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Debian win32-loader Goes Official
An anonymous reader writes "After a long process of review and polishing, the win32 loader from goodbye-microsoft.com has finally made its way to official Debian CDs. Latest daily builds of lenny (the development version) are including it, making starting Debian Installer as simple as just a few clicks (OGG). The win32-loader version, now based on GRUB 2, includes new features such as detection and pre-seeding of Windows settings, and is translated to 20 languages."
Since none of the links in the story explain what the win32-loader is, can anyone explain what it does?
This post cannot be rebroadcast without the express written constent of Major League Baseball.
or why the video doesnt work in vlc player?
Yup, including everyone running Ubuntu like me.
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
Your wish is google's command
http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/win32-loader
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Everyone remember to click right through the EULA like they do in the instructional video, or it won't work. :)
Please stop stalking me, bro.
But, more specifically, you're running Debian Sid, which I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. Ubuntu seems to have done a pretty good job of stabilizing Sid for the everyday user.
/home encrypted at the very least because that's where irssi/gaim logs are stored, and I'd rather not have a malicious person with physical access to my machine be able to get those logs. (short of rootkitting the system that is)
Once they implement LVM/volume encryption into the Ubuntu installer, I may consider using it on my desktop at home. I want
Peace sells, but who's buying?
I don't have any Windows machines to test it out on.
:)
Will this work in Wine?
Seriously though - nice work, guys.
Just disrupt the deflector shield with a tachyon burst.
win32-loader is a Windows program that installs debian. That has already been said. One might also wonder why a windows program that installs debian would actually be installed in debian.
For 1, it is not included in Lenny like the summary says:
http://packages.debian.org/win32-loader
It is only included in sid, for now.
Debian regularly includes debian installer packages in debian. Developers who create release CDs do so by creating a custom debian installation, with these debian installer packages (on CD). These packages are usually not useful on a regular user's primary system.
Write your own Choose Your Own Adventure. http://www.freegameengines.org/gamebook-engine/
Ran the win32 loader on a test-VM here at work. Pretty quick and painless, 4-5 prompts, 45 seconds of downloading, a reboot and debian was installing. However it was interesting to note that administrative privileges on the Win32 OS are not required. Not that big of a deal for most users, but could prove troublesome in some environments (Corporate, etc).
Launch every sig.
Yes. http://packages.debian.org/sid/win32-loader
Write your own Choose Your Own Adventure. http://www.freegameengines.org/gamebook-engine/
Seriously.... apt-get hell awaits, ... be afraid, very afraid!
You have a malicious person at home?
For an organization that dislikes Microsoft Corporation and the platforms distributed by them, they seem to spend an aweful lot of time developing software on or for it. If this was developed in a test-driven environment, wouldn't they have to spend money to license the platform(s) they dislike so much? With such hypocracy, maybe they can join forces with the Global Warming crowd...
So it's basically loadlin using grub instead of lilo? I hope it works better than loadlin did...
He must be married.
Ubuntu does import a lot of stuff from debian sid but they also package a lot of stuff themselves nowadays.
From what I can gather sid isn't too bad most of the time anyway it's just every so often big upgrades come through and break stuff.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
- Linux on vmware or equivalent
:)
- wubi style installations on a windows partition http://wubi-installer.org/
- USB bootable stick
- this new debian installer
- live cds and cd installers
- network
One might find the debian installer useful in those cases where the keyboard is locked on startup of the live cd, which prevents to choose one grub option. I guess it's an OS vs. BIOS issue at reboot, sometime it helps to reboot after a brief disconnection of the pc from power/battery.
Oh wait
- floppies
I recently had to install on an old server with borked cdrom. I had to install potato through bootfloppies and upgrade up to sarge. Went well but i hope not to do it again ever
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
Mr. Windows partition, meet Mr. fdisk.
My question is, what, exactly, is wrong with loadlin?
My blog
Sid ain't so bad. The system itself is quite stable. What's not is the package repository. Once in a while a large update will present some conflicts in dependency resolution. This will prevent you from completing the update until it's fixed in the repository, but it leaves your system in a usable state. Not really a big deal. For most purposes Sid is an excellent choice. I wouldn't put it on a production server however.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
>> by aswalkeraus (563276) Alter Relationship on Thursday September 13, @11:07AM (#20588309)
>>Seriously.... apt-get hell awaits,
Thats the first time I heard that expression, not a total surprise I guess; google says:
Results 1 - 10 of about 558 for "apt-get hell". (0.30 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 16,000 for "rpm hell". (0.12 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 208,000 for "dll hell". (0.07 seconds)
btw. see how much longer it takes google to even come up with the list for apt-get,
"better ways of doing things eventually just replace the inferior things" - Linus Torvalds 09-08-07
and the link to goodbye-microsoft.com offers to download... an exe.
