WUBI Makes Ubuntu Easy to Install

I was so favorably impressed by my initial LiveCD testing of Ubuntu 9.04 that I decided to see what a REAL install on a P4 desktop system would be like. Because I am testing lotsa stuff, I didn't want to repartition and reformat my XP hard drive to make this happen, and wouldn't you know there's a really simple way. I don't have to lose my existing Windows XP install to do a real hard drive installation. Check this out.....

The Windows Ubuntu Installer, or WUBI, is a small stub of a program that asks for user name and password, and the amount of space you want to dedicate to the Linux system, and then proceeds to download the appropriate version directly to your computer. My fast web connection still took about two hours to get the CD-sized file, likely because I picked the day the new version 9.04 was released and the servers were being hammered.

After verifying the download and doing some housekeeping, WUBI reboots the system and displays the Windows boot menu which showed my the choices of either Windows XP or Ubuntu (the default selection remains Windows). I selected Ubuntu and the system booted up and proceeded to install Ubuntu onto my hard drive. But wait! Don't I need to reformat my drive and setup swap and root partitions for the new Linux resident? Nope. WUBI makes this so simple by treating the Ubuntu install like any other application. If I don't like what I see, I can UNinstall Ubuntu and my system will be back to "normal".

So the Ubuntu setup took about fifteen to twenty minutes on this P4 2.4GHz system with 2GB RAM installed and presented me with the familiar brown desktop. As I always do when installing Windows, I immediately shut down and restarted the system, chose Ubuntu from the boot menu and was rocketed back into Ubuntu Land where I began another journey of discovery and enlightenment.

This computer is also connected to the Strelecki LAN via wireless, but is done with a D-Link USB adapter which remained connected during setup, so I anticipated difficulties in getting it to work. Imagine my surprise when I asked to see a list of available networks, selected my access point and entered the passphrase and was presented with a working network connection. Again, this happened in something like a minute, without any error messages or other issues. I clicked the Firefox icon and was off surfing the web.

I make it a point to backup and save my Firefox profile so that when I move to another system, or go portable, I have all my logins, passwords, cookies and bookmarks that makes navigating the web so productive. I did a quick lookup of the location where Firefox stores the profile on a Linux system (thank you again, Google) and copied my Windows profile onto a USB flashdrive and moved it into the Ubuntu location. In a heartbeat I was crusing with the very latest Firefox (3.0.9 as of this writing) along with ALL of my bookmarks, cookies, login credentials and everything. I stopped by my Earthlink webmail account and sent a message to a co-worker just to say I was on Linux and making it go. Hey, this feels GOOD, let me tell you!

While I was surfing, I found a few downloads I needed, and Firefox worked exactly the way it always does and stashed the files in a folder of my choice. It feels like the downloads go faster in Ubuntu, even though the transfer rate displayed in the download dialog shows it to be about the same as Windows. The browsing experience definitely FEELS faster, as pages seem to really pop onscreen, subjectively faster than they do under XP where I see the page being composited, section by section, until it's all loaded. In Ubuntu, the page just seems to appear fully formed and ready to go.

OK, so I had a couple downloaded ISO image files I needed to burn, and when I right-clicked on them I saw a choice for "write to disk" which brought up a burning app (Brasero) that worked flawlessly without any tweaking or configuring from me. The burn process was followed by a verification and disc ejection, making the whole idea of burning media a no-brainer. Once again, the new Ubuntu 9.04 made it very easy to just make it go.

As I perused the desktop menus, I came across an item called Remote Desktop Viewer (RDV). I thought it might be a Microsoft-compatible program (remote desktop) so I was very pleasantly surprised to see, from the help system, that it is a VNC-based viewer program. It so happens that I've been working with TightVNC recently to remotely access servers being setup in a new data center in Woodstock, Georgia, as well as some of the systems here on the Strelecki LAN. It was very cool to type in the IP address for one of the local systems, enter the password and be looking at the desktop of one of my Windows boxes.

By default, the Vinagre RDV came up in read-only mode, so I was unable to interact with the remote system, but a quick selection from a menu enabled me to point and click that desktop just as though I was sitting in front of it. It worked just like it does under XP, and the software was already installed in Ubuntu, no additional downloads or installation was required. OK, there's ANOTHER reason I could get to like using Ubuntu - it makes accessing Windows desktops a simple matter of knowing their IP address and VNC password. Very nice, indeed.

Some of the systems I administer are remotely located, and in XP I use the free Hamachi client from LogMeIn. It's a zero-config VPN client that works without any changes to the router/firewall, though I did need to add an entry into the Ghostwall software firewall I use on my XP64 system. Hamachi provides a public IP address for systems that share an Internet connection, sitting behind a NAT router and/or firewall, and it can be used to create and map shared folders and devices. I use it only for the public IP it provides, then use VNC to attach to that address. Works like a champ every time. Did I say that TightVNC was free? Yeah, it is. So is Hamachi.

My initial research tells me that Hamachi, or similar software, is available for Ubuntu, and you KNOW that I'm gonna try and make that go as soon as I get the chance. I figure the more I can do with Linux, and live to tell you about it, the better I'm gonna be. Windows is getting bigger, prettier, and more restrictive when it comes to user rights, but I have a massive history and experience there that I am unwilling to let go. Perhaps the path to take is one of using BOTH operating systems in parallel, which I am doing now with a small KVM that permits me to switch between two computers with a couple keystrokes.

Ubuntu 9.04 is looking to this longtime Windows user to be what we've been waiting for as an alternative to the Windows monolith - a workable, working desktop that networks very easily, leverages the web for all it's worth, and makes discovery of new abilities simple and fun. Oh my gosh! Does this mean I'm heading for the Computing Fun Times again?

I'll keep y'all posted. Thanks for reading.