[HN Gopher] Install Linux from a running Windows system, without...
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Install Linux from a running Windows system, without need for a
live USB
Author : reader_1000
Score : 79 points
Date : 2020-06-13 15:26 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| 8bitsrule wrote:
| This may become legendary.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Win32-loader https://salsa.debian.org/installer-team/win32-loader
| can do this from Windows 9x up to Windows 7 and possibly later.
| The author of this may want to work with that project, which is
| well maintained as part of Debian. It might be a lifesaver for
| devices that can't read external USB at boot.
| [deleted]
| geofft wrote:
| Debian has supported this for a while using a thing called
| "win32-loader":
|
| https://deb.debian.org/debian/tools/win32-loader/stable/win3...
| (txt)
|
| https://deb.debian.org/debian/tools/win32-loader/stable/win3...
| (exe)
| sandworm101 wrote:
| But where is the joy? The best part of installing linux on a
| windows machine is killing windows. Bypassing the normal boot
| process. Deleting the partitions. Pealing off those little
| windows stickers and seeing them on the trash heap is only reason
| anyone installs linux. I wish windows still came with
| installation CDs. I need more coasters.
| dTal wrote:
| Gave me a chuckle. HN must not be in the mood for frivolity
| today :)
| a3n wrote:
| I don't think Windows has "come with" installation CDs for a
| long time. But can't you still "buy" Windows discs? That's
| usually a better version of Windows anyway.
| [deleted]
| captn3m0 wrote:
| The scariest Linux installation I'd ever done was by creating a
| Vitual Disk for an existing partition (you can map a disk to a
| virtual disk) on VirtualBox as a VMDK file, then mounting that as
| the root partition for a VM that booted from an SamuraiLinux ISO
| and installed it on the root partition. Very surprisingly, it
| worked without breaking anything.
|
| [0]: https://askubuntu.com/a/47122/11736
| mehrdadn wrote:
| Fun fact: you can do that for Windows too. It also works
| fine... assuming you can even boot it. :-) You need to make
| sure Windows is booting from something it sees as _disk_ rather
| than a _partition_ (i.e. include an MBR or something before
| it). The main caveat is preventing the host from mounting the
| volume, otherwise the guest can 't write to it. But I've
| managed to do this (yes it's painful) and it's great.
|
| Pro tip: You can even make an immutable disk representing your
| _entire disk_ and then boot the _very same OS_ that is running
| VirtualBox from it. It 's an awesome way to test changes you
| want to make to your system that you're unsure about.
| my123 wrote:
| Windows can also boot from a VHDX directly, which is pretty
| nice. (having a VM both as a VM and a boot option)
| mehrdadn wrote:
| Yeah, though one issue with that is that expanding or
| shrinking it is so much more painful.
| raintrees wrote:
| Awesome, thank you. I am always looking for methods with the
| least friction to win people over to using Linux.
| miles wrote:
| The project description ("Install Linux over or alongside an
| existing Windows install, straight from Windows, without
| requiring to boot from external media like a flash drive or
| making BIOS configuration changes") reminded me of the old BeOS 5
| Personal Edition installer which "installs from within Windows
| _without partitioning_ " and "kicks Windows out of memory and
| boots BeOS in its place."[1]
|
| In the same review, Scot went on to say: "I tested the Windows
| installer on several machines, and was amazed. Not only did
| everything work as advertised -- it worked better than I dreamed
| possible. BeOS has always been the easiest OS on the planet to
| install, bar none, but this is ridiculous. BeOS is up and running
| in five minutes or less, and everything is totally painless.
| Linux distributors should be taking notes." Sounds like someone
| did! ;-)
|
| [1] https://birdhouse.org/beos/byte/13-beos_5/
| sildur wrote:
| Loadlin did something similar, but with msdos and linux:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loadlin
| myself248 wrote:
| I did horrible things with a parallel-port ZIP drive. Had to
| start loadlin with the kernel parameters to load the
| appropriate module for it to continue booting...
|
| Side note, running with your root filesystem on a ZIP disk is
| not performant.
