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Install Linux in Windows
Posted on Thursday, May 10, 2007 at 12:33 PM by Jason Barker
I wrote earlier about the potential value for churches and ministries of running Linux on donated or bare-bones machines. In that post I also discussed some of the ways in which Linux can be run in a virtual machine on a Windows system, thereby enabling priests and church leaders to become familiar with one or more Linux distros before committing to an OS.
It is also possible to test different Linux distros using a LiveCD, which runs on a CD without needing to be installed on your computer. There are of course many limitations with using a LiveCD (such as the inability to upgrade components and applications), but it is a relatively painless way to gain some experience with Linux.
Yesterday, Lifehacker featured a new Windows-based installer for Ubuntu Linux called Wubi. Wubi - as well as Ubuntu's own Windows installer prototype - allows you to install several distros of Ubuntu using Windows (I know this works in XP, but not in Vista; I do not know how well it works with older versions of Windows). Instead of needing to create a separate partition for Linux, these installers simply install Ubuntu into its own file in Windows. This is a relatively easy way to run a full version of Linux without some of the difficulties of a typical installation.
I haven't tried either of these installers - running Edubuntu in Virtualbox on my PC works fine - but everything I've read about them sounds very promising.
Posted in Miscellaneous