Creating a Wubi-like installer for Haiku

Ideas
#1

Wubi was an easy way to install Ubuntu alongside Windows without any knowledge or partionning. Installing Ubuntu 12.04 was as easy as running an exe application.

Here is a recent video to show you how it works

This is a fantastic way to install a new OS on a computer.

I saw that Wubi is more or less maintained on github (I didn’t test this)

I recently used something similar to install Q4OS(Installer for Windows).

Now, each time I boot my computer, I remember that I can using Linux too.

Wouldn’t it be a nice project for Haiku ? Maybe for Gsoc ?

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Haiku Marketing
#2

Running Haiku without creating partition on Windows will require stable NTFS driver, that is not yet completed.

BeOS have ability to install on FAT volume and even start from Windows without reboot.

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#3

Good to know! But is it to install on FAT volume as in to take over partition and format into BFS or make image file within FAT (like Wubi/Wubiuefi) does without modifing FAT partition and data?

#4

I believe Wubi installs the OS into a disk image, so no NTFS support needed.

#5

If we need NTFS support, we could try NTFS-3G, which is open-sourced I believe:


As you can probably see with the link preview, their description curiously mentions Haiku - someone will have to have a look at the code and determine whether it is feasible to use for Haiku.
#6

Our current NTFS driver is based on NTFS-3G already. It doesn’t work very well. I don’t know if it’s the fault of NTFS-3G, because we use an old version, or because it’s not well integrated in Haiku.

So there is nothing curious about it mentionning us :slight_smile:

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#7

I think we are still on the latest version (from 2017), at least I don’t see a newer version than that.

The problems are mostly in our integration layer, which could really use a complete overhaul, and integration into our caching system, which it does not presently use at all.

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