| SweetestRug wrote:
| I remember installing BeOS 5 PE this way. I think it installed
| using a loopback configuration. It really was the easiest OS
| install I have ever done. Even compared to the tools available
| today, BeOS 5 was like magic. 5 second boot times on a 200 MHz
| Pentium Laptop. Journalling filesystem. Fast and low-latency.
|
| It's great to see Linux installs going this direction. The ease
| of install definitely made switching to BeOS simple back in the
| day.
| m463 wrote:
| Linux boots and installs over itself all the time.
|
| It's interesting how linux kernel dumps work.
|
| You actually have a linux in your linux, and when linux fails,
| linux takes over and can dump the linux address space so when
| linux gives up and boots linux, you can use linux to do an
| autopsy on itself. :)
|
| Or, in other words, you allocate a reserved address space and
| load a linux#2 kernel in it. When you encounter a panic
| condition, the system can jump to linux#2 in the reserved
| address space. It will be non-corrupted and can dump the
| address space of linux#1 to disk (or a remote system) and
| reboot.
|
| kexec is the basis for all this, and it can do a lot of other
| interesting stuff like upgrade in place.
| [deleted]
| atum47 wrote:
| Man, I'm trying real hard to make my dad to use linux, I spent 3
| hours last weekend formatting and setting up his computer with
| ubuntu, but developers are letting new users down.
|
| He is familiar with chrome, so after the installation he
| downloaded chrome. At this point I was hoping that he would be
| able to just double click the .deb file and install with no
| hassle, but he couldn't. I don't know if was the package manager
| fault or google's... All I now is as long as people have to use
| the terminal to do basic things, windows users won't be able to
| make te switch.
|
| Nice job though, we need more projects like this.
| derefr wrote:
| > double click the .deb file and install with no hassle
|
| That sounds like a great way to introduce the concept of
| trojan-horse malware to the Linux ecosystem.
|
| You should almost never be installing a raw .deb, anyway,
| because packages form networks of requirements/versions/etc.
| (Heck, the .deb might be for the wrong version of the OS!)
|
| The proper GUI workflow, I think, would be for third-parties
| like Google to offer for download some sort of file
| representing _just_ an apt PGP-code-signing-identity + source
| list; and then double-clicking it would open it in Software
| Center or the like to do the GUI equivalent of apt-add-
| repository: asking you if you want to trust $ORG and follow the
| http://org.example.com apt repo. You'd say yes, and then `apt
| update` would get triggered, and new packages would appear
| (hopefully highlighted as such) in the Software Center list.
|
| I'm kind of surprised things don't already work this way. I
| think it's because--other than Chrome--there's pretty much
| nothing _consumers_ people want to install on Linux that isn't
| best installed from the first-party distro apt repo. I can't
| think of a single PPA or vendor apt host, that solves a
| consumer (rather than developer /administrator) use-case.
| gen3 wrote:
| If it means anything, KDE allows you to click on a .deb and
| install it.
| m4lvin wrote:
| This reminds me of a "Remote Install Party" I did some Debian
| versions ago. Basically the same, but on a computer in another
| contry: https://w4eg.de/code/rip/
| Jonnax wrote:
| Has anyone tried it? I see the repo owner created an issue for
| success stories from users but it's empty.
|
| If it works, it's very awesome!
| jedieaston wrote:
| In a similar vein, wubi-uefi[0] is a fork of the original Wubi
| project, made to be compatible with newer versions of Ubuntu-
| based distros and newer versions of Windows. Upside is that it
| uses the built in Windows bootloader, so you don't have to
| rebuild it if you want to get rid of Linux. It's incompatible
| with Bitlocker though.
|
| [0]: https://github.com/hakuna-m/wubiuefi
| mehrdadn wrote:
| I remember loopback mounting always gave errors on shutdown
| when the file system was being unmounted. It seemed to me that
| it would unmount before caches were flushed, resulting in a
| need for fsck later (and possibly resulting in corruption or
| data loss). Do you know if there's been any attempt to address
| issues like these?
| bdz wrote:
| +1 for wubi-uefi, really good there is a fork of the original
| version and it works perfectly. I just wish it was working with
| non-Ubuntu based distros
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