I am the proud new owner of an Asus EEE netbook computer. I really am liking the little bugger, but I have found a small problem with it. The problem is not so much that it lacks an optical disc drive (i.e. one that takes CD, DVD and/or Blu-Ray as it is that one is actually still needed in this day and age.

Unfortunately, for this machine to meet my specific needs for which I bought it, it needs to have Windows installed on it. For my personal sanity, it must also have Linux installed on it (I particularly like Ubuntu, much to my friend MW's chagrin).

Now, I have no problem with the idea of setting up a dual-booting machine. As I type this out on it right now, it is just exactly that. However, getting there was a cast-iron bitch. You see, I dared to buy a machine that didn't have Windows pre-installed on it.

Installing Linux from a thumb drive or an SD card is a no-brainer. Ubuntu even comes with the utility already in place to create such a thumb drive (though, be warned, some distros have a broken instance of this, so a workaround may be needed). I got my 10.4 image copied onto a thumb drive, without ever burning a disc, and it booted perfectly (and quickly!), and installed easily.

Windows, on the other hand . . .

Most of the instructions out there in the wild for installing Windows on one of these machines begin with an assumption that you already have a Windows PC at your disposal. I didn't.

Then there were instructions that didn't assume this, and they worked fine on my desktop machine, but the thumb drive wouldn't boot on the netbook. I suspect that this stems from a strange interaction of the tolerances of the existing standards.

Never mind that, though. What is important is this: Ultimately, the only way to get this OS that I don't really want, but need, onto my no-DVD computer was to run out and buy a DVD reader for it. Blech.

Now, I grant, there was nothing in getting this far that was unexpected. I anticipated that I would run in to problems somewhere, and, I won't lie to you, the Linux installation wasn't 100% peachy, either, but the Linux insallation at least happened without me buying additional hardware that I would only use once or twice.

Here's my real question: Why is DVD/CD still the default distribution medium? Even downloadable versions of operating systems are sent out as ISO files, which are just images of CD and DVD. In this day and age, as CD/DVD readers are increasingly not being installed on computers, much like floppies ten years ago, could we maybe, just possibly, make the jump to putting the installation either on a thumb drive or a thumb drive image? Wouldn't that be better? Yeah, I thought so, too.