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Tool to install a linux distro in dual boot directly from Windows? Without live USB (lemmy.ml)
submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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I always hear that a normal computer user would never install an OS and that is the main reason Linux has not a higher market share. But I guess what we mean by that is that a user would never create a live usb, access the boot options and boot from there to install the new OS.

Is there a hard technical limitation when it comes to create a tool that installs a linux distro from a "normal" windows exe file, provided that the user first disables secure boot and fast boot (which are things a tool with admin privileges should also be able do on first run)?

Does such a tool already exist?

I feel like there's something I'm missing, forgive my ignorance

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[-] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Installing dual boot over a default windows installation would be tricky, bordering on infeasible. Because you would need to shrink the windows partition live (which is not supported (and even if you could, requires free space and comes with meaningful risk of data loss)) and alter the UEFI boot entries, which is also very risky and engineered to be protected from unauthorised writes.

Even if you got around all those limitations, Windows can constantly erase your Linux boot entries (thanks Microsoft), making a dual boot-on-one disk setup basically unusable every month which needs to be fixed. So thanks to this Windows behavior, this setup won't work on many systems.

So you'll pretty much only ever be able to install to another disk. And the portion of non-tech savvy users with a spare, unused disk is going to be effectively nonexistent.

Don't get me wrong, an install-from-windows feature would be nice, but I don't think it could feasibly overcome any meaningful barriers.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

https://www.goodbye-microsoft.com/

p.s. oh, wait, the link doesn't work anymore. too bad

[-] [email protected] 16 points 1 week ago

Yes https://codeberg.org/viperultra/linixify-gui

Yes, I created such a tool,it works starting from windows vista, but it is not easy because of some features. From Windows, we must predict the name as the device will be called in Linux because the Mint installer does not know how to work with UUID for an automated installation, and then how the Ubuntu is changing the installer for parameters. This is a real hell

[-] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Back in the old days there was UNetBootin. Maybe it still works?

And for Ubuntu there is Wubi.

[-] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

DONT USE UNETBOOTIN. This tool more often than not breaks something and causes issues for people. Somebody I know used it and broke booting into Windows, he had to use a USB anyway to fix the bootloader.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Ohhh I remember Wubi! No need to boot from an install media and you can install it entirely under Windows. That method of installing a dual boot never seemed to get super popular and I guess based on the OSes listed in that article, it seems pretty dated and not updated. I'm kind of curious to know whether or not it still works tbh.

[-] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago

What about this as on alternative:

Instead of trying to make people install an OS or have to buy a new machine with Linux pre installed, just sell NVME drives with a Linux distro. Something like Mint, or Ubuntu. In my experience Linux is really good nowadays in recognizing hardware plus the people who would be the target audience are unlikely to have some exotic PC setup, probably just a standard off-the-shelf laptop with very common components.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

Hmmmmmm... I think the hardware bugs might be rare, but common enough to make this a tricky product to sell consistently to the unknown masses.

Also, I think storage partitioning could be a problem; assuming some number of people would have other drives that they had OS/media together, or just separate storage with files they wanted to keep. Those would be NTFS, which can read/write on Linux but you won't have the best compatibility with Linux program execution (depending on a ton of factors).

[-] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

As I said, most of the people who would be in the target audience for this age highly unlikely to have separate storage drives. These are the people who go to Costco or Staples and just get the laptop in their price range.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

That same target audience would be the least equipped to install a new drive or handle any problems that do come up. How many John Q public people have even opened up their laptop to dust it out?

Problems might be rare, but if I am selling a product (in this case new storage with Linux on it) I need to be able to charge enough to cover all my overhead. Every time I sell it and it doesn't work out of the box that's time spent helping the customer, more shipping/return costs, or both. Markup has to cover all that, and I'd guess that it's not viable as a business model to charge a high enough price to deal with all the random static from computer illiterate people.

I get what you're saying but I just don't see it being a viable business strategy to sell this product to that target audience.

Anyone who knows enough to seek out and purchase a Linux OS drive can just download and install it themselves.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

Fair point. Support for this may be tricky.

Although I think something like replacing a drive is doable by an average consumer given enough instructions/tutorial videos, there's bound to be issues that come up. One way to minimize them may be by matching the OS installs on drives to commonly available hardware out there. Something akin to Amazon automotive "it will fit your car" matching.

[-] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago

Forgive the not so serious remark: you can run Linux in Excel!

[-] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

What's not serious about this?

[-] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago

From the projects GitHub:

The thing is evidently very buggy but I did not want to spend a lot of time on it. This was done mostly for fun.

It doesn't sound like even the author takes it very seriously

[-] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

It's not what OP asked for.

[-] [email protected] 0 points 1 week ago

We're training him wrong on purpose

[-] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

If you have more than 1 Drive, you can just use a bash script and 7zip to unzip Linux to the drive, that does it

Otherwise you would have to resize a mounted partition, which is just more of a risk than smacking that user with a frying pan until he decides to learn how to install an OS

[-] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

Another way explicitly banned by OP is running a script, which prepares a live USB drive and reboot to it. One would argue it's the same process as your resizing a mounted partition method.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

like 15 years ago you could install ubuntu through an exe on windows, but i believe they stopped supporting it, which sucks.

you may be able to find an archive of one of those old installers and install it like that, but i believe this was all the way back in version 11.04 or 12.04

this post was submitted on 23 May 2025
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Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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