A linux installer for windows that works just like a normal installer on windows. You download the .exe, double click it, it opens a wizard you can walk though, and by the end of the process, after it reboots, you're in a linux distro.
How could something like this be implemented?
My idea:
Best case scenario where multiple data partitions exist and can accommodate the user data stored on C:/ + there's a swap partition -->
download a linux iso
deactivate swap
replace swap partition with ISO contents
modify contents to auto install linux with settings from wizard
add boot entry to boot from old swap / modified ISO
reboot
install linux with a nice progress animation
move user data from C:/ to other partition
replace C:/ with linux
install alternatives to programs found on windows (firefox for edge, gimp for paint, inkscape for ..., libreoffice for MS office, etc.)
move user data to /home/$username
configure DE with theme (gnome for macos look, kde with theme for windows look)
other customisations
reboot into linux
Dunno if this is feasible in the best case scenario.
In the bad old days there used to be an ubuntu tool that you could install linux from windows. From memory it created a disk image inside your Windows drive, and then setup a boot environment that could mount and boot into the disk image. Kinda like a livecd, but persistent?
Ill try find more info and update. (Ah, its Wubi, which the other poster mentioned already).
Looks interesting, thank you. The biggest difference I can see here is the installation to virtual drive on an NTFS partition. But it's good to know that a lot of the work has been done. Probably one could go a little further and not use a virtual drive.
In the bad old days there used to be an ubuntu tool that you could install linux from windows.
Looong time ago, and the linux world wasnt anywhere near stable and polished as it is now (neither was Windows either if we are being honest with ourselves).
While Wubi does not install Ubuntu directly to its own partition this can also be accomplished by using LVPM, the Loopmounted Virtual Partition Manager, to transfer the Wubi-generated Ubuntu installation to a dedicated real partition
I vaguely recall using something like that and trashing both OS installs.
Resizing partitions live is very dangerous, which is why normally its done from a bootable CD or USB. Doing it live from Windows wont be easy. And if you have to boot into a usb or dvd environment, may as well just use the regular installation media?
Not sure why, but a lot of other distros did something just like this in the past (see the comments about WUBI) and no longer do. Q4OS still has a .exe installer though.
I couldn't find the source for Q4OS's exe installer 🤔 They're on github and sourceforge, but neither have the source for it. Am I looking in the wrong places?
I don't think Windows has swap partitions, you could maybe install a basic installer to the recovery partition, repartition in that (copying the ISO between partitions), then load the full ISO.
I wasn't aware windows didn't have a swap partition. Thanks for pointing that out. Using the recovery partition instead should work too 🤔 I currently don't have a windows PC to test this on, nor find out how big the recovery partition is.
The biggest barrier is writing lots of formatted data to disk without a pre-existing filesystem structure. Look at nixos-anywhere for an example; the first thing it does is ensure that it's booted into Linux, because otherwise it can't trust that the disks are laid out properly.