Quote Originally Posted by rickenbacherus
What better way to show someone how amazing Linux is than by handing them a cd and in 5 minutes they have a Linux distro to work with? Try THAT with wimpdoze!
Well...

It is possible with Windows, at least with Win9x. You basicaly create a bootfloppy-image which loads MSCDEX and a little RAM-drive with the windows registry. You subst the ramdrive to C:, and execute "win" from the CD. D*Space helps a lot here too, similar to the Knoppix compressed image.

Off coarse things are a little bit more complicated (drive letters). These can be fixed by hand (export reg, search/replace, import under DOS). But Win9x unhappyness with changing hardware is a bit more cumbersome. But actually Knoppix had to overcome this same problem, more or less.

And then you have Microsoft breathing in your neck not to release the CD, because you would be blah blah EULA blah...

btw, I never actually tried it myself, but I do know that people got this kind of setup working.