The fate of the Wubi tool seem to be sealed by Canonical

Apr 10, 2013 14:47 GMT  ·  By

Wubi or Windows-based Ubuntu Installer has caused quite a stir among the Ubuntu developers, but its story is far from over.

A few Ubuntu developers have come to the conclusion that Wubi should skip the next Ubuntu 13.04 (Raring Ringtail) release. The development for this particular piece of software has stalled and it no longer works with newer editions of Windows. And that's the least of its problems.

Ubuntu's Steve Langasek has proposed, just a few days ago, that Wubi should be dropped from the 13.04 release, saving the testers some pain and grief.

A few days later, another Ubuntu user joined the discussion, and made the case to keep Wubi and to fix the smaller problems mentioned so far.

“It's hard to make an informed decision without knowing the usage stats of Wubi. If it's quite low then I expect there'd be little impact, but if it's popular then it's taking a low-risk installation method away from users who might otherwise not have tried Ubuntu,” said bcbc (a user that describes himself as a supporter of Wubi migration/resize scripts), on the official Ubuntu development mailing list.

The discussion has ended on a very sour note, at least for Wubi, when another Canonical developer said that Wubi has a very negative image and that it should be separated from Canonical's products.

“The unfortunate reality is that if Wubi is your first experience with Ubuntu, you're likely to come to the conclusion that Ubuntu is an unstable mess, when really it's the fact that Windows is an unstable base underneath your Ubuntu.

“In short, Wubi needs to die a quick and painless death, so we can get on with providing positive experiences to new users of Ubuntu” ended Canonical developer, Robert Bruce Park.

As it stands right now, Wubi won't be released with Ubuntu 13.04, but Canonical is going after Windows users and they will want a tool capable performing that task.