With Ubuntu 8.04 now including a Wubi installer on the CD, I thought this provided a great chance to try Ubuntu on my laptop. Wubi allows you to install Ubuntu as if it was a Windows application. It installs via Windows, but on rebooting, you get the choice of Windows or Ubuntu to boot into. If you decide you want rid of it, then boot into Windows, and uninstall Ubuntu like any other Windows app. The real benefit of this is that it doesn’t touch your Windows system, so for trying out Ubuntu it gives you the complete experience with none of the risk.

It works very well I must say. It installed easily, and on booting it sorted out the Linux system in the virtual disc it had created. Eventually I was faced with the usual Ubuntu login prompt and then desktop.

Unfortunately there was one thing that gave me a problem. I couldn’t get my wireless to work at all. My laptop (HP NX6110) has a Broadcom card that is apparently supported, but I had varying degrees of success via ndiswrapper and the bcm43xx drivers. Ndiswrapper at least managed to get my laptop’s wifi light to come on, but I couldn’t then get connected to my wireless network. I should say however that my ethernet worked no problem.

So, despite messing around with it for a good while, I just couldn’t get the wifi to work. I ended up removing the ubuntu installation, but I wouldn’t let this stop anyone else from trying out Wubi. Wifi is still tied up in proprietary Windows drivers for the most part, and for anyone else curious about trying Ubuntu out, I’d really recommend trying out the Wubi installation method. Everything else worked fine on my laptop on boot up (display, sound, ethernet) and its a great tool for anyone curious about Linux, but unsure about getting rid of their Windows installation.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 27th, 2008 at 17:37 and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.