Wubi stands for Windows-based Ubuntu Installer, it is one of Ubuntu’s smart ways to convince Windows users to switch to Ubuntu. Wubi allows you to install and uninstall Ubuntu as any other Windows application, in a simple and safe way. Remember the old days when you tried to install Windows and Linux on the same machine with the dual-boot options? You have to prepare your partition very carefully, otherwise, the Linux install will wipe out or mess up your Windows partition and you will end up with nothing working. However, with Wubi, you don’t have to worry about this at all, it is a one-click installation of Ubuntu in Windows: it creates a partition for Ubuntu, creates the dual-boot menu, and installs Ubuntu all for you automatically by just one single click, can you imagine that?

After you download Wubi.exe from Ubuntu web site, double-click the exe file to load the installation wizard of Wubi.

All you need to do now is to give a username and password. Once you click “Install” button, it will start downloading Ubuntu packages from the Internet, preciselly from Ubuntu web site. It will take some time (the Ubuntu distro is about 700MB) to finish the download. Once the complete package is downloaded and copied to your computer, your computer will be rebooted. During the reboot, you will see that Ubuntu has been added to the boot menu in which Windows is still selected by default. You will need to boot into Ubuntu to complete the installation process.

Once the installation is finished, your system becomes a dual-boot system with Windows and Ubuntu. If later on for any reason you don’t want to keep Ubuntu any more, all you need to do is to boot into Windows, then go to Add or Remove Programs in Control Panel. You will see “Ubuntu” is listed in the program list as any other Windows applications. Just click “Remove” and it only takes about 30 seconds to remove Ubuntu from your machine safely. You don’t even need to reboot your machine after uninstalling Ubuntu. Next time when you reboot your computer, you will be surprised to see that the boot menu is back to the way before Ubuntu was installed.

I am very impressed by Ubuntu folks, and I truly believe Ubuntu will attract more common users in near future by its user-friendly interface, easy installation, easy package management (program install/uninstall in Windows world), and of course security.