Live media

[Don B. Cilly]

I got a simple question that I’d like to ask
If it is not too difficult or burdensome a task
How come we need live media? To install stuff I mean
If we already have five distros running as routine.

Why not a simple script
Or installer thing
That would simply take an ISO
And set it up in a ding

To our favourite partition
With presets you could choose
From a simple little menu
With no need to confuse

I mean why really go through
The whole rigmarole
Of using grub or beef stew
And dig yourself a hole?


Notes:
Yes, it is the Bulworth TV interview revisited.
In prosaic (as in using prose :·) English, it could run: Why use a (compulsory) live medium - DVD, USB, SDcard - to install a Linux distro when it could easily be done with a clever script, an ISO, and not using grub to start with?

[claydoh]

You still need a boot loader of some sort in order to do the install, at least for some of the low level stuff, I think.

Look up Wubi, which imo was crap, but did allow some to experience Ubuntu in an easier manner. But it was not a proper install, per se.

I am sure this is entirely possible to do this from within Linux, to install another Linux, but there must be noi interest in doing so, else it would exist somewhere,

[vinnywright]

you can boot the .iso directly from grub ,,,,,,,, but you don't want grubs in your stew ...

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2/ISOBoot

VINNY

[jlittle]

you can boot the .iso directly from grub ...

(Beating this drum again, sorry.) I do this all the time, it saves a lot of time and bother. It's not just the time taken writing the iso to a USB disk, having the iso on an SSD means it loads much faster too.

[Don B. Cilly]

I am sure this is entirely possible to do this from within Linux, to install another Linux, but there must be noi interest in doing so, else it would exist somewhere,

Well, it should be possible even directly from the dark side, shouldn't it? Just make a Widows/Mac installer
And a Linux one, of course...

More than a question of not there being much interest, this seems to me a case of... dinosaurs refusing to go extinct.
The accepted (not acceptable - to me - mind you) method is to download an ISO, "burn" it to an external medium, boot from that, and install.
Now
- an ISO is just a tarball designed to be copied to a prehistoric ISO9660 filesystem, because... ancient Egyptians used it and they must know better... or something :·)
- One could simply have a reg'lar tarball - or zipball, or whatever.
- The tarball could contain an installer - like the Squids we have on Kubuntu at the moment.
- While we're at it, the tarball could even be (innovative concept ;·) executable directly. Like... an appimage :·) Or a Widows installer/wizard from the '80s...

Except... the Circumlocution Office, through its Complicating Simple Things Department, is always minding that the world does it exactly the way How Not To Do It ;-) *

Of course, you can use grub (bleargh) to do a "frugal" install and then install from that.
And from the bottom of the page Vinny linked (which makes my toenails hurt just skimming the Contents) it says you can use Unetbootin to do that.
But then, you look it up, it still does a frugal install and you have to then install from that.
Of course, this is because of how the distribution is... distributed.

So, hey. I just happen to believe the whole live-medium thing is just the way How Not To Do It. It should be available for rescue purposes at best.
I may be wrong. Opinions welcome.

* If you haven't read Little Dorrit (Charles Dickens, 1857), I strongly advise you to do so :·) It's on the Gutenberg Project, free and legal.

[jglen490]

If you are looking for an installer, you already have it. And you have choices as to how you can install. Nobody says you have to use live media, just beat jlittle's drum. And Grub has nothing to do with an installer, but it is a means of bootstrapping (GRUB = GRand Unified Bootloader). If you don't like Grub, find something else and an installer that will install that something else.

Grub works fine. Lilo worked fine before that. There will always be something that works fine - and isn't illegal, immoral, or fattening. And goes well with fried chicken and waffles

It is always necessary to "burn" something from one media to another. Creating an ISO image, copying a tarball from one place to another, installing an OS from one OS to a blank slate. I found your Freudian use of "Widows/Mac", very interesting.

[Don B. Cilly]

You lost me a bit here.
What I'm looking for - not just for me, mind you, for people "in general" - is something like a distro that comes as "installubuntu.exe" or installmint.bin" or "installneon.appimage".
Now, you say "If you don't like Grub, find something else and an installer that will install that something else."

Well, I definitely don't like grub. I think grub is Linux's bane. But that's me.
But even if I did, what you're suggesting is... to go through an incredibly complicated and totally useless rigmarole like the one Vinny linked?
And your average Windows/Mac user is just going to love it?

Now, I can certainly understand the need of using a DVD/USB removable medium to install an OS if you haven't got any OS to start with.
From that to it being the only accepted method of installing it - and before you say it isn't, google "installing [any Linux distro]" - or to it making any sense, it's "30'000 light-years to galactic central point", for me.

Considering that, what something else that will install whatever else (say Kubuntu) would you recommend?

[jglen490]

First, like it or not, unless you are a programmer we have what we have. The devs at the Kubuntu point in the foodchain are not likely to go off inventing new bootloaders. There are a couple of ways to install Kubuntu, external media (i.e., DVD, thumb drive) or internal media (i.e., jlittle's drum beat). Both require a download of some sort, of course. And both are going to be of the current standard, ISO-ish, file format. If you want a different file format, go to FreeBSD or OpenBSD and have at it with gzipped TAR files - tone of fun. A self-booting, self-extracting file could work and would have a lot of complexity and under what conditions could it self-boot that would be easier than booting either external media or internal media. The devs would have to build separate containers that would boot under Windows OR Mac OR Linux OR on bare hardware; or buld a front-end that would detect the running OS and boot accordingly. I think that's a bridge too far, not technologically, but in terms of practicality and the use/abuse of (in many cases) unpaid help.

