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I have been wondering this for a while and would like to get a definitive answer.

We still get questions on wubi on the site, however, it is no longer developed and won't work on a modern Windows OS (8, 8.1, 10), so is it off topic or not?

What got me thinking was a close vote on this question as off topic ( I guess, based on comments by @kos) but the help does not mention wubi at all.

What are your opinions on this?

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I think I made a mistake.

I've always seen questions about Wubi being closed as off-topic because of it being discontinued, and since that itself made sense I endorsed the same practice.

However reading this post I understand I overlooked an important point, which is that Wubi is still an option for some supported releases (specifically 12.04.x and 14.04.x).

So I removed my close vote and my comment on that question.

I think that as long as 12.04.x and 14.04.x are not EOL we should provide support for Wubi on 12.04.x and 14.04.x (unless on UEFI), as it is still a vaild method to install those releases.

After all if Ubiquity would be discontinued today we would still support installing supported releases which rely on it.

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    You make a great point here, I got the 12.04 and 14.04 iso and checked, wubi is gone from 14.04 but is still included in 12.04, so I guess it can stay for now based on this evidence, at least until 12.04 goes eol anyway, thanks. Don't know why this did not show as a duplicate of that link but at least we have the definitive answer I was looking for :)
    – Mark Kirby
    Commented Jan 13, 2016 at 13:07
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    @markkirby To my surprise, it's also included in the 14.04 ISO: releases.ubuntu.com/14.04 (this time I checked, to avoid further mistakes :))
    – kos
    Commented Jan 13, 2016 at 13:13
  • @kos "unless on UEFI or on Windows 8+" should be "unless on UEFI" only. If you install Windows 8+ in old BIOS mode, it still works.
    – ngng
    Commented Jan 13, 2016 at 13:30
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    @ngng Fair point, Windows 8+ machines with a compatible bootloader should be supported, I should have included those. However Wubi won't work on fresh Windows 8 installations (and I suppose the same goes for fresh Windows 10 installations).
    – kos
    Commented Jan 13, 2016 at 14:02
  • @kos here is a strange thing I noticed, not really relevant to this question but before I looked on an XUbuntu 14.04 ISO, no wubi, after reading your comment I check an Ubuntu 14.04 ISO and you are correct, it is there.
    – Mark Kirby
    Commented Jan 13, 2016 at 14:36
  • What are your sources for 14.04? wubi was deprecated with 13.04.
    – Seth Mod
    Commented Jan 13, 2016 at 14:48
  • @markkirby I might be wrong but I think Wubi never supported flavours other than the default, that would explain it.
    – kos
    Commented Jan 13, 2016 at 15:06
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    @Seth Here: releases.ubuntu.com/14.04, also I mounted the 64-bit image for 14.04.3 and it was there, so I'm sure it's in the ISO.
    – kos
    Commented Jan 13, 2016 at 15:07
  • I actually found some questions on this very topic, see this and its duplicates askubuntu.com/questions/522181/…
    – Mark Kirby
    Commented Jan 13, 2016 at 15:08
  • @kos It was included through 14.10. They deprecated it but didn't pull it until 15.04. Hence so many wubi questions still.
    – Seth Mod
    Commented Jan 13, 2016 at 15:10
  • @markkirby Only Xubuntu has dropped Wubi since 12.10. see info at blog of bcbc
    – ngng
    Commented Jan 13, 2016 at 15:14
  • @markkirby Ah I see. Never used Wubi other than once with 10.04 (I think), and I tried the normal release, so I didn't really know. Thanks.
    – kos
    Commented Jan 13, 2016 at 15:15
  • @Seth Yes, what I meant we should support only 12.04.x and 14.04.x since other releases are off-topic anyway.
    – kos
    Commented Jan 13, 2016 at 15:16
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    @kos then no. wubi is deprecated >=13.04, it's not worth the pain to make it work. 12.04 is OK however.
    – Seth Mod
    Commented Jan 13, 2016 at 15:17
  • @Seth Wouldn't it be the same pain to make it work for 12.04.x or for 14.04.x though?
    – kos
    Commented Jan 13, 2016 at 15:20

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