I’m not sure how many releases back this started, but Ubuntu has apparently been offering an installation choice that allows you to skip out on partitioning your hard drive. Ubuntu can be installed and uninstalled like any other application in Windows. This is done through using an installer called Wubi, and is amazingly easy and hassle-free to set up. Once installed, you simply reboot and then you can choose which operating system to boot into, Windows or Ubuntu.

My problem with this so far has been that any time I install the initial group of updates for Ubuntu, I completely loose everything after I reboot. Either the grub menu doesn’t exist anymore, or it can’t find the right location of the kernel. The first time I installed through Wubi, it automatically used the latest 64-bit version of Karmic (9.10), which worked fine after the updates, but ultimately had some intolerable bugs and conflicts with software I use. Normally I just use the live cd to fix booting issues, but that won’t work in this case.

Hopefully I can find a solution to this soon, because I consider this installation method, if working, to be one of the coolest things I’ve found this year to date.

*UPDATE: It turns out, fourth time’s a charm. I installed the 32 bit version and successfully updated all packages on my fourth try. I installed restricted drivers, used it for a day, then installed all the updates as soon as the update manager popped up. After reboot, my grub menu and everything was still there. Victory.