Well that was unsatisfying.
I tried the download on my little-used desktop after clearing 12.5 GB of space on it, and the downloads were similarly snail-ish. I killed it. I’ll dig on the Wubi site later, perhaps. But for now I quit.
No Ubuntu for me today!
This update is short, since I abandoned the installation of Wubi. I let it run overnight last night, going to be with an estimated 28 hours remaining. When I woke up this morning, it was estimating 25 hours, and I guarantee I slept at least 7 hours. So I quit the install.
I did check the Wubi forums and FAQ, hoping to find some guidance on this slowness, but other than finding one or two other souls with the same problem, I found no answers. My guess is that something on the laptop (AVG anti-virus, or who knows what) is killing the download speed that other people report being close to 10 minutes.
I think I’ll try again on my desktop machine, and see if the results are better. More to follow in part 3…
If you haven’t heard of Wubi, here’s a short explanation: Wubi is an Ubuntu Linux distribution that you install via a Windows installer package. Then you can boot into Ubuntu or Windows as you wish, or at least that’s my basic (and possibly flawed) understanding of what you get. I don’t think it’s a virtual machine implementation, but that’d be interesting to me too. So upon hearing about this somewhere online, I decided to give it a whirl.
The download of the Wubi installer was quick, too quick for a fully featured Ubuntu installation, I was sure. And I was correct. What you initially download is a package that then downloads components from the web as necessary, and installs them as it goes.
For the record, and the curious, I am installing this on a Dell Latitude D600 laptop currently running Microsoft Windows XP service pack 2, and fully patched (if you’re interested).
The first error came pretty quickly.
The first error I found during my Wubi installation
I pressed OK on this error, and the installation continued at a blistering pace of 6 KB/sec. That’s 6 KB, not 6 MB. Since this is a 694.5 MB download (at least the current part is), this is going to take a while. Over 33 hours according to the download dialog seen here.
Wubi download progress during installation
So here I sit at 2% and I’m nowhere near completion. I’ve decided to post this much, and come back later (tomorrow?) to post my progress, or lack thereof.
More to follow…
I ought to take a moment to indulge in an introduction. My name is Chris, and this is RockDoggy.com. I am a software developer in the Detroit area.
I am the same person who once ran the internet radio station at this address, named RockDoggy Radio. Back in 2003 & 2004, I had some fun being (possibly) the most popular oldies station on the web. No other station had as many listeners while focusing solely on the music from 1955-1974. I served up to 250 concurrent streams at the station’s height of popularity.
A few facts intruded on the fun, though. It turns out that bandwidth is expensive. Who knew? At least as important was the fact that music royalties & licensing in the digital world are prohibitively expensive. But most importantly, having infant triplets (born in January, 2004) put a crimp in one’s disposable income as well as one’s free time. Both disappear, in short.
And so it was that RockDoggy Radio had to disappear in 2004. But I never let go of the URL. I always knew I wanted to make something useful out of it once again, but only recently have been able to carve enough time out to try my hand at blogging.
Will I resurrect the radio station? Are we gettin’ the band back together? Nope. Not a chance. Bandwidth, royalties and licensing fees have only gotten more expensive. I can use that money for the kids’ college funds. Also, the death of Joel Platfoot in 2006 took any remaining wind out of my webcasting sails. Joel was the owner of Generation Rock Radio, the first internet radio station I got hooked on in 2003. Joel’s friends have kept Joel’s station and memory alive there since his passing. But half the fun for me was the friendly competition with Joel, and I’m just not interested without him around.
Instead, I’ll focus my attention on the family, a constant source of joy. Sure, higher order multiples are hard to raise, but it’s a unique experience I wouldn’t trade for anything.
So my intention here is to dump my thoughts on whatever I want. It is my site, after all! I intend to document my woodworking projects, interesting tech notes, observations, and thoughts. If you enjoy it, let me know. If it needs improvement, I’m open to constructive criticism. If you hate it, then move on, nothing to see here.
More to come!
