macOS has been able to do this for over 20 years. Nice of Microsoft to catch up now that nobody wants to use the windows ever.

If only we could do this in linux

Be the change we want to see.

I assume this is sarcasm

I think it is possible, but without a lot of funding for uptime and bandwidth it'd be a bit impractical for most distros.

Plus, could bring up privacy/security concerns if the hosting address/device gets compromised in any way.

Let me know when macos catches up in almost all other aspects, since nobody wants to use a mac ever.

How so? This is basically a net install procedure, which operates right out of most distros package system.

since nobody wants to use a mac ever

Statements like this remind me just how utterly removed from the reality of tech the average Lemmy user is, lol. People fuckin love macs, unless there's a joke I'm missing

I've never actually done a network OS install, but aren't those generally a "local" network install, ie the file is on another computer you or another admin control? Grabbing the file from somewhere else might open the door for a third party to provide their own ISO

You can with LAN install

Shit, with the M2 chip (and I guess later versions), I saw tech people I would never have imagined as Mac users jumping over to Apple.

You're thinking PXE/netboot, which netinstall disks are often used for, but you can use them independently of netboot.

Generally you have a minimal disk or recovery partition that initiates boot and offers the package manager, basic file and disk utilities, and a script to install a list of important packages. Basically nothing else. A handful of distros offer them, but they're easy to make too. I usually have one in a partition alongside by boot partition. This is very similar to the distros that offer a "recovery" boot option.

The point is that instead of downloading a static version of the OS at 2GB+ these days, you have a tiny boot disk that downloads all the latest and greatest versions of the files you need, or allows you to fix breakages. This is what MacOS and these Linux distros have been offering for years.

Hey now, this dude is clearly an outlier

This is sarcasm right? You literally can.

Shit, with btrfs and snapshots, you don't even need an internet connection

Asahi Linux now officially supports the M3!

You can do this with Fedora, I’m pretty sure you can do this with other distros

Popos even has a system recovery partition like a Mac

They are just prepping for putting everyone on subscription based thin clients.

Oh wow, now you have me considering a macbook...

Now I just need you to go fuck yourself.

Wait, that thing already did..