Running any Linux in Windows without a CD-Rom (for free)
Monday, June 12, 2006
I have been trying to learn Linux for a while, but I was always concerned about the partitions, and that it might not work in my laptop. I have also being playing with the idea of using the VMWare player, to run a Linux distribution "inside" my windows, but the appliances available were not exactly what I was looking for.
I had also tried some Live-CDs, but my laptop has no internal CD-Rom, and I hardly ever travel with it.
And with so many distributions, it was difficult to decide on which one to install.
But then I found Easyvmx, that allows you to create a VMWare appliance of your choice, with any Linux distribution that you like.
EasyVMX allows you to create an appliance from a Linux live-CD. But to create a Linux appliance that runs from the hard drive without a need for creating a Live-CD, you simply have to create an appliance that has a CDROM #2 (Slave) pointing to "disk.iso"; then, download the Linux distribution of your choice, and rename it as disk.iso. Put all the files from Easyvmx and the disk.iso in the same directory, and run the appliance. But select as active the CDROM #2 and the CDROM #1 as inactive. Once the appliance starts loading, press ESC, and choose to boot from the CDROM, which will make the disk.iso file to load. Once it is loaded, you are inside the Live-CD. Click on install and install the Linux distro to your "virtual" Hard disk. Then reset the appliance, this time connecting again CDROM #1 and disconnecting CDROM #2. And there you are, you have a full Linux distro installed for you to play and evaluate.
I am happily trying Aurox, Slax, Ubuntu 6.06 and Kubuntu 6.06 right now .... :)
I had also tried some Live-CDs, but my laptop has no internal CD-Rom, and I hardly ever travel with it.
And with so many distributions, it was difficult to decide on which one to install.
But then I found Easyvmx, that allows you to create a VMWare appliance of your choice, with any Linux distribution that you like.
EasyVMX allows you to create an appliance from a Linux live-CD. But to create a Linux appliance that runs from the hard drive without a need for creating a Live-CD, you simply have to create an appliance that has a CDROM #2 (Slave) pointing to "disk.iso"; then, download the Linux distribution of your choice, and rename it as disk.iso. Put all the files from Easyvmx and the disk.iso in the same directory, and run the appliance. But select as active the CDROM #2 and the CDROM #1 as inactive. Once the appliance starts loading, press ESC, and choose to boot from the CDROM, which will make the disk.iso file to load. Once it is loaded, you are inside the Live-CD. Click on install and install the Linux distro to your "virtual" Hard disk. Then reset the appliance, this time connecting again CDROM #1 and disconnecting CDROM #2. And there you are, you have a full Linux distro installed for you to play and evaluate.
I am happily trying Aurox, Slax, Ubuntu 6.06 and Kubuntu 6.06 right now .... :)
Labels: linux
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