Booting Fedora from inside windows

[john wendel]

On 08/31/2009 06:27 AM, Bill Davidsen wrote:
> john wendel wrote:
>>
>> Is there a way to boot a real OS on a windows box (without using a VM)?
>>
>> I'm looking for a way to boot Fedora on a hostile windows XP box. The
>> windows box is locked down with a BIOS password, won't boot a CD,
>> disabled usb ports, and no way for me to install any windows programs.
>> I believe the Ubuntu thing that runs Linux from windows requires the
>> installation of a windows program, so it won't work in this environment.
>>
> Maybe. You may be able to plug in a USB thumb drive and then hit a key
> at boot time which takes you into a "boot manager" which bypasses the
> locked down BIOS choice. Some BIOS configs have it, some don't, some ask
> for the BIOS password.
>
> If you can plug in a USB drive you can run one of the distributions
> which run using Windows as a microkernel (colinux) and executed off the
> USB drive. This does not use virtualization, at least in the usual sense
> of a virtual machine, and is about as fast as any Linux on bare iron.
>
> There are articles on colinux, microkernel, etc.
>

Interesting, I'll investigate further.

Since the malware creeps seem to be able to install whatever they want 
on a Windows box, there should be a way to get Fedora running.

Thanks,

John