to
repartition your disk). This extra layer of abstraction for your main
storage will reduce performance for filesystem access and swap space
(virtual memory) because every time it accesses a "sector" of the virtual
disk it has to lookup in the Windows filesystem where that sector is located
physically.

If you decide you want to commit to Ubuntu exclusively, archive your
"/home/[my name]" folder and copy it over the network to somewhere else.
Then get an external CD drive or find a howto for installing Ubuntu from a
USB thumbdrive, and then install Ubuntu cleanly after completely erasing the
disk. Then restore your home folder backup.

If you feel like you're never going to get rid of Windows, then you might as
well keep things the way they are.

Brendan Kidwell

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