It's the same model that both Apple and Microsoft use for their OS updates, especially when upgrading from "dark ages" version to the latest version. I just think that most Linux distro providers either don't have the resources or the passion for Windows programming to make & maintain the windows .exe part of the pathway. Wubi is neat, but living out of a file on an existing partition doesn't feel like a pathway to full-time Linux. But if it already exists and is maintained, why hasn't it become the standard approach for all distros?
You must have been in an interesting place if floppies was more limiting than bandwidth... Splitting the installer across multiple floppies would be more common for initial install I believe and you would only fill up to ∼2/h on great dialup.
I, at least, did Linux installs by downloading the floppy images to my campus account overnight and walking to the computer labs on campus to write them to disks (they had some NeXTstations that had floppy drives).
Can't edit so replying to myself. The campus itself used a 56k leased line for internet (1993-4) and their dialup pool of eight (!) modems for ~3000 students ran at 2400 bps. It was far faster to walk over to the labs with a stack of disks.
They were almost never all busy. Then in summer of '95 or so, they installed 100 Mbps Ethernet.
That was a big jump. And security was a huge afterthought at the time; many, many people shared their entire hard drive with no password. If only it had been a few years later with MP3's and affordable CD burners...
This sort of thing used to be more common. My first exposure to Linux was before CD-Rs were ubiquitous so there was often no possibility of using external media if you downloaded Linux. Partitioning the drive and installing there was typical.