yes, just get it... and what is easier: WUBI or a Live CD? There are some valid reasons not to use WUBU but in general they boil down to something like 'I don't want to run or suggest running Ubuntu'. Well, sorry, but *Ubuntu is a very easy to learn and user-friendly distribution with a vivid community. BTW, it is also possible to install Kubuntu or Xubuntu with WUBI.

Yes true, people who buy VMware use it for this very purpose!

You've clearly never used a VM in a professional environment, or you're mixing up VMware Player with all other VMware products.

Every VM listed here using 'virtualization' or 'para-virtualization' provides native to near-native speed. If the rest of the hardware is supported it is very much like the real experience.

Yes, there are some issues with a VM, like for example disk I/O. Several solutions mitigate the problem. Like a seperate harddisk for each installation.

Running 2 OSes in paralel has some advantages too. For example, you can easily switch back and forth. When I started using Linux this wasn't possible, and back in the days when I bought a new computer it was a blessing to have a 2nd one available. One can even remotely log in on the VM. Something Vista Home edition doesn't even allow anymore since it lacks RDP server...

OK, but one thing you're missing. "I don't want to support [kx]?ubuntu." At least in the context of pointing friends and relatives in the right direction for an install, you're consigning yourself to providing some level of support. I've nothing against ubuntu, if you're unfortunate enough to be "human", but not being such myself, I prefer other options. This renders me unqualified to render the support they'll expect, and so I won't recommend ubuntu.


There's a whole other argument regarding the whole notion of an "easy-to-learn distribution". I'm of the opinion that you need (eventually) to learn UNIX in general, and GNU and Linux in particular. That's a constant amount of learning. Whatever other stuff you learn specific to the distribution is variable and can be minimized by reducing the number of distro-specific tools you need to learn, and by making the tools themselves easier to learn. Nothing I've said this far is too controversial, in general. But I tend to favor reducing the total learning involved, and not care that the resulting curve is pretty steep. Others, I know, are more concerned about the learning required to reach some level of capability, and so they favor increasing the total distro-specific knowledge needed, but letting it mask the users' ignorance of deeper topics, so they can be up and running easier.

They tend to accuse me of "turning newbs away", and question whether I "just want Linux to remain my ub3r1337 playground".

I tend to accuse them of "requiring needless unlearning", and question whether they "have the mental capacity of an oyster".

Which is really quite fun, but if anyone's interested, let's start a new thread.

Huh? The issue appears you cannot say 'no' to such request? Thats an entirely different issue (perhaps rather related to your personality). I've often been asked to help people with computer related issues many years ago when I was younger, and they always gave me an amount of money or mere thanks which were laughable. Now I just mention my price, I say "you can get support <here and here>, and reply 'no' to begging and any following psychological manipulative reasoning. On the flip side of the coin, if your friend has some unique capabilities they can help you with something related to their field as well. Thats what real friends are for.

However, assuming you don't want to give free support you just tell someone: try this out, read the instructions there, and if you cannot figure it out use a search engine. Maybe your peers don't know how to use a search engine. Then they have to learn that, or stick with something which doesn't require this ability. Thats an entirely different problem, but then theres a community and good documentation. Besides, this problem also happens in non-WUBI and non-Ubuntu environments.

One problem is, there is a lack of standards on the GUI layers of UNIX. X11, Aqua, VNC and with all kind of different and incompatible toolkits like GTK and Qt. I don't think one needs to learn eventually UNIX in general. Someone who does his whole life CAD work shouldn't need UNIX. He has an (internal or external) support desk who know UNIX, and who are there for him in case of problems. Some of the underlying things UNIX does are very different from Windows whereas people grow up with the Windows ways of doing. How are you going to educate these people in a more broad sense, where they can use what is taught and apply this knowledge in a more general sense while changing the underlying architecture/platform. Herein lies the challenge of usability.

Finally, all the different Linux distributions are very cloudy and odd to new-comers. Lets just stick with a few user-friendly ones, and integrate several with each other...

Some people prefer to keep new people away from Linux. I don't see these people as Linux users, I see them rather as e.g. GNOME or KDE users. The user interacts with the DE far more than the kernel. What I care about, is that they have a happy experience without bugging me. I think Ubuntu or Kubuntu (or say, Linuxmint) are good options for that goal.

