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this post was submitted on 22 Jan 2024
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Linux
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Actually, I have a story that I'd consider an achievement even though it was extremely stupid and by all accounts should've bricked the system but didnt.
So I was on windows and wanted to install linux as a dual-boot on the main drive. The problem was that my mobo didnt like this particular and the only flash drive I've had, dropping it out mid-boot, before I got any usable terminal, so a usual install method wasn't an option. So I had this crazy idea to start a vmware vm in windows and pass the linux iso and the boot drive directly to it and try to install it live over the running system. Unfortunately, vmware guys thought of this and there's a check that disallows passing the boot drive to vms. So i created a bunch of .vmdks for another drive and fiddled with them in notepad until I somehow managed to trick vmware and at some point it started booting the same windows copy that I was sitting on. I quickly powered it off, added the linux iso and proceeded to install like I usually would. It did involve some partition shuffling, but, somehow, it went smoothly, linux installed, grub caught on, and even windows somehow survived, even though it was physically moved around on the disk. It serms that vmware later patched this out, because later in an attempt to re-create the trick of running the same copy of windows twice, but after updates to both windows and vmware, I was met with the same old error that boot drive is not allowed when trying to add that same virtual drive I had laying around.
I had a similar debacle, when I managed to corrupt a btrfs file system to point it wouldn't mount again...
I was preparing it to have as my main system on bare hardware. I had accidentally mounted the same block device simultaneously in the host and guest: kablamo silent corruption and all 5 hours of progress lost.^*^ :(
*shred the guest VM, host was ok.
I had a similar setup once. Dualboot, plus the VM with the same physical disk, to access windows, while running linux.
All it took was a small distraction... I've missed the grub timeout, and accidentally booted the same ubuntu partition in a VM that was running on the real HW. To shreds...
Allrighty, now we officially need a program (I'm hesitant to call it malware since technically it's for the user's good XD) that covertly replaces a running copy of windows with linux... Besides, I think it was possible before to install stuff like Ubuntu directly from windows?