Say Goodbye To Microsoft

I encountered an interesting new piece of software recently, it allows you to install Debian Linux from within Windows, it’s a Win32 program. Crazy hey? I had heard of programs like this before, there is often talk in the Ubuntu Forums of a native Windows installer but I hadn’t seen one on release before. The site I came across was goodbye-microsoft.com

They are offering a Win32 Debian installer direct from the site which they say will install Debian 4.0 Etch onto your Windows machine in a friendly GUI (Graphical User Interface) and then allow you to reboot into Debian. The screen shots look pretty cool I have to say.



You can see the rest of them here – http://goodbye-microsoft.com/screenshots/

It appears that the installer performs a network install and downloads the files as it goes. This makes sense because packaging the files in the installer would be massive but it could be quite slow to install, even on a hefty broadband connection. I downloaded Etch a while back and it came on 3 DVD’s!!! Maybe it’s a trimmed down version or something. Anyway, I think this is a great idea and if it gets people to try Linux who might not otherwise have done so, then I’m all for it. Nice work guys. I have to be honest I can’t really review this as I would have to install Windows just to reinstall Linux but I may try it on Virtual Machine and report back in future.

I also can’t help thinking that the Microsoft lawyers will be all over this domain name, it seems anything with Microsoft in it is their legal right. I can’t believe they didn’t already have goodbye-microsoft.com as a preventative measure actually. There are a few other projects out there for Win32 Linux installers and if I’d done my research like a proper writer I’d name them all for you but I didn’t so for now the only one I know is http://instlux.sourceforge.net/ which I have to say looks very cool.

If anyone has any experience of these Win32 installers they’d like to share please let me know I’d be interested to hear about it 🙂

One comment

  1. I used this on an old IBM thinkpad with now cd-rom or floppy drive and it was a very painless experience. Just took a while to install.

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