Canonical Considering the Removal of WUBI from Ubuntu 13.04 Release

When Canonical introduced Ubuntu 8.04 in 2008, it implemented a tool called WUBI (Windows-based Ubuntu Installer) that aimed to help those not familiar with installing an alternate OS on their PC to be able to do so easily – without affecting their partitions. Admittedly, I’ve never had much luck with WUBI, although it’s been quite a while since I last checked it out (10.04, I believe). Reading around, though, it does appear that it held quite a bit of value.

It comes as a bit of a surprise, then, that Canonical is considering removing the tool from its 13.04 release, due out at the end of April. The news came from Canonical’s Steve Langasek in the Ubuntu Devel mailing list, where he simply stated the company “does not expect Wubi to be in a releasable state for 13.04“. This is a fairly open-ended statement, and kind of sounds like WUBI is being dropped from 13.04 because it’s simply not ready.

That said, I do find it a little unlikely that a tool would be dropped for just a single release and then reintroduced in another. It’d be a total death call if 13.04 was set to be an LTS release, but alas, it’s not. What is likely to happen is that the tool will remain available from alternate sources, but the concern is there whether or not it can be truly trusted. If Canonical wants to get rid of it, just how good of shape can it be in? It’s not as though WUBI would take up much space on the CD, so I certainly can’t see space being the reason.

Have any of you guys used WUBI and will be sad to see it go – if it is in fact gone for good out of the official release?