What does Wubi Install Size do?

[pwright2]

I tried Wubi installing 8.04 onto my USB drive and apparently the installation worked but the boot would not. I read some of the messages here and decided that wasn't worth fighting. So I cleared some space on my C: drive and set off to try again.

I had noted that the resulting install on my USB drive was about 13GB and had cleared that much space on C: but when I started the installer it came up with a dialog box which contained a box for Installation Size which initially contained a 15 but which then changed to 10. I clicked the box and noted that it contained even smaller values.

I haven't found any reference to this size in the documentation. Does anyone know what happens when smaller values of installation size are used?

-----Sims-----

[Snowhog]

Re: What does Wubi Install Size do?

Partitioning Windows and Ubuntu (from Psychocats.net)

[pwright2]

Re: What does Wubi Install Size do?

Thanks, but while there may be some general application of the information possible, Wubi doesn't actually use partitions and I can't make the logical leap.

-----Sims-----

[yourlord]

Re: What does Wubi Install Size do?

I haven't used wubi yet, though I'll be trying it this weekend in an attempt to convert some extended family to the free side..

The install size is analogous to setting the partition size. From what I gather from the little I've looked into wubi (about 5 minutes today) you're choosing the size of the file that ubuntu will reside in.

The trick that I'm assuming wubi exploits is that linux can use a file in a filesystem as a block device, and therefore it creates a file in the host OS (windows) and installs linux using that file as the block device. If you choose 5GB in the wubi installer then your ubuntu installation will appear to be installed on a 5GB drive/partition when you're running it.

That's my take.