Getting better results with WUBI

WUBI dramatically reduces the gap that prevents windows users to try Ubuntu. If you are wondering what WUBI is all about, you may get some idea from my post “WUBI – A wonderful little gem that helps windows users to try Ubuntu“. Yes, with WUBI, installing Ubuntu is just like installing Firefox or Thunderbird on a windows machine.

Well, while there are so many great things that WUBI offers, there is one drawback that can make eyebrows rise. WUBI downloads the latest “iso” image from the web automatically when you run it. There is nothing wrong with that and infact this is what makes WUBI a very very easy tool to use. Then what really is wrong with WUBI?

The problem is, WUBI does not seem to choose the fastest mirror near your location. And this makes the download take very long time. I installed Ubuntu in my machine using WUBI and it took nearly 12 hours to download the “iso” image (Kindly note that the size of the iso image is around 700 MB). And even worse, when I tried installing Ubuntu via WUBI in my wife’s notebook, it took nearly 18 hours and downloaded only 38% before I got frustrated and stopped WUBI.

But what makes WUBI great is that has so many “hidden” options that one can explore and I did exactly the same. I learnt from the WUBI guide that WUBI can detect any “iso” image found in the same location as “wubi.exe”. That means if you are “wubi.exe” from your desktop and if there is a ubuntu “iso” image on your desktop, then WUBI will make use of it instead of downloading one for you.

So I went ahead and made use of my “Free Download Manager” (a decent open source download manager) to download Ubuntu-8.10 iso image. FDM was smart enough to download the 700 MB iso image in less than 2 hours. Then I placed wubi.exe in the same place where the iso image was downloaded and I was surprised with the result.

WUBI installed Ubuntu in my machine in a couple of minutesand then asked me to reboot. Then in another 10 minutes Ubuntu was ready to use and then my wife tookover from me. However she likes the word “KUBUNTU” more than “UBUNTU” and now I should find ways to bring Kubuntu desktop in Ubuntu to make her happy. 🙂

So, if you have a pretty average or slow internet connection, you should not attempt running WUBI straight away. Download the respective iso image with your favourite download manager and then start WUBI. WUBI will obey your commands and it will get the job done for you in minutes.

If you have installed Ubuntu recently, you might find some useful tips from my posts,

– Customizing Ubuntu to provide stunning looks

– Good news for Google Talk users on Linux