Wubu and minimal cd

[Amedee Van Gasse]

On 05/27/11 13:54, Billie Walsh wrote:
> On 05/27/2011 04:50 AM, Amedee Van Gasse wrote:
>> Running Ubuntu in a VM or in a second partition doesn't fit my
>> requirements. I guess I'll have to a full monty on the desktop version.
>> But I'll install a minimal version in a VM first, to have something to
>> compare with.
>
> I'm not sure I completely understand it, but the one time I tried Wubi
> as an install method the only difference I could see between it and a
> standard dual boot install was that it used the Windows Bootloader
> rather than Grub. It still repartitioned the hard drive. There was no
> "Kubuntu" button on the Windows desktop, or Windows button on the
> Kubuntu desktop. I still had to restart my machine to go from one to the
> other.
>
> As far as I could tell it was just for people without the intelligence
> to set up their computer to boot from a CD before the hard drive.
> Someone that was so used to Windows Autorun they didn't have a clue how
> else to do it.
>
As far as I understand it, Wubi creates a container file in Windows that 
holds the Linux filesystem. It adds an entry to the NT bootloader, 
mounts the container file, and boots Linux.

There is no partitioning going on. If you have a 20 GB "partition" in 
Linux, then this means that you have a 20 GB container file somewhere in 
Windows.

That is at least how I understand it, and it seems like Wikipedia says 
I'm right:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wubi_(Ubuntu_installer)