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Portable Ubuntu runs Ubuntu in Windows

Robert Hallock April 4, 2009 4:10 PM ET in Tech

downloadYou’ve heard about Ubuntu, you’ve probably seen it evangelized as the first consumer-friendly Linux distro, and you’re probably curious what all the fuss is about. It’s also pretty likely that you’re not willing to tamper with your system by giving dual booting a whirl, and I bet you’re definitely not willing to abandon Windows entirely in favor of Linux. Lucky for you, there’s a quirky solution to every one of those problems in the form of Portable Ubuntu.

Portable Ubuntu uses a suite of Linux tools to put Ubuntu’s applications and much of its functionality right on your Windows desktop. This is not the full Linux experience, but it’s a good taste of what Linux and Linux’s tools are like. You can get a look at the command line, all the applications, and its configuration panels. In essence, you get a good 90% of the real deal without any of the hassle. So what are you waiting for? Give it a try. You actually have nothing to lose.

If you like what you see, you can download and burn Ubuntu which boots from CD/DVD and gives you the full experience without installing a thing. Still convinced? You can install Ubuntu to the hard drive from within the bootable session, and I promise it will play nicely with Windows.

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1 Comment:

  1. Cliff_Forster
    Keepin it real
    5 Apr '09, 10:11 am

    I can tell you one thing I absolutely love Ubuntu for is its ability to take an old PC, and perform CPR on it. Perhaps something sold right at the dawn of XP, but with the service packs and updates it is not pretty much useless as an XP machine, say a late Pentium III, or really early Pentium 4, or just about any Celeron are good examples.

    If it breaks your heart to just throw it out, perform CPR on that thing with an Ubuntu installation. I had a customer with a laptop, old Pentium III 933 megahertz, 128mb of RAM, acceptable to run XP on day one, but over the years with the service packs and security updates, it had become a pretty much useless brick, but it runs Ubuntu 8.1 fairly well, enough to at least get some decent productivity out of the hardware again.

    So if you, or a friend of family have an old piece of hardware laying around collecting dust, that's an amazing place to start your ubuntu experimentation, it runs really well with fairly low hardware requirements. I'm not telling you it will run fun on an old Pentium pro, or even a 500 megahertz pentium 2, but if you have a Pentium III, early Athlon or better with 128mb of Ram, its a pretty decent experience when compared to a fully updated XP.

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