(Yes, I am being super paranoid and I know it's a bit of promotion for Debian but I can see someone clicking on that and then wondering where Clippy has gone).
My first thought following the link is that this is a virus. When I follow a link that says "Good bye Windows" which wants to launch an .EXE with no explanation, what else would I think?
I run Ubuntu in VMware. I thought from the article that perhaps I could run Windows programs inside Linux with this. Another WINE.
I think that's a problem with Windows, not Linux.
The only thing you ever need.
I have found it to be a very good distro. Stable and lightning-fast (I was really amazed when I tried etch in VMware). It kind of feels less bloated than Ubuntu and puts more decisions in the user's hand. But distros will always be a matter of preference.
He must be married.
This is slashdot you inconsiderate fool.
Infuriate left and right
If you need a Windows application to install Linux you are not ready for Linux. I believe the efforts should be focused on improving the usability of Linux (hardware compatibility, software update issues etc.). The installation of many distributions is nowadays a painless process. But what happens after the first reboot can hurt you.
are used to make complete sentences.
(huh?)
http://distrowatch.com/stats.php?section=popularity
solid package requirements, automatic dependency resolution, alternative kernels [Hurd/Mach and kfreeBSD]
We at slashdot are scientists, specialists and kernel hackers. Your FUD will be found out.
I've had a Portege for ages that I haven't been able to install anything on (apart from the existing W2K) because it has no CD, no floppy and no way to boot off USB devices. I'm guessing this will let me copy get Debian on there with a minimum amount of dicking about. Great!
No you are not the only one. But I assumed I misread it.
Netbsd has COMPAT_PECOFF which handles Windows binaries natively. Linux could do the same thing. This is quite different that using binfmt_misc to launch wine. Ideally, PECOFF binaries/libraries would be loaded natively like ELF and previous "A.OUT?" binaries.
There have been discussions about this before for Linux, but I don't think there is any code for it.
If somebody created a virus or a worm to automate running this, it would only spell disaster for Linux PR. Let's hope that the Debian crew have some sort of checks to help minimize this possibility.
>But, more specifically, you're running Debian Sid, which I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.
/home encrypted at the very least because that's where irssi/gaim logs are stored, and I'd rather not have a malicious person with physical access to my machine be able to get those logs.
Sid is great - up to date and at least as stable as most non-Debian distros. I think it makes a perfect geek desktop. However, I wouldn't pick it as the first distro for someone coming straight from Windows, especially someone too timid to do the install from a bootable CD.
>I may consider using it on my desktop at home. I want
Er, do you have "malicious people" at your house that you trust so little that you feel you need encryption of your logs? If so, you have bigger problems to worry about than privacy of your data.
This could come in very handy for reinstalling a dual boot system.
As windows updates itself every 4 years but debian every 6 months. So you just install windows again then launch the debian installer from windows once its all setup.
What would be good is for it to grab the already install ndis drivers and use those.
And maybe even copy over the windows dll's and fonts for wine.
What I find interesting is the potential for "Linux Phishing" or "Linux Greifing" that this creates. There are already plenty of problems with various viruses loading directly through the browser in Windows, can you imagine what would happen if a "religious Linux fanatic" were to take this, alter it to use a known but unpatched IE vulnerability to auto-install and reboot people's machines into Linux? What would happen if a "religious Microsoft fanatic" did the same thing to try and make Linux look bad?
I've got a baaaad feeling about this...
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
Great, another win for Microsoft, when do we poor linux people get our version?
*****JOKE*****
*****JOKE*****
Anything is possible given time and money.
"It is nice to know that the computer understands the problem. But I would like to understand it too." --Eugene Wigner
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=441379
/noexecute=optin /fastdetect
I didn't try it on 32, so I don't know, but I suspect it has the same issue. The installer attempts to write to c:\boot.ini and/or do something with bcdedit.exe. I made a shortcut to debian.exe and set it to admin+xpsp2 compatibility and copied a boot.ini from an xp machine. The install ran and asked me to reboot, and it did modify the boot.ini I copied over, but of course the real startup files were not modified.
