All the Linux distros are available in the ISO image format that you can download from the internet, burn on an optical disk (CD or DVD) and then install on your computer. You can also use tools like Rufus to create bootable USB sticks or pendrives from the downloaded ISO images for installing Linux. But what if you don’t have a blank CD/DVD or a spare USB pendrive for use? Even in those cases, you can use UNetbootin to install Linux in your Windows PC directly from the hard drive. This method is faster and easier than using a CD/DVD or USB pendrive. Here is how you can install Linux on your Windows PC without CD/DVD or USB sticks:
- Download UNetbootin from http://unetbootin.github.io/.
- Download ISO image for the Linux flavors supported by UNetbootin. It supports many Linux distributions along with Linux based tools such as emergency antivirus ISO images. If you are confused which one to use, then download Ubuntu ISO from https://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop.
- Launch UNetbootin and select Diskimage, select ISO and then browse to select the ISO image file for the Linux.
- Select Hard Disk for Type, C: for Drive and then click on the OK button.
- It will copy files from the selected ISO image to your hard drive, add a bootloader to your hard drive and then display the “installation complete” message.
- Now when you reboot your Windows PC, it will show a UNetbootin boot entry. You can select this new entry to boot into the Linux and finish installing Linux on your hard drive. Make sure you choose to install it alongside Windows and do not overwrite the Windows partition.
- After the installation is finished, it will reboot into installed version of Linux through Grub. You can follow these instructions for adding Windows to Grub menu after installing Ubuntu or Debian based Linux distros.
Once Linux has been installed, you can boot back in Windows and launch UNetbootin once again to remove UNetbootin from your system.