

Kexec can be used to load a new kernel and “reboot” quickly, it can also be used to load a new kernel, an initrd and never touch the disk. Such a system lives completely in ram and allows you to modify the disk in any way you want without breaking you running Linux (which is in ram)
Any distro that has a network boot installer that can be passed to kexec can be installed this way, any that don’t can still kexec any Linux distro and then install any other distro by passing the disk to a VM and installing linux through that.
You can also kexec the netboot.xyz image and get any distro supported there.


Yeah I tried just now and it diesn’t seem to be working (anymore?) could’ve sworn that worked.
You can still kexec the installiers directly, I followed the netboot.xyz scripts and got the links they use. Here’s Debian as an example:
From the scripts: https://deb.debian.org/debian/dists/stable/main/installer-amd64/current/images/netboot/ looking at the boot config debian-installer/amd64/grub/grub.cfg
submenu '... KDE Plasma desktop boot menu ...' { set gfxpayload=keep menuentry '... Install' { set background_color=black linux /debian-installer/amd64/linux desktop=kde vga=788 --- quiet initrd /debian-installer/amd64/initrd.gzso we need to download those two files and take the netboot.xyz cmdline arguments then
$ kexec --command-line="desktop=kde vga=788 mirror/suite=stable initrd=initrd.magic console=ttyS0,115200n8" --initrd=initrd.gz -l linux´ $ systemctl kexecand it boots.
also here’s an example for the nixos netboot commands, more on that in the nixos manual:
$ kexec --load bzImage \ --initrd=initrd.gz \ --command-line "init=/nix/store/n37nmcvbrblk9ahfzj9nxy01axs7zsf6-nixos-system-nixos-kexec-25.11pre-git/init nohibernate loglevel=4 lsm=landlock,yama,bpf" $ systemctl kexecEdit:
If that means that you can only connect to SSH and have no VGA/video then this will be limited, you could setup an automated install but that requires a lot more knowledge than what your guide requires.