Here's what it did, in case anyone knows how to replicate this by hand using bcdedit.exe (it added the last line):
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional"
C:\g2ldr.mbr="Debian Installer"
I'd monkey with it, but not on this machine.
Also, it says during install that once you reboot it will ask you if you want to format your hdd or resize it, but I thought from reading the thread here that it would create a few gig file on the c: and use it as a virtual drive. I just ran it again to make sure I got my verbiage right, and there is no indication that it will run directly off of the ntfs. Am I reading it wrong?
So in your qualified opinion, only people that already know unix/linux should use unix/linux.
I think this is great to allow new would-be linux users to install linux with less hassles. Or even experienced users to install linux withouth having to resort to burning a CD or downloading a bootable image into a thumbdrive. Repeat after me: convenience is good. Even if it allows people who shouldn't use it to shoot themselves in the foot. And I bet it can be easily adapted to boot any other distro, perhaps one of the more novice-friendly ones, such as Ubuntu. There's more than one way to use OSS. (Extolling the virtues of OSS on Slashdot: -1 Redundant, here I go :-).
By your line of reasoning, high-level languages should not exist, because people who don't know how to program assembler have no business mucking about with a computer, and dumbing it down is just going to make it easier for them to whine about it.
Jeez people, when you give us a story, please bear in mind that many of us have never heard of the stuff you're talking about. I had to puzzle for 5 minutes to figure out that a "win32-loader" is Linux installer that runs under Windows. ("Loader" is a really stupid choice of words, but that's another issue.) Yeah, yeah, if my time is that valuable, I shouldn't be wasting it on Slashdot. But damn it Rob, can't you find some editors with some basic communication skills?
... and many others. You can start here, but the list goes on and on because free software is like that. If you count the Debian derivative users, you find that it's the most popular and widely used gnu/linux. That's because it's free and easy to modify. Ultimately, freedom meets user need better than anything else.
The above site doesn't give even the slightest information on what the installer does.
/. If we want common people to embrace OSS and Linux we must give proper documentation or we'll achieve a strong well deserved opposition.
Will it overwrite the Windows partition or will it resize it and install itself on a newly created one in the disk free space? Or will it rather install on a disk image file in the Windows partition? Will it backup my existing data automatically or give me tools to do it by hand?
If you don't give this information on the installer and expect someone to run it on a disk where the user presumably stores his own data, you're a fool.
Editors, please, don't publish stuff like this on
1) sid is a horrible monster that breaks all the time -- this is just not true. Sure, parts of it break from time to time, but for a cutting edge desktop, its great -- lots of current packages that mostly work all the time. You do have to be a little cautious with the upgrades, but it doesn't take much work; a little judicious reading of relevant bug reports is all it really takes to stay fully operational for long periods of time. THe last major sid breakage I remember was about 2 years ago when there was some fubar in the initrd's causing root pivot to fail. But it was fixed in a day and the work-around was posted to d-u within hours, IIRC.
2) testing is a better desktop than sid because its more stable -- this is outright false. Testing is a worse desktop than sid *BECAUSE* its more stable. That means if something breaks, it stays broken for a while. I think the policy is that a package has to sit in sid for 10 days without a change before it can move into testing. That means if a packages slips through sid without a particular problem being noticed (it happens) then it sits in testing until someone files the bug report. Then the fix has to sit in sid for at least 10 days from the time it is uploaded. You can see its very easy to be in a broken situation in testing for quite a while.
The fact is that though sid is subject to breakage, and there is a lot of package churn sometimes, if it does break, it gets fixed pretty quickly. Devs seem to respond pretty quickly to bugs in sid as it stuff they're currently working on. I love running sid and wouldn't do otherwise.
man, I feel like mold.
I think this installer isn't so much about the fear of changing BIOS settings as it is about the fear of changing BIOS settings, repartitioning, and installing a boot loader. So it basically makes installing Linux about as painless as installing other Windows apps. Since one of the biggest complaints (after hardware compatibility and software availability) about Linux is difficult installations, this can potentially go a long way towards introducing people to Linux.
It's probably not the way someone should install Linux if they're actually planning on using it as their main setup, but if they want to test it out, it's a great way to start. If they don't like it, the whole installation (nearly) is all on one folder in the Windows partition. I'm guessing you can just "uninstall" it the same way you would uninstall any Windows app.
