Goodbye, Microsoft!

[mdlbear]

This is one of the coolest hacks of all time. Browse to goodbye-microsoft.com, and click on the Debian logo image. It will download a Windows executable. Hopefully you are not so foolish as to allow IE to run programs you download off the internet without an explicit double-click, so go ahead and double-click it. It will ask you whether to run the graphical or text-based installer, download the appropriate one for your CPU, set it up as an option in the (Windows) boot manager, and triggers a reboot.

At this point you have the choice between restarting your stupid old Windows, or booting into the clever and friendly Debian installer. You can even make your system dual-boot. You might want to make backups first, unless it's a brand-new machine.

Ubuntu users can use the somewhat similar install.exe, which downloads Ubuntu using bittorrent and installs it into an image file so that you don't even have to repartition your disk.