For Kubuntu, the current CHOICES of external media and internal media are practical and technologically mature, and in most cases very easy to follow. I know, there are cases (i.e., complete newbs) where hand holding may be required, but that's why we the forum-dwellers get paid the big bucks. Download the file, verify the integrity of the file, move the file (if desired), execute the file, enjoy the trip. Far better than exploding gzipped TAR files, I know as I've tried a few different BSDs. A beautiful OS once it's running, but a lot of administration to get it there.

As for Grub, it too is technologically mature, it works (unless the user screws with it), and it provides an inexpensive and effective bootstrapping process. It doesn't matter whether the motherboard's firmware is UEFI or BIOS, it works with MBR or ESP bootloading, and once the firmware knows where to find it (when it's put in the right place) it just works. And it works best when it's silent.

I've been using Linux and BSDs for 20+ years, and specifically Kubuntu for more then a dozen years. It has matured over that time., become easier to install, administer, and use. Don't worry about Grub, it's happier to just run during boot and in the background. Once it's set up, barring some bizarre hardware failure you'll never notice it. I have a "playground" laptop. I use it to tryout different OSes - mostly Linux. I've installed probably 20 different Linux distros over the past year or two. Some distros are better than others, in my opinion, and most of those 20 or so, are just not worth the time and energy - for various reasons, but mostly look and feel. It's currently running Kubuntu 18.04.3 LTS, just like its big brother, my desktop unit. The laptop is happy, but limited in CPU and RAM, but it works well with a "fully-growed" Linux on it.

I was stuck in Windows-world for a long time, and in my job I still am. But, I loved Linux from the beginning (well, maybe not so much with Slackware - that's another story), enough to stick with it and return to it from cousin BSD. I know people who absolutely hate Linux - O.K., it is a choice and living in Linux-world I very much appreciate choice. I'm not out to convert people to Linux, it's not my religion, but it is my OS. So I don't care if the average Windows or Mac user will love Linux.

After that first foray into Slackware, the day I got my hands on that beautiful old thrift shop-sourced RedHat version 5 boxed set complete with documentation was the day I was liberated!

[Don B. Cilly]

Lord Decimus Tite Barnacle couldn't have put it better.

[jglen490]

I'm not going to look that one up ...

[vinnywright]

After that first foray into Slackware, the day I got my hands on that beautiful old thrift shop-sourced RedHat version 5 boxed set complete with documentation was the day I was liberated!

Aaaa the good old days of Slackware and a text based installer lilo for a boot loader and 5-6 CD's of goodness , you even "had to/got to" select your own package sets .

now that was a few hours of geeky fun , and then you get to start making it all work like you want

@Don B. Cilly , did you know you can run the installer from the Konsole (in a live session) and tell it NOT to install a boot loader (grub)

ubiquity -b

one of my installes was done that way ,,,,,I use a custom menu entry in /etc/grub.d/40_custom to boot it .

menuentry 'Kubuntu-18.04' {
insmod btrfs
set root='(hd2)'
linux /@/vmlinuz root=UUID=fe385e89-57a5-4632-9823-043a70b67c65 rootflags=subvol=@ ro quiet splash
initrd /@/initrd.img
}

it's on a 250GB SSD that has a hole disk BTRFS file system , no partition , MBR , GPT , so no space for a boot loader

Model: ATA Samsung SSD 860 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdc: 250GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: loop
Disk Flags: 

Number  Start  End    Size   File system  Flags
1      0.00B  250GB  250GB  btrfs

VINNY

[Don B. Cilly]

So... it turns out that booting a live image from hard disk without having to use prehistoric systems is quite possible.
Not only that, but more and more people seem to be interested in doing it.

------------- RANT/RAVE MODE ON ---------------------

Ah, but if I say so, they call me a liberal, a radical, fanatical, criminal... (yes, it's the Logical Song ;·)
Because "developers have better things to do", and "why don't you do it then", "it's not easy".
I mean, try it on Reddit. I did, you can imagine the results :·)

Thing is, it turns out it's extremely easy, developers do not have better things to do than to make Linux better - and above all accessible, and if my dad were still alive he would put this at the beginning of The Power of Stupidity.

------------- RANT/RAVE MODE OFF ---------------------

Honestly, isn't it about time to evolve?

[jlittle]

It can get fiddly, and gets broken by little changes, like the names of vmlinuz and initrd. But the solutions are usually simple. I have installed a couple of multi boot USB projects, not because I use them much, but because they have scriptlets for just about any distro and utility and communities that find and post fixes quickly.

[Don B. Cilly]

Well, the day some developer in Tasmania or thereabouts decides to finally make the "installukbuntu.exe" or installmint.bin" or "installneon.appimage",
this particular warning will have to go:



Or at least be put in its proper place.

[jlittle]

I've posted in KFN about the underlying problem that that dialogue is about. I haven't tried it with Focal but with Eoan if you'd booted into an iso on the drive you were installing to and you clicked yes it didn't work, the install failed later.

With Eoan if you wanted to do that, you could by adding "toram" to the linux line in grub, and forcing the unmount in a konsole before starting ubiquity (the installer). I must give it a try with Focal.

[edit] this is the post