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I used to have Xubuntu 11.10 side-by-side with my Windows installation, installed via WUBI from Windows. After upgrading to Windows 10, however, this doesn't start any more, so I wanted to reinstall it.

However, I have noticed that WUBI is not included on the new 15.10 Xubuntu iso, and is also generally not supported any more.

Is there any way I can achieve what I had before, without partitioning my hard disk?

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  • 1
    There is WSL where you can install Ubuntu inside Windows instead of alongside. Dec 1, 2016 at 19:08
  • @ThomasWard: GUI support is planned according to uservoice. Dec 1, 2016 at 19:10

4 Answers 4

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There are community supported versions. see wubi info

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I'd also consider stepping sideways and using:

  • VirtualBox - for fully separated client VMs from the host, or
  • Docker on Windows - for containerising individual apps or a desktop. (Unfortunately doesn't mount straight onto Windows filesystem yet.)

Obviously, both of these require some kind of Virtualisation technology in your chipset to be used effectively.

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Ubuntu 18.04 on Windows allows one to use Ubuntu Terminal and run Ubuntu command line utilities in Windows 10 including bash, ssh, git, apt and many more. Ubuntu 18.04 WSL is published by Canonical.

Windows Subsystem for Linux version 2 which features a true Linux kernel can be installed in Windows 10 version 2004 and later. WSL2 can also be upgraded from Windows Subsystem for Linux version 1 in Windows 10 version 2004 and later. WSL2 supports Intel, AMD and ARM processors.

Install the Windows Subsystem for Linux

  1. To use this feature, one first needs to use Turn Windows features on or off and select Windows Subsystem for Linux, click OK, reboot, and use this app. This step can also be performed using Administrator PowerShell prompt:

     Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName "Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux"
    
  2. Restart your computer when prompted.

Install Ubuntu 18.04

  1. Check that Windows 10 build 16215 or later is installed.

  2. Open the Microsoft Store and choose Ubuntu.

  3. From the Ubuntu page, click the blue Get button.


To launch Ubuntu, type ubuntu1804 on the command-line prompt (cmd.exe), or click on the Ubuntu tile in the Start Menu.

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The windows Linux subsystem does not run full Linux only the command line, making the subsystem useless as a full Linux installation, I should know, I've tried it and there is no way of actually installing a full graphical version of Ubuntu using the windows Linux subsystem.

WUBI should never have been stopped, it's the best installer for windows to install Ubuntu without the need to destroy the MBR, meaning if Ubuntu is installed in it's own dedicated partition, and something goes wrong, there's no way to return the MBR back to before Ubuntu was installed, at least with WUBI, if something goes wrong, then all one has to do, is boot into Windows and uninstall Ubuntu,,, simple!, can that be said about installing Ubuntu in its own dedicated partition? NO!, because if something went wrong with the booting of Ubuntu and one can only reboot into Windows,,, Windows can not read a Linux partition, so restoring the partition and MBR can not be done through Windows.

The only way to restore the MBR, is to use a utility that saves a backup of the MBR on a bootable pen drive along with the MBR utility,,,, then when something goes wrong with either the installation or booting of Ubuntu, then just boot from the pen drive, run the MBR utility, load the previously saved MBR back, and reboot, simple!, Windows is back to as if Ubuntu had never been installed.

That's why WUBI should never have been stopped.

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  • You can usually run bootrec commands in Windows recovery to fix the mbr.
    – mchid
    Nov 3, 2019 at 15:31

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