Installing Ubuntu from a virtual drive
 

I am attempting to install Ubuntu on my girlfriends laptop, She is pretty much fed up with windows, and has been seeing me rub linux in her face (Compiz helps haha). The major problem for me is she does not have a CD/DVD drive, Nor do we have USB drives. Daemon tools will let me boot a virtual drive at boot (in theory according to their forum) so this will be my choosen method. The concerns/questions I have are these:

1) If I install from a virtual drive, Will the Ubuntu partition list that as a device and try to load from it? (When I am done, I am deleting windows and thus the drive) will that cause any major issues?

2)MS Will have to stay on the drive for awhile, I plan on shrinking it down as far as possible (Most likly with gparted) then formatting it as EXT and extending Ubuntu to occupy the whole space, Can gparted do that? (I've only used it with Linux, Never tried with MS)

3) Is there anything I should do PRIOR to installing Ubuntu, other then backing up files?


Any insights,answers,comments, or quips are appreciated. Thanks :)

You are going to want to do the shrinking from within windows unless you are using XP.

Her laptop is a dell from 95, I would be afraid to run anything newer then XP :) ... it is in fact XP (Service pack 3) ... She is starting to get more into how computers work, and she is tired of the windows format (and updates and crashes), and wants to give linux a try ... Just I have to do the install, I guess so she can blame me if it f***s up.

In your last post you indicate the computer in question is a laptop from 95. If it is that old, I would not expect a current version of Ubuntu to work well at all. I would suggest you go to the Ubuntu site and get minimum hardware requirements to compare to what this laptop has.

AFAIK is Daemon tools Windows only. It installs a driver for a virtual drive and therefore needs a running Windows kernel to work. So your only choice in installing Ubuntu is a Wubi-install, you can not boot from Daemon Tools.

Might try wubi install.

Personally, I'd have the OEM disks on hand just in case. I'd make a backup of the thing with ntbackup with "system state" to a usb or network share first. Then I'd reload the OS from oem disks and apply all service packs and updates and then let her try that. Then make a backup of that for just in case also. Then I'd play with linux. If fails then try the second reload. It may be the fastest choice.

Be sure to check the min requirements.

Cool, Thanks for all your input guys!

I am sure Ubuntu will work on it, I am using Zorin with an upgrade to ubuntu 11.04 on my laptop with half the power of hers (as far as processor and RAM are concerned) her video card is better, and most of the other hardware too, some is the same (network is Broadcom) but nothing on hers is any more outdated then what I have.

I found an article (A few actually) on how to do a Linux install without removable media (SD,USB,CD, or DVD) direct from an .ISO so I may try that instead of trying to use DAEMON, And if all else fails I will do wubi as suggested, Thanks again. I'm marking this as solved.


update: Got ubuntu installed on the dell and it is going fine, only thing not working is the Broadcom wifi ... But thanks to the handy search feature built into LQ, I know how to fix that. :)

Good that it worked. Please post your solution or a link to it and mark this thread as solved.

I would also like to know how you have installed Linux from ISO, as i have number of systems where i like to install OS without being going there. Please share the article.

The steps I used where as follows (I use Daemon tools lite):

Download .ISO, Create a virtual drive in Daemon, Mount the .ISO, press Play and the installer starts and asks 1)Demo and full install 2)Run Live 3)Install from Windows ... I chose 3 and now her laptop has Ubuntu at boot :)

Here are a few of the articles I read (But decided against this method):


http://www.instantfundas.com/2007/08...ctly-from.html

http://www.howtoforge.com/install-li...our-hard-drive

http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-28948.html

There are a few more I am finding but I have actually read these 3 (Howtoforge and instantfundas are the most in depth) it just seemed like a lot more work then mounting a drive ... Good luck to others :)

As a wubi install.

As jefro already has stated, this is the classical wubi install. If you remove the Windows-partition your Ubuntu will be gone, too.