installing linux without a cd?

[excalibur3]

Just out of curiosity is there a way that I can install linux without using a cd? Is there a way I could partition the harddrive and then go from there? I currently just have windows installed but I'd really love to dual boot. On that note is there a way to alter the boot screen because for some reason there is an option to continue with windows installation on my bootscreen in addition to normally booting.
Thanks,
Stephen

 

[n0cmonkey]

If you have a floppy or PXE support you should be able to do a kickstart (redhat) installation or a network install.

 

[excalibur3]

Hmm does fedora work or just redhat? What is PXE? How does a network install work?

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: excalibur3
Hmm does fedora work or just redhat?

No idea, but probably.

What is PXE?

It's a network boot thingy.

How does a network install work?

You install over a network instead of from local discs. There might be a way to install from the hard drive too, but I don't know for sure. I generally have optical drives.

 

[cleverhandle]

Red Hat no longer supports floppy installs themselves, but if you look around online you can find community sites that have put some disks together. Don't know about other distros offhand.

 

[excalibur3]

When I install it over a network can I have it link to the ftp servers on fedora's site or so I just need another computer with those images sitting on the hard drive?

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: excalibur3
When I install it over a network can I have it link to the ftp servers on fedora's site or so I just need another computer with those images sitting on the hard drive?

FTP installs are usually possible.

 

[volrath]

They are entirely possible. You can boot off floppies to do this, but you have to hunt down the floppies, and it is probably very slow. What I do is boot off of the FC4 repair CD, then point it to a network install kickstart file. Doing a full install over the internet... takes about as long as downloading every CD, plus some extra time. I just create a repository on my local network with all of the RPMs, and do a network install that way. I think with kickstart I managed to do a linux install in about 6 minutes. Much faster than CDs!

 

[excalibur3]

The issue here is that I don't really have any blank cds lying around to do this with and I'm having a lot of problems with windows and would like to get away from it. It turns out that this computer doesn't recognize usb thumb drives...Can I use partition magic to make a primary partition with the file that should be on the usb drive as well as the 4 isos and then when it boots i can point the install cds to that hard drive? If this doesn't work how can I switch the primary partition back to windows so I'm not screwed?

 

[cleverhandle]

Honestly, it will be faster and less frustrating to just go out to a store and buy some cheap blank CD's than to try the alternate installations you're exploring here. Getting Linux running for the first time is enough work on its own.

 

[excalibur3]

Yeah you're probably right. I should just do it the right way. Thanks!