Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Install Linux with in Windows

One problem people seem to have with installing Linux is the fact you have to download an .iso, and then burn it to a CD. While burning an .iso to a CD is not hard, unless you are into it, or have done it before, it can be confusing. That is, assuming you have a CD drive, CD burner, and spare CDs. Not to mention with some Windows CD burning programs, it’s not exactly obvious how to properly burn an .iso.To solve this Debian and Ubuntu are now offering a downloadable Windows .exe file that will install Linux while you are running Windows. The Ubuntu one apparently will do all it’s automatic, non-destructive partition magic (meaning it will make your system dual boot with both Windows and Linux without hurting the Windows OS).
The Debian installer can be found on goodbye-microsoft.com, and the Ubuntu one doesn’t seem like it’s ready, but you can read about it on the wiki page.

I don’t see myself using this as I tend to build my own servers (and use Mac on the desktop). However, I can see this being very useful for systems that come with Windows pre-installed and you want Linux instead.
In my experience, a Debian or Ubuntu CD is only used to boot the system anyway. Once a network is found all the software is loaded live over the net via apt-get so this removes the first step being local (and limits some waste). Very cool.

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