4 ms·

What would be more interesting is installing Windows from a Linux live boot environment. It could actually be very useful to have a custom open-source Windows i

What would be more interesting is installing Windows from a Linux live boot environment. It could actually be very useful to have a custom open-source Windows installer like that, with customization options and repositories with community-made mods.

zamadatix 2y ago
The windows install process is actually pretty hackable despite not being open source. It largely boils down to extracting an OS image archive into a partition and installing the boot loader in another, all of which can be directed manually via CLI from the install media (shift+F10 if you want to do it manually). So the modifications are more or less: Do you want to customize the partitions? Do you want to tweak/replace the bootloader? Do you want to extract a custom image? Do you want to modify the image after to customize the install?
U1F984 2y ago
This is actually possible. There's Linux tools to extract the WIM files from a Windows installation iso. You have to create the appropriate partition setup (EFI partition with bootloader, NTFS partition with the extracted files), and for configuration of the bootloader I created https://github.com/U1F984/create_bcd/ https://github.com/U1F984/create_bcd/
- RulerOf 2y ago
  Very nice implementation of a BCD creator. And in a language I can read, heh. The only thing that's missing would be driver reflection. I always wanted to have a magic command to just reflect a driver from WinPE into an already-installed Windows, but that seemed to be handled directly by Windows Setup back when I looked at it. I think you can do it with DISM nowadays though. So just make a trip through a WinPE on the way to starting for the first time and everything would probably work fine. I would bet that FOG[1] probably handles all of this reliably already. Anyone wishing for a real devops-style workflow for Windows installation could also look at Glazier[2]. 1: https://fogproject.org/ https://fogproject.org/ 2: https://github.com/google/glazier https://github.com/google/glazier

zamadatix 2y ago

The windows install process is actually pretty hackable despite not being open source. It largely boils down to extracting an OS image archive into a partition and installing the boot loader in another, all of which can be directed manually via CLI from the install media (shift+F10 if you want to do it manually). So the modifications are more or less: Do you want to customize the partitions? Do you want to tweak/replace the bootloader? Do you want to extract a custom image? Do you want to modify the image after to customize the install?

U1F984 2y ago

This is actually possible. There's Linux tools to extract the WIM files from a Windows installation iso. You have to create the appropriate partition setup (EFI partition with bootloader, NTFS partition with the extracted files), and for configuration of the bootloader I created https://github.com/U1F984/create_bcd/ https://github.com/U1F984/create_bcd/

RulerOf 2y ago
Very nice implementation of a BCD creator. And in a language I can read, heh. The only thing that's missing would be driver reflection. I always wanted to have a magic command to just reflect a driver from WinPE into an already-installed Windows, but that seemed to be handled directly by Windows Setup back when I looked at it. I think you can do it with DISM nowadays though. So just make a trip through a WinPE on the way to starting for the first time and everything would probably work fine. I would bet that FOG[1] probably handles all of this reliably already. Anyone wishing for a real devops-style workflow for Windows installation could also look at Glazier[2]. 1: https://fogproject.org/ https://fogproject.org/ 2: https://github.com/google/glazier https://github.com/google/glazier