Posts Tagged ‘intrepid ibex

01
May
09

Wubi and Jaunty Jackelope

By kevinsm 1 Comment
Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , ,

For the first time in a couple of weeks, I have an actual Linux dual-boot on my hard drive. Another relative has temporarily moved in with my grandfather and me, so I decided to reinstall Windows on my computer to allow him to work with an OS he was more familiar with. I decided to set up a Wubi install of Intrepid Ibex to tide me over until Jaunty Jackelope came out.

Wubi

That was my first use of Wubi. Having experienced it, I wish it would have been an option when I first got into Ubuntu and Linux (back in the days of Gutsy Gibbon). If I’d had the chance to try Ubuntu out without setting up a permanent dual-boot, I wouldn’t have set up the conservatively sized partition I originally did. Then I wouldn’t have spent so long trying to figure out how to expand the damn thing.

Wubi works very well. The boot-up seems to take longer, but Ubuntu runs just as quickly under a Wubi install as it does on a regular dual-boot. The biggest differences are:

  • You don’t have access to your Windows files under Wubi.
  • You only have a maximum of 30 GB of storage for Ubuntu under Wubi.

Otherwise, everything seems to work the same, including the update feature.

Gnome Partition Editor (GPartEd)

In my past experiments with the Gnome Partition Editor, I’ve never been able to get the results that I’ve wanted. I finally figured out that this is because you can’t manipulate the partition on which you’re running GPartEd. Thus, when I downloaded the program and attempted to grow my Ubuntu partition, I was out of luck.

Fortunately, the Jaunty Jackelope live CD comes with GPartEd, which allows you to manipulate any partition on your drive by running it from the CD. Unfortunately, I didn’t come to this revelation until after my relative had already saved some stuff on his Windows account, so it’s going to be a while before I can really grow my Linux partition. However, I was able to gain about 10 more gigs for Linux because of the fact that a Wubi install apparently creates an ext3 swap drive separate from the Windows partition.

Jaunty Jackelope

At the end of the day, I got Jaunty Jackelope installed. So far, I like what I’m seeing. A few things struck me right off the bat after I installed it and started playing around.

  • The boot time has dramatically decreased, as others have pointed out.
  • The new wallpapers (though there are only two of them) are much better than in the last couple of releases.
  • The preinstalled themes are better. This batch includes popular third-party themes like New Wave and a couple of versions of Dust.
  • The default shut-down widget now gives you 60 seconds to change your mind.
  • OpenOffice 3 is now preinstalled. That saves me the trouble of adding the OOo repository to get it. (I do need the ability to occasionall read Office 2007 documents in case I accidentally download or otherwise access them in Linux. Of course, OOo 3.1 is sounding interesting enough that I might end up doing that eventually anyway.

I’m sure I’ll find more to write about as I mess with Jaunty some more, but this is enough for now. Besides, who keeps a blog to write one comprehensive entry every six months?