I don't regularly use Windows, but when I did, I was always afraid of messing up my install when dual-booting, especially if I needed to repartition the drive. A friend of mine is having virus/spyware problems and, since I don't use Windows killing all the bestiary in her computer would take me a while. Her needs are simple, so I was thinking about having her boot a LiveCD and store her stuff in USB. I think I'll try this now (actually, Wubi which was pointed by somebody).
"convenience is good" :) I agree with you.
However, if you want to broaden the base it's not enough to get new user on board, you also need to keep them on board or at least willing to come back after a kernel panic attack.
Remember the badly-named product called "OS/2 for Windows" ?? After IBM's rights to Win16 code expired, they released this product -- it basically installed OS/2 on top of Windows, but it kept enough of Windows intact that not only was your data preserved, but your license to Microsoft's code on that machine remained intact.
It would be interesting to see whether installing a Linux on top of an existing Windows machine could leverage that same type of method. Installing on top of an existing Windows system presumes that the Windows installation was paid for, and therefore the user is legally running things like multimedia codecs, a bunch of DLL's for use with Wine, etc.
Not saying it would necessarily be a good long-term idea, but it's interesting to think about.
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My first linux experience was booting to it from windows, using slackware, to install into a directory on my drive. Didn't require any partitioning as it used fat and ran on top of that with various hacks to make everything work in a linux friendly fasion. You could start windows, then just run an exe to switch to linux. Of course switching back required a normal reboot, but it certainly made 'trying' linux a easy thing to do. If you didn't like it you just deleted the directory you installed linux into. This was in 1995, give or take a year or so.
Why is this suddenly supposed to be impressive or new? Surely there was a reason that this sort of thing went away, why is it coming back now if it didn't work then?
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Slashdot is hardly intended for 'common people' Why don't you read a medical journal then complain because they used medical terms that you have understanding of? I guess you think they're holding medicine back too?
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
This scenario was labeled the "Tux Virus" many years ago.
Typically, the scenario involved a win95 themed wm and a far-fetched belief that wine or openoffice could allow the user to be fooled at least briefly.
hawk
That's a nice tool for newbies, although I have to say if you don't know how to set up your BIOS to install an OS or you have problems with the Debian installer (not that hard to use), you are a few steps back the road.
I would reccomend distros like Ubuntu or live CD's for total newbies.
Check out my blog!
I'm not a n00b but the installer is damn useful in and of itself. I installed debian on an old laptop where trying more conventional methods would have failed badly. Namely because the CD-ROM on the laptop was fucked and it would not boot from a USB key.
The way I look at it is:
Stable = servers
Testing = desktops
Sid/unstable is good if you don't mind having to fix things when they break, but that doesn't happen that much.
I track testing on my main PC. Security updates are slow, but the testing security team is working diligently on fixing that.
I've used Sid for years with fewer problems than I had the times I tried Ubuntu. If only Ubuntu tested their packages a bit before "stabilising" them, then perhaps it would end up having nearly as high quality as Debian. As it is, Ubuntu seems to me as a quite half-assed effort at bringing Debian to the masses.
How long until some well-meaning but unscrupulous virus writer creates a virus with this Debian install as a payload?
I'm not sure if that would be a bad thing or a good thing...
Nothing to see here. Move along.
Just tried this myself, it's indeed a way to start the installer from windows, but it won't install debian on a loopback mounted file, residing on a windows partition, (unfortunately).
> Sid ain't so bad. The system itself is quite stable.
Ok, I'll ask you again tomorrow. And the next day... and the day after that.
You canNOT make any blanket 'quite stable' statements like that about sid... ever. That's the nature of sid.
Does your Portege (very nice machines btw) has an Ethernet port? If its network card supports booting off the network, then you can try booting up this way. If not, then I would suggest removing its hard drive, connecting it to another laptop or to a desktop machine with adapter, writing any necessary files to boot and install Debian or other distro, and then connecting it back to the Portege.
I can see all the calls I will get now from newbs who run this from within their Windows install on a FakeRAID Stripe (Like NVRAID) and watch them woefully break down in tears as I tell them that FakeRAID doesnt run (Nativily) in Linux and that thier data is gone and lost forever thanks to the partitioning process.
Seriously you are going to get anyone and his dog trying this because it "looks" easy. If they have any oddball hardware then they will be royaly screwed.
perhaps they should rename the domain to goodbyedata.com
Absolutly wonderful.. Well done.. a huge pat on the back!.
