Would it be possible to lower barrier to entry that low?
To the point where installing some Linux distro would be as easy as installing a game on Steam or installing an application on a phone?
There is existing software for installing Linux from Windows.
For example, old WUBI for installing Ubuntu, and linixify-gui (fork of abandoned tunic) apparently does this as well.
So question is, should there be some effort put into making a modern installer of this kind? Something that even the person with the smoothest brain can use to get Linux on their PC?
Are there any existing projects that try to make this happen?
There are reasons this hasn’t been done before.
There are a lot of things you’re not considering. You’d need to potentially re-partition a live mounted window disk(s) to create space for a Linux partition which could fail spectacularly. Or install over a running Windows system which will also fail very quickly.
Also - there are many tools that make it easy to create a live USB drive that one can boot from to get a taste of Linux in a way that is non-destructive and optionally install Linux.
WUBI did it really well. It got a lot of people on to Linux.
It has been done before despite reasons.
We used to do this all the time.
Do what?
Previously it was possible to boot from live disc, but install, non directly in, but from Windows. Actually I think maybe we did try it directly from the Windows OS now that I think about it. How long ago!
But yeah, just click in D drive and you go to live disc or installer. My memories are old though. I remember the the word Wubi but would need a refresher to exactly recall.
Basically, Microslop screwed up the boot loader at one point in an anticompetitive practice they were never penalized for. Afterwards you couldn’t dual boot without having two drives. You also could no longer access full Linux in Windows. There was still Cygwin and WLS way later, but it wasn’t as cool.