Fw: Intention to drop Wubi from 13.04 release

[Stephen Michael Kellat]

After checking #ubuntu-release and seeing that, yes, this is truly not a joke the question is whether or not we need to worry about this.

Stephen Michael Kellat


Begin forwarded message:

Date: Mon, 1 Apr 2013 12:59:35 -0700
From: Steve Langasek <steve.langasek at ubuntu.com>
To: ubuntu-devel at lists.ubuntu.com
Subject: Intention to drop Wubi from 13.04 release


Dear developers,

Recent bug reports suggest that the Ubuntu installer for Windows, Wubi, is
not currently in very good shape for a release:

  13.04 installer doesn't create user account 
  https://bugs.launchpad.net/wubi/+bug/1155704

  Wubi fails to detect 12.04.2 and 13.04 AMD64 ISO
  https://bugs.launchpad.net/wubi/+bug/1134770


Combined with the fact that Wubi has not been updated to work with Windows 8
(bug #1125604), and the focus on mobile client over desktop, the Foundations
team does not expect Wubi to be in a releasable state for 13.04.

I am therefore proposing to drop Wubi from the 13.04 release, starting
immediately with the upcoming Beta.  This will save our testers from
spending their time testing an image that will not have developers working
on fixing the bugs they find, and spares our users from using an image for
13.04 that is not up to Ubuntu's standards of quality.

If someone is interested in taking over the maintenance of Wubi so that it
can be released with 13.04 (or if not with 13.04, then with a future
release), I would encourage them to start by looking at the abovementioned
bugs and preparing patches, then talking to the release team.

Thanks,
-- 
Steve Langasek                   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer                   to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer                                    http://www.debian.org/
slangasek at ubuntu.com                                     vorlon at debian.org




Begin forwarded message:

Date: Mon, 01 Apr 2013 16:08:29 -0400
From: Stéphane Graber <stgraber at ubuntu.com>
To: ubuntu-devel at lists.ubuntu.com
Subject: Re: Intention to drop Wubi from 13.04 release


On 04/01/2013 03:59 PM, Steve Langasek wrote:
> Dear developers,
> 
> Recent bug reports suggest that the Ubuntu installer for Windows, Wubi, is
> not currently in very good shape for a release:
> 
>   13.04 installer doesn't create user account 
>   https://bugs.launchpad.net/wubi/+bug/1155704
> 
>   Wubi fails to detect 12.04.2 and 13.04 AMD64 ISO
>   https://bugs.launchpad.net/wubi/+bug/1134770
> 
> 
> Combined with the fact that Wubi has not been updated to work with Windows 8
> (bug #1125604), and the focus on mobile client over desktop, the Foundations
> team does not expect Wubi to be in a releasable state for 13.04.
> 
> I am therefore proposing to drop Wubi from the 13.04 release, starting
> immediately with the upcoming Beta.  This will save our testers from
> spending their time testing an image that will not have developers working
> on fixing the bugs they find, and spares our users from using an image for
> 13.04 that is not up to Ubuntu's standards of quality.

I think this will save us quite a bit of the usual troubles we have
around release time and the fact that Wubi is nearly unusable on Windows
8 makes it a lot less relevant.

As we discussed, there may be some interest for some of the flavours
targeting people who tend to use older versions of Windows but even
then, current wubi has a bunch of bugs that need fixing first before we
can realistically ship it even for a limited set of flavours.

So anyway, +1.

I'll take care of disabling any remaining wubi builds and the matching
products on the tracker (and remove wubi from the 13.04 manifest).

> If someone is interested in taking over the maintenance of Wubi so that it
> can be released with 13.04 (or if not with 13.04, then with a future
> release), I would encourage them to start by looking at the abovementioned
> bugs and preparing patches, then talking to the release team.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> 
> 


-- 
Stéphane Graber
Ubuntu developer
http://www.ubuntu.com