Strictly speaking yes, but only if you have more than one hard drive. You'd need some technical expertise, because it's not a normal thing to do.

In reality, you would be better off buying the cheapest USB storage you can find (which should be cheaper than the cost to post it to you, these days) and turning that into an installer

Yes you can. However, if you are not familiar with systems administration then you will experience much more difficulty than just using the USB method.

Whatever you do, backup all of your important files and data from Windows before you attempt anything. To be extra safe create a Windows recovery USB.

After you have backed up important things then just read as much as you can regarding your OS of choice, like MX, and then try it. Having a second source of internet for any problems that may arise is recommended, like a smartphone.

And then try it. My first foray into Linux dealt me about a week of struggles before I got ot working. That was 20 years ago and thing have gotten better since then.

You will struggle at first. You may even fail a few times, but the feeling of accomplishment and the freedom of having an OS that allows you to do what you want and not what a corporation deems profitable is priceless. You will enjoy that feeling.

What is the reason you want to do it specifically this way?

I think if you want a very easy solution, then this might actually be the answer you are looking for:

Get an USB stick. Then download the program called Unetbootin . Open the program. It has a list of all Linux distributions out there. I'd say choose Linux Mint. I'm using OpenSuSE Tumbleweed, and am very happy with it as well.

Then in the bottom of the Unetbootin screen, choose your USB stick and press the install button. After that reboot your computer from that USB stick and things will be rolling just fine! :)

You'll be creating the USB stick with almost zero effort. It works and it's easy.

PXE / Net boot / install is a thing but that's not really meant for Linux noobs. Often times it's something IT departments do to install the same OS image on multiple systems on the same network (not just Linux, Windows and others can do this too). I've never attempted to do that over the internet so can't say much else about that process.

Being this is linux4noobs I suspect you're just talking about one system being installed, a regular USB install would be far more feasible in your use case. You're kind of going straight into hard mode attempting more advanced types of installs.

:3

1st step:

Install gentoo (stage3).

2nd step:

Hijack with bedrock.

3rd step:

Fetch any debian or devuan.

4th step:

Change repos & add things

Ta-da!

;D

Now your MX Linux, installed "directly" online, also has gentoo and bedrocklinux capabilities too. ;)

More "sane"(?) methods may exist, but just for breadth-of-possibilities and whimsy, I offered this alternative route. ;)

It depends.

https://linuxvox.com/blog/reinstall-ubuntu-from-terminal/

Back on the day, I was able to coerce the Windows bootloader into chainloading GRUB, which then launched a netboot kernel and initrd for Ubuntu that contained the CLI installer. I don't know if that's still possible, but I only needed one hard drive for it and it worked great until the laptop sadly melted itself to death several years later (it had a desktop P4 in a 14-inch laptop chassis, so I was surprised it took that long to die).

Do you want to run specific apps, or see what the desktop UI looks like?

Its not something I would want to do because if something goes wrong I want the physical media to boot off of regardless of its a cd or usb device.

Others are answering what you technically asked, but I think that's not what you're looking for. What you need is a 'live USB version', you run it from a usb stick and can try it without installing anything in your main drive.

Here is the link to the page with the links in mxlinux.com.

Now you have to make another decision, which desktop you want to use. Mx Linux's got three, xfce (known for being less demanding on resources), kde (bit windows-like, not that resource hungry either. It's worth a try), and Fluxbox (I don't know anything about this one). You might as well download and try the three of them. Just flashing them to the usb to try another.

Now the process. First you need one or more iso files (downloaded from trustable sources like the one from mxlinux.org itself, you also can check the checsum, but maybe too nerd just yet), a USB stick (probably 16gb or even 8 could be enough, but I'm not sure exactly. Pick a fast one if you can, it'll feel quite snappier. THE DATA IN THE DRIVE WILL BE LOST), and Rufus (this is a program to flash the iso into the usb stick).

Now read the pages I linked, and maybe follow the links there for explanations, I cannot tell you how to use rufus since it's been ages since I've touched it, but it's not so hard. May get a couple tries to flash the iso into a bootable usb (meaning the computer can boot or start running the os in that drive) but you've got this! Run rufus and flash one of the isos into the usb stick.

Now try to boot it. Look up how to get into your 'boot menu' (preferable if available, and it works. But it might not..) or 'bios setup' on the internet. It depends on the brand and model. You'll have to turn it off, and push some key just immediately after turning it on again, with your flashed usb stick plugged. If we're lucky you must see some text menu that lets you chose it to boot, and you'll be running Linux in a few seconds, hopefully.

Now when you're ready to install one of them into your computer's drive you have two options, dual booting keeping windows and putting also Linux for which you'll need a free partition or ssd for it, or if you are convinced of getting rid of windows for good just chose the easy formatting options while installing and that'll be it (THE DATA IN THE DRIVE WILL BE LOST).

If something doesn't go as planned or you have any doubts don't hesitate to make follow up questions, it's normal if you have to repeat some steps or search the internet to troubleshoot something, but Linux has become super easy to install and use (it really is much worse with windows or Mac..) so good luck and welcome to Linux!

The question is confusing, what exactly do you mean by "directly from online"? Just click a button in a web browser and it will install the entire distro? If so, pretty sure the answer is no; if you imagine something else, please clarify.

What's your use case? If you want to replace Windows on your device then the answer is not really, however, if you just want a Linux shell then you can pretty much one click install a Linux distro inside of Windows with WSL2

You can download a Linux distribution from the Internet, but you must use a tool like Balena-Etcher or Ventoy to "mount" that distribution (typically in the form of a .iso file) to an external media, like a USB flash drive. Then, you'd boot your system into that USB to install the Linux distribution to your machine.

I don't think there is, the closest would be a net install release but MX doesn't appear to offer that.

I think - and believe me, it wouldn’t be the first time I encounter this - that OP assumes Linux is like an app in Windows or Mac. Ao, grossly oversimplifying, Windows, MacOS and Linux are today’s most popular operating systems. An Operating System or OS is software that sits all alone directly on top of the hardware; therefore, a computer has only 1 OS. These are not interchangeable either, ie you cannot run Linux as an app in Windows or vice versa. Now, what you can do is download an image of any OS online. An image is in the end just a storage device copied into a zip file with a bit of extra data, that you can “unpack” back onto a storage device that can be used to boot your computer, just like windows.

I think this really highlights a gap in Linux adoption. This makes me wonder how many people would install Linux if they could just click one button in their web browser to guide them through the process of replacing Windows.

macOS, but only on a Mac

if i remember correctly, if you use balena etcher, you can flash an usb stick without first downloading the ISO, using the url

Adding to the already excellent answers: there is such a thing as WebFAI: https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en/TUXEDO-WebFAI.tuxedo . In short, it is a web-based tool to pick and install your distro of choice.

I do not think that it will be helpful for OP, as MX is apparently not being offered. You may need a Tuxedo laptop for it as well. Hopefully other readersl will have a TIL moment though.

Yes, what you're looking for is called netboot. It is primarily meant for LAN use, but it is possible to grab an iso from the internet and boot it without leaving the UEFI environment.

https://netboot.xyz/ makes it kinda easy and nice