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I'm interested in trying out other distros but I for various reasons, I'm not allowed to actually install them with all the partitioning and such. Ubuntu's Wubi installs various Ubuntu derivatives. There's an installer for Linux Mint call Mint4Win and it's very similar. I'm wondering if it's possible to modify the Wubi program to install other distros and how would I be able to do this? Even if it installs only derivatives, that's better than nothing. Thanks

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According to this link (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/WubiGuide#Can_I_use_Wubi_for_non-Ubuntu_based_distributions.3F) it is possible to modify Wubi for use with other distributions, this involves probably a lot of scripting/coding and recompiling of wubi, additionally some Linux files (in the distribution) may need patches and some packages are required.

Wubi can be easily rebranded and modified. (Wubi Guide: How do I compile Wubi from source?)

Note that you need the following: A Live CD with ubiquity + casper + lupin-support (which provides lupin-casper). The ISO must have a .disk/info formatted like the one in the Ubuntu ISO and with data matching what you provided in the isolist.ini (ibid)

Note that upstream files (Linux-side) need to be changed since normal distributions are generally not capable of targeting and booting (and rebooting) off of a loop device. (Can I use Wubi for non-Ubuntu based distributions?)

That said, it is possible to modify Wubi to make it boot other distributions (such as Linux Mint) but this requires modification on the image side of your distribution.

You could try and rename a live image of a distribution you would like to boot to ubuntu-12.04-desktop-amd64.iso (or ubuntu-12.04-desktop-i386.iso depending on your architecture), put it in a place wubi can find it (root of any drive but C:\ or same folder as wubi) and then install "ubuntu" in wubi knowing that it is not really ubuntu.

I would, however, strongly recommend not to do so because it could potentially screw up many things: Wubi may refuse to start the installation, or it will install and the installed distribuation will not work properly.

In summary: Yes, wubi may be modified for other distributions but the distributions have to be modified correctly in order to work with wubi. So you will have to ask the maintainer of the distro of your choice to support wubi.

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