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Debian Gets Win32 Installer

Posted by kdawson on from the no-CD-no-USB-no-problem dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Debian hacker Robert Millan has just announced the availability of a Debian-Installer Loader for win32. The program, inspired by Ubuntu's similar project, features 64-bit CPU auto-detection, download of linux/initrd netboot images, and chainloading into Debian-Installer via grub4dos. The frontend site goodbye-microsoft.com/ has been set up for advocacy purposes. Here are some screenshots."

2 of 232 comments (clear)

  1. Re:questions by Coryoth · · Score: 5, Informative

    anyone know if this does:
    1) resizes the windows partition so you can still access it from debian?
    2) scans windows for your settings and replicates similar ones in debian?
    Anything else, and why not just use the damn CD?
    I was curious about this too. The site itself doesn't carry much information, but the related Ubuntu project has more detail. The idea is that the linux disk image gets saved as a file (in C:\ubuntu apparently) which gets loopmounted and booted into via grub4dos. Thus Windows gets to stay exactly as it is, and there isn't even any disk repartitioning done - linux just sits as a disk image file on the C:\ drive. The Ubuntu project also talk about gleaning some info from the Windows registry for installation - though it only mentions locale and timezone data (presumably more can be managed).

    It is, at least, quite different from a CD install in that your Windows install (presuming this works the same as the Ubuntu version) remains untouched (aside from getting a new directory and a couple of extra files) with no risk of data loss via repartioning etc. Certainly an interesting idea.
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  2. Re:Almost Too Easy? by NekoXP · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's a loop-mounted ext3 "hard file" like you get in an emulator.

    The process is, basically - GRUB loads a kernel+initrd from the Windows filesystem. Kernel loads, mounts / from the initrd, mounts the NTFS or FAT filesystem from the Windows box, and finds the hardfile and initrd - then it swivels root to use the image via the loopback filesystem (so you can mount files as disks).

    Not sure how this bodes for expandability of the disk image though. I guess the idea is the Ubuntu install just works, and you can put the data back onto your Windows disk..?