No Bootdisk Required
No Bootdisk RequiredWhat would it take to create a Linux distro that didn't require a bootdisk to install?
Repartitioning software seems to load code to run at boot time, before Windows boots. So what's stopping a Linux installer from doing the same?
Finding a CD burner in the city to burn a bootdisk for a single use seems highly inefficient.
Since just about anything you could imagine along these lines does in fact exist, there's nothing stopping it -- but I'm a little unclear on which variation on the theme you want. What's your ideal scenario you're looking for?
Oh, you want it EASY, too. The easiest possible solution is to go to the Linux users group in your area; they have a tradition of eagerly installing Linux for people. Having someone else do it has got to be the easiest conceivable solution.
Hell no. That would require trucking a whole computer across town instead of a CD! Besides, the idea here is to REDUCE the difficulty in installing Linux, not to move it onto someone else.
Only the cabinet; they would have keyboards and monitors lying around.
I know that the software you're asking about exists, but I haven't used it myself (I also certainly couldn't swear that it was guaranteed to be a trouble-free 1-click install, without trying it); I have installed from CDROM rather than the net ever since 1993.
Oh -- that's another thing -- they give out free Linux install CDs, too.
Good question for a Linux-centric forum (newsgroup, IRC, etc) if you want exactly the solution you originally asked for.
Here's the context. I already paid twice to have CDs of Red Hat burned at a shop and I'm not shelling out another $50 for a CD set I don't intend to use myself. Especially since I did intend to use the first two. So the install CD deal the LUGs run would look great but it won't occur for almost a month. Plus there's the whole issue of asking a favour from people who'd hate me if they knew how much I loathe their favourite pastime. :)
Annyyyways. I think the best way to go is probably VMWare. Install the trial version, install Linux, uninstall trial. Certainly not shelling out 300 CND though. -- RK
FYI cheapbytes.com carries ultra-ultra cheap CDROMs including major linux distributions. The caveat is that (at least in the past) they couldn't include all of the commercial distribution's custom developed friendly installers. Maybe that'd make it useless for your purposes, but it's worth knowing about anyway.
I don't really follow the story about burning CDs and why it didn't work and why you loathe but want to use it etc. However, like I said the other day, you can get CD burning hardware cheaper than $50 U.S. these days, another thing to keep in mind.
The very friendliest installers tend to be on commercial distributions (e.g. Redhat, SuSE), since they put their own private development effort into it. It seems to me that they are less likely to concentrate such efforts on people downloading the free version. But I'm 1.5 years out of date on whatever's going on. See fedora.redhat.com for their downloads.
People say Mandrake was friendlier to install than Redhat for a few years, but that Redhat caught up in 2003.
People say the apt-get utility from Debian and other distros based on Debian (Redhat and SuSE don't use it) is by far the most convenient way to go for individual packages; apparently you tell it what you want and it downloads and installs it for you. Presumably that would only help once you had Linux up, though.
Maybe none of that helps, but those are the tidbits that come to mind.
Thanks for the thought. I loathe Unix for good reason, but I loathe Windows even more, so that's why I would want to use it. I didn't use the CDs I got burned cause CD media is brittle and can degrade within a year. Didn't know there was a difference between the ISOs put out by Red Hat and their CDs, there isn't supposed to be. So far I've installed Slackware, Debian, Mandrake and Red Hat. Red Hat's was the only one that was non-problematic. And finally, VMWare really is the way to go if you don't believe in copyright.
According to the Ubuntu FAQ http://www.ubuntu.com/support/faq , if you ask them nicely to send you a CD, "we will send you one package that contains both an Install CD and a LiveCD in a single cardboard folder." free of charge.
Yes, this involves a CD, so it's not exactly what you asked for -- but it's not $50, it's free. And it's mailed right to your door, no "traipsing all over the city". (The "up to 6 weeks" mailing time might be too much suspense).
Would moving this page to http://linuxquestions.org/ be appropriate?
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