IMNSHO, virtualization apps like VBox, et-al do not run quite as fast as bare metal installations (even with light weight DEs). My experience with Q4OS after using the Windows based installer has been indistinguishable from a bare metal installation. This is why I think wubi may be worth investigating.
My2Cents,
Ernie
Good idea! A new user could even run it from a USB port like a flash drive but still have the option to install the SSD.
It would be slow on an USB port.
I think USB SSDâs have a different connection than internal SSDâs
A USB SSD is limited by the throughput of the USB port. USB2 transfers data at a slower rate than USB3 OR 3.1, and all USB technology provides slower throughput than either M.2 or SATA.
The connection is the same. You just have to buy a USB 3.0 To SATA adapter connector to connect the SSD or a HDD to the USB port. Yes, much slower connected to a USB port vs SATA but the connector works very well. Of course, it could also be connected to a USB 2 port which is even slower.
From the web:
" USB 3.0 has transmission speeds of up to 5 Gbit/s or 5000 Mbit/s, about ten times faster than USB 2.0 (0.48 Gbit/s)"
@easyt50 ,
It exists
Version is a bit dated, but surely we can market SSDs with an uptodate newbie friendly pre-installed Linux.
Maybe even itsFOSS could do it and include copies of all its tutorials as a startup guide.
What does @abhishek think?
Yes, I did two new PC builds, around the first of the year, one for my wife and one for myself, Herâs has 16GB of ram and boots W11 via a NvME drive with MSI mobo, mine has 32GB with the same specs.
I have no intention of doing a hard install of Linux on my W11 machine, I do however use VirtualBox and boot a Gentoo VM.
That being said, I did the Q4OS wubi install on a machine that dual boots with Tiny W11 and W7 HP (Home Premium), I used W7 for the wubi install. Requirements for the wubi install is W7 W8 and W10 64bit not sure about W11. One important thing with wubi, you have too make sure you have enough disk space too create the file to run Q4OS, with 1tb, I had plenty. I am not on that machine, but so far Q4OS and the wubi installl have been running really well.
Also I am not sure if wubi is being actively developed, and why Q4OS, is the only Distro, that I know is still using wubi, Ubuntu did a few years back. Give it a try, it just might work.
If this is whole concept is aimed at newbies then I donât think a hard drive is the way to go. A newbie wonât be comfortable opening up a computer and installing a hard drive. At least I donât think so.
Something more like a USB stick that either installs the OS or images it to the internal hard drive from an image on the USB would work.
This is why Iâm so intrigued by wubi. It could be the answer to an easy rout to try out GNU/Linux. Iâm not sure if this next part is possible, but we could include an installer stub in the trial distribution that will offer to install our âOfficial Linuxâ distribution (or whatever we decide to call it) alongside Windows or to replace it (Windows). I know that a live version of a distribution can be booted from a USB stick. I suspect that our installer stub would be able to resize the Windows partition to make room for a new partition to store the installer and the image of the distribution to be installed on bare metal, then run the uninstall script for the wubi installation so Windows has enough room if the user wants to dual-boot, then restart into the installer we just stored on the new partition to complete the remaining steps to do/finish the installation. If the new partition is about 8GB, we can reformat it for swap space when installation finishes and the user clicks a restart button. Weâd need people who know how to create a distribution and its installer to learn if what I propose is even possible.
What does everyone else think?
Ernie
I agree, only some newbies would want to open a case and swap an SSD. Especially a laptop.
You can use an SSD on a usb port, but if you are not going to
eventually install it, a flash drive would be cheaper. That takes us back to what OSDisk used to do⌠only you want to make the install simpler⌠How do you envisage making install simpler?
I booted Linux Mint from a SSD 120 GB connected to a USB 3.0 port and surprisingly it worked pretty good. But I agree with the above comment about installing the SSD. A newbie just would not want to do it.
I like the idea about the USB Distro + installer, but the installer would have to be fool proof.
That is the catch. Current methods of installing from usb are too tricky⌠mainly because of disk partitioning. Putting an SSD straight in avoids that.
It may be possible to make a usb that is just an image plus a bit of tricky software that copies itself to your HD. It would takeover the whole HD , just like Windows.
There is an OS that does that⌠its called Amoeba. Put it on one OS on your network, and it creeps around and installs itself everwhere. Maybe we could learn something from Amoeba.
Lets see what @pdecker comes up with.
Just put Puppy or EasyOS on a USB stick and be done!!!
Itâd be great of this theoretical USB would work to boot as a live trial and then when you choose to install it would use DD, or something like that, to duplicate from USB to the internal drive. The only problem with that is the drivers would have to be pretty generic so it would boot successfully from the internal drive and then have good discovery of devices. Not sure there is any such thing at the moment.
Yep, and there would be issues with UUIDâs
Lots of Linuxes install from a command issued in the live trial usb booted system.
It would be easy to make that command a dd , but then the problems start.
Most live distros have more robust drivers than what eventually gets installed⌠they have to be able to boot on anything.
I am interested in a related problem⌠how to get a .qcow2 file out of a VM and put its image on an HD or a USB flash drive.
Might think a bit.
Actually Linux is quite good in this regard right now.
I moved mutliple times SSDâs between different (x64) machines with different chipsets, and Linux (Mint) kept just booting without any problem.
There were only 2 exceptions: when there was a proprietary GPU driver in the installed setup. If that was the case, the GUI could not start, until I resolved the problem.
I expereienced this with both Nvidia prop. driver, and AMDGPU pro drivers.
Yes , moving the device avoids uuid issues.
That is why we started thinking about distributing a newbie Linux on SSD.
You have pointed to some cases where it would fail.
Copying a device (or a filesystem) leads to uuid issues.
I have moved OS filesystems with rsync many times. ⌠you always have to edit /etc/fstab before it will boot. That is not a big deal, but we are looking for something completely automatic⌠a path into Linux with zero hitches.
From what you say , that may mean VGA graphics.
@nevj
That is why you start a PC with either a live cd or usb and all other drives are unmounted.
Try moving Gentoo between two different PCâs, I have yet to get Gentoo too boot.
That is because Gentoo is compiled for a specific architecture.
You would only be able to move it between 2 identical machines, and even then you would have uuid issues
That is why they say every Gentoo install is different.