mint4win and Wubi together

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crshortt

mint4win and Wubi together

Post by crshortt »

I have just recently started trying to learn and use Linux more. Have been running a couple versions of Puppy Linux from flash drives (great experience) and also recently installed Ubuntu to my Windows 7 machine using Wubi. I have configured Ubuntu quite a bit since, trying to set it up in a way I like, so I don't really want to uninstall it - at least not yet. But I would like to try some other distros as well, particularly Mint since it is highly rated and has the mint4win feature. My question is this - can I install Mint with mint4win on the same Windows 7 computer as Ubuntu with Wubi? Will I then have three boot options on startup, or am I asking for problems if I do this? I do intend to try it from dvd first to make sure I like what I see, but my experience with Ubuntu like this, and from a usb drive as well, was not great. It was sufficient to see that I liked the interface, but it was very slow and laggy. Much better with Wubi, and I'm assuming Mint will perform at least somewhat similarly from dvd. By that I mean slow.

Rick
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
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alan_newbie

Re: mint4win and Wubi together

Post by alan_newbie »

From memory the mint4win spin of the wubi executable simply changes the folder name target from ubuntu to mint; unfortunately this is hard coded into the wubildr file which has the same name. There is absolutely no reason in principle why you can't have as many loopmounted images as you wish ( I'm writing this on a Debian Wheezy image on a Windows XP partition & have an Arch Linux image & a Slackware 14.0 image as well ) but because the file names of the wubi install are the same it is not possible. But you can simply change the names or move your wubildr & wubildr.mbr files installed by ubuntu & then install mint4win which will install another wubildr & wubildr.mbr hardcoded to point to a mint folder.
crshortt

Re: mint4win and Wubi together

Post by crshortt »

Thanks for the info!
alan_newbie

Re: mint4win and Wubi together

Post by alan_newbie »

It would be wise to rename temporarily your ubuntu folder or back it up or simply move it out of the root folder together with the wubildr & wubildr.mbr file. The mint4win executable is a respun wubi executable & it is possible that it might flag an existing install & prompt for an uninstall of the existing (ubuntu) install. As long as the files are renamed or moved temporarily you could accept an uninstall without risking the deletion of your ubuntu image. It may not happen but better to be safe!
Further down the line it is possible to make your own "wubildr" which points to a configuration file in the root directory and provides a menu to allow you to choose which image to boot without requiring swapping of wubildr files.
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