If you haven’t heard of Wubi, here’s a short explanation: Wubi is an Ubuntu Linux distribution that you install via a Windows installer package. Then you can boot into Ubuntu or Windows as you wish, or at least that’s my basic (and possibly flawed) understanding of what you get. I don’t think it’s a virtual machine implementation, but that’d be interesting to me too. So upon hearing about this somewhere online, I decided to give it a whirl.

The download of the Wubi installer was quick, too quick for a fully featured Ubuntu installation, I was sure. And I was correct. What you initially download is a package that then downloads components from the web as necessary, and installs them as it goes.

For the record, and the curious, I am installing this on a Dell Latitude D600 laptop currently running Microsoft Windows XP service pack 2, and fully patched (if you’re interested).

The first error came pretty quickly.

The first error I found during my Wubi installation

I pressed OK on this error, and the installation continued at a blistering pace of 6 KB/sec. That’s 6 KB, not 6 MB. Since this is a 694.5 MB download (at least the current part is), this is going to take a while. Over 33 hours according to the download dialog seen here.

Wubi download progress during installation

So here I sit at 2% and I’m nowhere near completion. I’ve decided to post this much, and come back later (tomorrow?) to post my progress, or lack thereof.

More to follow…