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Linux installer .exe without pendrives (secure-boot compatible)

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It is fairly simple, but useful for non-power users: a statically-linked Qt app that gracefully edits Windows Boot Manager to do a reboot-once into GRUB, which in turn launches ZorinOS live/installer from disk loopback. I needed to make a custom initramfs with dislocker in it, and to squeeze it a little (default Windows EFI partition is not so big).Currently my biggest issue is that systemd is unable to shut down gracefully when rootfs is mounted from such a deep loop stack. The other is that installing to full disk crashes right after it successfully damages the partition table. I think I could solve both by copying the ISO contents to ramdisk before systemd takes over (initramfs needs to stay slim as I mentioned before) - maybe opportunistically if there is enough RAM (3,5G is not so unreasonable to expect).I decided to make it paid for now (maybe not eligible for show? if so, sorry, I've been mostly a HN reader so far), but I am still considering if my project brought more good by being free of charge. It is free as in GPL3+ though, so although I can politely ask you not to exercise it too hard until I turn Bad™, you (will) have several ways to obtain it without paying anyway.The website itself (especially payments) is also an interesting story, I can share it too some day.What do you think?

HN · launched Apr 21, 2026 · 5 upvotes (top 89%) · 0 views

Niche: software packaging and installer tools · 63 launches, 2 in the last 7 days ▼ -88% · Explore this niche →

Category and tags

  • Horizontal
  • Dev tools
  • Prosumer
  • Not AI
  • Hobby / open-source project

Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗

Could you build this?

No Modifying Windows Boot Manager (BCD), configuring EFI/Secure Boot-signed shims, handling BitLocker/dislocker, and building a custom initramfs for loopback live boots requires low-level OS and firmware systems engineering where subtle mistakes can brick hardware.

What it would actually take: Requires deep systems programming in C/C++ or Rust alongside custom Linux kernel and initramfs development. The developer must handle Windows BCD manipulation via native APIs, secure-boot certificate chain compliance (e.g. shim/GRUB signing), BitLocker disk mounting via dislocker inside initramfs, and loopback kernel mounting across diverse BIOS/UEFI implementations. Achieving reliability requires specialized operating system, bootloader, and device driver expertise.

Discussion

1 comment analyzed.

Concerns raised: Qt static linking difficulties, Windows console encoding/UTF-8 output issues

Competitors

Other products that read as similar to this one : 163 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.

Attention rank: #157 of 164 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).

Launched 167 days after the earliest competitor.

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