I remember installing BeOS 5 PE this way. I think it installed using a loopback configuration. It really was the easiest OS install I have ever done. Even compared to the tools available today, BeOS 5 was like magic. 5 second boot times on a 200 MHz Pentium Laptop. Journalling filesystem. Fast and low-latency.

It's great to see Linux installs going this direction. The ease of install definitely made switching to BeOS simple back in the day.