Comment 13 for bug 57379

Has UNetbootin http://lubi.sourceforge.net/unetbootin.html been considered for accomplishing this (basically similar to instlux, only it's better maintained and supports more distros, including the latest Ubuntu, which instlux does not, as well as Vista support and installation via .deb or .rpm packages)?

For something like this (as well as the no-CD-installation issue) something like Wubi seems like overkill in terms of complexity; not to mention that users don't necessarily want to install to a file in their NTFS partition (especially now that Vista can resize its own partitions, basically eliminating the partitioning issue which was the very reasoning for using loopmounted filesystems); and maintaining loop-mounting patches for each release of Ubuntu seems much more difficult than simply re-using the unmodified netboot initrds in UNetbootin builds (not to mention yet-to-be-discovered support issues if the loopmounted-filesystem approach becomes a more common installation medium).

Of course, UNetbootin isn't perfect either; perhaps adding a nice GUI to the netboot installer interface, by adding a gtk-fb interface to d-i, like in Debian Etch, or including an Ubiquity interface in the netboot and ftp-install builds will make it more appealing to new users unfamiliar with the CLI .

Also, perhaps switching to a pre-download-packages and pre-partition-disks via Vista's partition manager approach, thus allowing for a faster and more reliable hd-media style install (albeit this approach would work only on Vista and newer since only they can resize their own partitions while running, though the netboot version can be used as a fallback on older Windows versions), would be a more sound solution, since it allows for a proper, not loopmounted, installation, while still not introducing the risks of manual repartitioning (since resizing can be automated via Vista's built-in drive-management utilities), and still not requiring a CD (like CD-chainloading via SBM or GRLDR) or on-the-go downloading of packages like in UNetbootin, instlux, and debian-w32loader