Therefore my preference & suggestion:
1) WUBI
2/3) LiveCD or Virtual Appliance

That's again depends on what is your goals.

"Real" OS install via Live CD needs separate partition(s) and you have to be careful when partitioning being applied and should have some knowledge of what you're going to do. If you have unused space on HDD (I mean unpartitioned space!) or second unused HDD and you're familiar with what partition is, it is a way to go. You will then have "real" OS install without any nasty limitations (the only hint is not make "/" partition too small).

With WUBI you can give it a try in simplified way. If I'm remembering well (warning: I can be WRONG here!), WUBI does approximately the following: creates big file on NTFS volume which will then contain disk image of system. And then it writes OS into that file as if it was a real disk partition. Yeah, Linux is quite universal and can treat files as disk devices and even can boot from such "disk device" with small tricks. So, you don't need change partition layout at all - system will parse NTFS to find it's "disk" file and continue booting from that "disk". The only known drawback of such behavior is that its a bit slower when it comes to heavy disk I/O. At first, NTFS driver needs to parse NTFS structures to represent file as linear space and then driver of chosen filesystem (for example ext2) needs to parse filesystem of such "disk-in-file". And surely double-fragmentation may happen when at first big file which is "disk" fragmented on a carrier FS and then, filesystem of such "disk" may have fragmentation on it's own. However, for many tasks it's not a big deal. Btw, this technique somewhat resembles vmware virtual disks but in contrast the only (and often small) penalty is a bit slower disk I\O while everything else works just as usually.

P.S.: why I'm sticked to Kubuntu? Because I'm not started my life with ROM bios built in to my head. So I have by default zero knowledge how certain OS works. Then when I'd installed OS and it works, I can start exploring it, learning it and reading documentation in it. If I see OS for first time what the h*ll I know what the "packages" is? And how do I know which ones I need and how to configure them manually? Don't you think I should have working OS to do RTFMing? So, to solve chicken and egg problem OS at first should work and then I can learn how it does that. Otherwise I need to have another OS just to learn this one (and why I should bother myself with another OS then?). And definitely, RTFMing on a text-mode console on LCD surely can broke eyes. So to be a really usable system IMHO should at least be able to start GUI and be configurable from it at least to allow basic operations. Then I'm fine and may learn how it works and have fun with advanced tricks after RTFMing. The only alternative option is to write (or at least construct from existing components) OS from scratch. This slow, painful operation which is not seems to be needed if you're not going to become your own distro maintainer or even a new OS author .And well I see no reasons why I can't learn how Linux works, actually I got some skills, etc and Ubuntu inside still just Debian, quite good and powerful OS. With Ubuntu I can also learn how Linux works WITHOUT interrupting all my other tasks requiring PC use. So this is a bit like with cars. First drivers of ancient ages surely were able to assemble their cars from scratch on their own just since there was no any other options anyway. And they should be able to build engine and so on. However now, if you want to get from A to B you do not have to assemble your own car from scratch. You can drive a ready car (and even you can drive like a pro). You can also fix and repair or mod, tune and customize your car if you wish and have right skills. However this is not strictly required. To get from A to B you can just drive a car or you can even use a bus for example (Windows way - requires nothing except pay for a trip and it is up to bus driver to decide where to go and you can't change his decisions). Same with OSes. Dealing with LFS and similar stuff is like being ancient driver who assembles his car from bare metal. Surely he has to know how engine works to achieve this. Slackware and Gentoo and similar half-baked stuff are somewhere between this and hardcore tuning and modding - you're maybe using ready engine and some parts from existing cars but reworking 'em all hardly and tweaking to the hell, etc. However just to drive car or for SOME tuning and tweaking such things like building own engine from scratch surely awful overkill. If you're not going to manufacture own cars, why you need to know ALL details about your car then? Same with OSes. I may be interested in learning SOME parts of *nix deeply. But I have no plans to write own *nix-like OS from scratch. Hence I do not care if some slackware or LFS or Gentoo guys will mumble something about Ubuntu. Someone still can built his car from bare metal or via parts assembling but in 2008 year this is rather for fun than for a real-world use. Same with Linux distros, IMHO.