I realise this is meant as a joke but I hope it doesn't happen in any vaguely successful way. It'd only serve to hit all the Debian mirrors really hard and they'd end up being black-listed by a lot of admins, possibly by ISPs. That wouldn't be good for anyone, regardless of their OS preferences.
"I would suggest removing its hard drive, connecting it to another laptop or to a desktop machine with adapter, writing any necessary files to boot and install Debian or other distro, and then connecting it back to the Portege."
Worked fine with my old Portege 3010CT. Too bad makers of such machines don't make the hard disk as easy to remove and install as a PCMCIA card.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
BeOS could be installed to, and run from, an image file on a Windows partition since 1999.
You don't need to reinstall to create an encrypted filesystem for /home. That's Windowsthink!
Unless the package is compiled against a different glibc.
For example: testing stayed at 2.3.6 while sid moved to 2.5.
Now their both at 2.6.1 so there is no problem, but that was not always the case.
I find running straight sid easier to maintain than a mixed system testing / sid.
Not a problem... the package build against libc 2.5 will depend upon it, so apt knows to upgrade libc6 too.
1) Debian's net install download is under 200mb. I don't have to download, install, and un-install a lot of cruft that I don't want.
2) With debian, I upgrade as I go. I don't worry about the six-month goofy name release. I install debian once.
3) Debian is indifferent to which WM/DE you use. For all debian cares, you don't have to run any GUI. Don't even install X11, it's all the same to debian. And you don't need a different *untu, or whatever, to use a differnt GUI. I happen to use IceWM.
4) IMO, Debian has the best package management in the business.
5) With debian I can run a super-stable server, or a bleeding-edge desk, or whatever else. Debian is not a one trick pony. Debian is more like a blank canvas, I can make into whatever I want.
I am glad to see Ubuntu, or any version of Linux, catching on. But I happen to be happy enough with debian.
This could be the base for a new virus that could actually fix computers infected with the dreaded Win32.XP and any more recent variants of this nasty malware?
Yup, he clicked through that EULA as well.
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
It is my opinion, completely unverified and pulled out of my ass, that running a mixed testing/sid system will eventually end up running all sid anyway. The gradual pulling in of various dependencies will ultimately lead to more unintended breakage and the requirement to upgrade more packages, rinse and repeat. Unless you are really doing testing (and willing to file bug reports and willing to pull down dev's tarballs to try etc etc etc) you should not run testing.
But to each their own...
man, I feel like mold.
Using an exe when seems to be the wrong tool for this job. An axe whould be far better suited to achieve 'goodbye-microsoft'.
2) testing is a better desktop than sid because its more stable -- this is outright false. Testing is a worse desktop than sid *BECAUSE* its more stable. That means if something breaks, it stays broken for a while. I think the policy is that a package has to sit in sid for 10 days without a change before it can move into testing. That means if a packages slips through sid without a particular problem being noticed (it happens) then it sits in testing until someone files the bug report. Then the fix has to sit in sid for at least 10 days from the time it is uploaded. You can see its very easy to be in a broken situation in testing for quite a while.
So the bug hits later and gets fixed later, overall you shouldn't be exposed to it for any more time. Also RC bugfixes that aren't otherwise risky should really be getting uploaded with higher urgencies cutting down that waiting time.
The bigger problem with testing is that sometimes build issues on some obscure architecture hold up progression of packages to testing for a LONG time. There is currently such an issue with mozilla related packages and whenever there is a major glibc update it tends to block progression of practically all packages to testing.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
not really, if you pin testing to a higher priority than unstable (or use the default-release setting which does just that) next time testing and unstable have the same version of a package apt will stop pulling updates to that package from sid.
Yes you will probablly end up running sids version of certain core libraries most of the time but new major versions of those core libraries tend to get quite a bit oef testing before they even hit sid.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
The above site doesn't give even the slightest information on what the installer does.
/. /. is a geek news site, you really shouldn't expect everything here to be polished enough for newbies.
yeah it is rather vauge, that site is only really a temporary source though. I would imagine that with the next stable release of debian it will be placed on the official mirrors and described in the official installation guide.
Will it overwrite the Windows partition or will it resize it and install itself on a newly created one in the disk free space?
It will operate in just the same way as if you booted the installer from CD, floppy, network or whatever. If you select the use entire disk option then it will do that, if you select the use the largest free space option then it will use the largest free unpartitioned space. Unfortunately if you want to resize the windows partion then you will have to use the manual partitioning option.
Editors, please, don't publish stuff like this on
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register