How do i install linux with no CDRW

[kieran_d]

I have a 61.4gig drive and i have 3 partions:

30gig running WindowsXP Home edtion
15gig doing nothing (waiting for linux)
15gig for backups - storage etc... (i am downloading Mandarke 8.1 iso here)

so can i boot from a 98se boot disk and then go to the E: DRIVE (mandarke iso is here) and start set-up from here?

What way can i do it thx

[klosters64a]

I could well be wrong about this. I think that an ISO has to be burned to a CD-R/W before it's usable.

It may be possible to do an FTP install(if the flavor of Linux that you want is available for this method), assuming that you have a fast connection to the Web. The GPL versions of many distros are available on CD-ROM for peanuts. You might have a look at www.cheapbytes.com .

[XWRed1]

You can pull the files out of the iso, but then its difficult to initiate the setup.

Depending on the distro, they will have boot disks in there that you can boot off of, then do an ftp install of the distro when the files are extracted on another computer on the network.

Still other distros have installers for use in Windows, bypassing the cd-booting stuff.

[mcrites]

If you don't mind running debian, or I am sure slackware does the same thing, but you can get the base of debian on around 5-8 disks, depending on your needs, and do a net install for the rest of the files that you need. I believe there are like 5 base disk images, 3 driver images, a root disk, and a setup disk, so more maybe like 9 disks :D

[David]

If you can extract all the files out of the iso and find the boot disk image then yes, you can. make a boot disk and treat the hard disk partition as a CD. Or, I know that Mandrake 7.1 had loadlin included, so you could use loadlin to start the install, I think...

[Gonzo]

go do a search for isobuster and you can use that to break the iso into directories. Then go read the readme from the mandrake iso, it explains how to install using the files copied to the disk. You might have to make a boot floppy, but that is really easy with mandrake, someone wrote a program so that when you stick the cd in the drive of a windows machine it comes up with the disk image utility (or you can run is from the iso directory).
The only problem that I see here is that you better make sure you create a boot disk when it asks you during the install. Your partition is after the first 30G so lilo will not run because it is too far from the front of the disk, and windows XP will overwrite LILO if you try to put it in the master boot record. The only way you will be able to boot into linux is by using that boot disk.
Does XP have a boot loader? If it does then do a search on dual booting windows 2000 and linux, then you can use the windows boot loader to choose which OS to boot. Good luck.