What's up with mint4win?

[maXmo]

Wubi is provided for ubuntu, so question in subj.
I already have an old mint installed and want to upgrade. I had troubles with software and hardware support and want to check out how things are doing (this probably rules out LTS release?).
Is something special done to mint4win to support latest release? Can I use min4win from previous release to install latest release?

[Mark Phelps]

Mint4Win is (was) based on WUBI (Windows UBuntu Installer) -- for which support was ended some time back, due primarily to problems with WUBI not working on preinstalled Windows8 machines that came with UEFI enabled by default.

My guess is that Mint4Win suffered the same demise.

[maXmo]

Well, maybe unofficially, but it's provided for ubuntu. Is windows 8 such a big problem, its market share is only 13%.

[Mark Phelps]

Well, maybe unofficially, but it's provided for ubuntu.

But even there, it's not supported anymore. I believe the last Ubuntu release that supported it was 12.04.

Is windows 8 such a big problem, its market share is only 13%.

Market share is not the issue; instead, the issue is that OEM PC providers, starting with Win8, changed the BIOS versions on their preinstalled PCs to nearly always use UEFI -- and WUBI/Mint4Win do NOT work with UEFI.

[maXmo]

It's just a missing feature. Is it a good idea to discontinue software because it doesn't suit 13% of people?

[WinterTroubles]

From the Mint 16 release notes...

mint4win
The mint4win Windows installer was not able to reliably handle the size of the ISO images. It was therefore removed and isn't available in Linux Mint 16.

this applies to subsequent releases too, one assumes.

Source.. http://www.linuxmint.com/rel_petra_cinnamon.php

Regards
WT

[Mark Phelps]

It's just a missing feature. Is it a good idea to discontinue software because it doesn't suit 13% of people?

NO, it's not a "missing feature"; it's a serious incompatibility.

I've no doubt that the WUBI developers did an assessment of the work involved to fix that incompatibility -- and decided to discontinue work on WUBI as a result.

[Xstor]

It seems that linux developers should consider the idea of deal with UEFI problem instead of avoid it...most of notebooks with preinstalled Windows OS (which is a huge amount of computers, believe me) have UEFI, and that is preventing most of their users to install and try Linux...

[baldrick.777]

To be honest, wubi wasn't the ideal way of installing, so that may have also been a factor as well.

Dual boot is the preferred method, way less bugs.

If you really have to run Mint within a Windows OS, perhaps consider running it inside a VirtualBox?

[Pierre]

there used to be a way to install Debian itself, direct from the 'net
using a small installer, that created a dual_boot with your Windows O/S.

once it was running, you could then expand the programs that were available via synaptic. ..
- these days it seems that you now have to use a minimalistic cd installation, instead.

[maXmo]

Dual boot is the preferred method, way less bugs.

That's quite an investment, and it doesn't work when there's no free partition. And what to do with all this if it doesn't fly?

If you really have to run Mint within a Windows OS, perhaps consider running it inside a VirtualBox?

Pointless as hardware support is still wanting if hardware is not linux-certified.