Would it be possible to lower barrier to entry that low?
To the point where installing some Linux distro would be as easy as installing a game on Steam or installing an application on a phone?
There is existing software for installing Linux from Windows.
For example, old WUBI for installing Ubuntu, and linixify-gui (fork of abandoned tunic) apparently does this as well.

So question is, should there be some effort put into making a modern installer of this kind? Something that even the person with the smoothest brain can use to get Linux on their PC?

Are there any existing projects that try to make this happen?

  • anelephant@lemmy.world
    4·
    3 days ago

    Asahi linux does this, you run a script and it installs. No USB needed. That’s on apple silicon hardware though.

  • utopiah@lemmy.ml
    3·
    3 days ago

    I don’t think it matters so much. It’s possible to test Linux literally in seconds with nothing to install thanks to virtual machines on the Web. It’s risk free.

    What prevents people from migrating isn’t technical, it’s mostly FUD and marketing (not to say lies) from MicroSlop.

  • Jo Miran@lemmy.ml
    10·
    5 days ago

    I find that live USB drives, like the Linux Mint installer are a fantastic way to show potential converts around. If they like it, all they had to do is click install.

  • BCsven@lemmy.ca
    7·
    5 days ago

    Back in the days of CD Drives you just inserted the linux disk from a magazine or from a bestbuy that sold OpenSUSE and did a restart and it booted from CD ready to install, just like you’d install a game.

    USB stick is just as simple but people don’t know the process to make the stick or boot and hit the f key that gives them temp boot device options so it is a “harder” process

  • moonpiedumplings@programming.devEnglish
    5·
    5 days ago

    There does exist a tool that does it. The creator posted about it on the fediverse. It only supported ubuntu at the time but looked extremely promising.

    I cannot remember it’s name. :/

    Maybe it’s linixify? But I remember seeing a post on lemmy with a youtube demo?

  • texture@lemmy.world
    3·
    5 days ago

    there is and i also think there should be.

    but i would never use one or recommend doing so.

  • vortexal@lemmy.ml
    2·
    5 days ago

    I have seen distros that offer methods for installing Linux directly from Windows but I wouldn’t use them. Live CDs are a good way to test if that distro, or even Linux in general, will work properly on that computer. For example, if you installed Linux on a computer with a WiFi adapter that Linux doesn’t currently support, you wouldn’t have known this if you just installed Linux directly from Windows without testing it first and there is no simple solution to this problem.

    Now, if you could install Linux onto an external hard drive from Windows, then this might be fine because you’d have a dual boot between the two OSs and can easily fallback to Windows if Linux doesn’t work properly. However, as far as I’m aware, you’d still need to boot into the bios and change the boot loader so that Linux can actually boot.

  • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
    2·
    5 days ago

    Your options to try out Linux without disrupting your Windows experience are:

    • WSL, which is using a Linux kernel that is running in a VM (WSL 2). This will let you run some Linux applications on Windows.

    • Live Disk, This gives you a full Linux environment but may lack persistence (your settings are loss on reboot) and performance issues (using a USB drive as a system drive is slow).

    • Linux on a VM, This gives you a full Linux environment with persistence and good performance but you won’t have access to your hardware, like your graphics card, to do things like gaming (You maybe able to use passthrough, I haven’t used Windows VM software in quite a while).

    • Dual Boot, The full Linux experience. Requires another hard drive or a willingness to resize your partitions (which could* destroy your Windows install).

    The installation step is trivialized on some distros, just a simple series of dialog boxes. Like installing Windows was in the 00’s before you had to watch streaming ads and give it access to your medical records while creating your OneMicrosoft Online Co-365-Pilot Teams Drive Pro account.

    *I have literally never had a single problem resizing partitions in 20 years of doing this, but it is technically possible if you lose power or are really unlucky with the cosmic ray lottery.

    e: To your question directly: As long as you’re not trying to mess with Window’s system partition you should technically be able to resize/create partitions, create a new file system, copy files, and add a boot entry from inside of Windows. Ubuntu was the last big project to have a sustained effort to attract new users, WUBI was a big part of that project. Now, there just isn’t as much interest.

  • yesman@lemmy.world
    2·
    5 days ago

    This might not be feasible. IDK how you could install a whole OS, inside of another, without looking like a serious virus or malware. There are many files that cannot be changed while Windows is running (why it needs to reboot so often for updates). And no sane OS is going to let a program edit things like the MBR.