install from usb to hdd without prior linux?

[seexor]

Hello, I'm completely new to linux and I'm having an extremely irritating time trying to find out how to install it on my machine.

I have a netbook (no optical drive) running XP, with a BIOS that tells me it can boot from USB.

My goal is to dual boot (on the HDD) XP and iibex, with ibex of course in its own partition(s, which have not yet been created).

To that end, I have not used wubi, and unetbootin does not seem as if it will do what I want. Please correct me if I'm wrong. I definitely don't want a live USB, and I'm pretty sure I don't want the frugal install.

I was wondering if, without ritual sacrifice, it was possible under XP to create a bootable thumbdrive to install ubuntu. (I have the 8.10 ISO file)

I am hoping to avoid installing with wubi and using that to prepare an installation USB, then uninstalling wubi and installing from the USB... Which to me seems needlessly silly.

Please don't direct me to https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromUSBStick (as everyone else who has asked seems to have been). I don't have an installation CD, I have only the ISO file. Is there a way to turn the ISO into an installation package that I'm noobishly ignorant of?

Thanks in advance.

[lha]

To that end, I have not used wubi, and unetbootin does not seem as if it will do what I want. Please correct me if I'm wrong. I definitely don't want a live USB, and I'm pretty sure I don't want the frugal install.

In fact, unetbooting is probably the right tool for you. Ubuntu live cd is also the install cd: after you have started Ubuntu from a live usb stick, you are able to install Ubuntu to your hard drive.

[lindsay7]

You may find what you need here;

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/