Trying to install Linux without USB/DVD

I want to install Linux on my laptop (UEFI, Windows 10). This is proving quite difficult. I've seen similar questions, but those are for Windows 7 and below.

My computer lacks a DVD drive, I can't make it boot from USB, and I don't have another PC to PXE boot. I can't even take the hard drive out of my laptop, because of how it is designed. I'd have to remove about 20 screws, and rip off the keyboard with enough force to remove it, but not enough to bend it or destroy wires. (basically, it's nearly impossible to disassemble without damaging it)

So, I got another idea. I know how to add entries to the Windows bootloader. I was thinking that using a bootloader entry, I could boot from an ISO file on the hard drive.

Is this possible?

Just a side note, I have heard of Unetbootin, and EasyBCD, but those appear to not work with UEFI and Windows 10.

4 Answers

I figured out the solution. I'm not 100% sure if this should be a separate answer (this is a really isolated problem/answer scenario), but someone can correct me on that. Anyway, the problem had nothing to do with software. Secure boot was off, I used Rufus properly, and I made empty space. The real problem was that I used an SD card to USB adapter, but the SD card was really bad. (randomly corrupts itself) Everyone knows that SD cards have a really bad lifespan, so that was the problem. I did this again with a less worn out card, and I did successfully boot the computer from it.

You can use a program called UnetBootIn. It's mostly used to create bootable usb drive for linux installing, but you can directly use it to install linux on your pc.

Once you installed it you select wich linux distribution you want to install, you select your windows partition and in the next reboot you select unetbootin, then the installation will start.

It is possible to install Linux on a Windows 10 UEFI/GPT system without any other media. But it's not for the novice and it's not simple.

Here's a sketch of what I was able to do to get Debian Bullseye installed on my laptop that shipped with Windows 10.

• Choose your installation media. I recommend the Debian netinst CD, which is about 600 MB. NB it's important that you be able to fit the media entirely in memory.
• Use the Windows partition manager to shrink the existing Windows partition to the desired size, to make room for Linux.
• Create a new partition large enough for the installation media with a little buffer (about 700MB for the Debian netinst CD) and format it as FAT32.
• Download the installation ISO and put the file on this media.
• Mount the ISO image to a drive letter
• Using the command line, copy the EFI directory from the ISO drive to the EFI partition (NB the EFI partition cannot be accessed using File Explorer).
• Also copy to the FAT32 installation partition the boot/ and .disk directories.
• Reboot the system, set the BIOS to boot to Linux, and you will appear in the Debian installer. However, more steps are required to complete the installation.
• Drop to a shell and:
  • Mount the FAT32 partition with the installation media
  • Copy the ISO to /tmp
  • Unmount the FAT32 partition
  • Use the dd command to copy the ISO onto the FAT32 partition (make sure you choose the right partition or you could suffer data loss or render the system unbootable)
• Reboot the system again and re-enter the Debian installer.
• When asked on what device the CD-ROM can be found, provide the device for the partition that was written with the dd command above (e.g., /dev/nvme0n1p4).
• From here you can install Debian as normal. But, when partitioning, don't delete or modify the installation partition. You can delete it after installation if you like.

There are a couple things that make this process more painful than it needs to be:

• I couldn't find a way to write a raw ISO image to a hard disk partition from within Windows. Most imaging tools refuse to write to a hard disk partition because of the risk of data loss if writing the wrong partition.
• The Debian installer requires being able to access an actual block device with the ISO filesystem, and in particular it's not possible to install from a loopback device.

If you cannot use a USB drive or Optical drive for whatever reason, I would recommend booting Linux using PXE. He could setup a live CD ISO for PXE boot, or use one that is available on the net.

See [Netbooting Ubuntu Live CDs][1]

Hope this helps! [1]: