> hose instructions require you to use some other piece of software to write the image onto your boot disk.

I mean... That is how a lot of OSes are distributed: by giving you an ISO that you burn onto a USB dongle to install.

> In my case I used an Ubuntu livecd to download and write the image to the machine.

So... Same thing?

I'm worried that my writing is unclear and is being misinterpreted here.

The HAOS ISO cannot install itself onto a machine. That is my minor complaint.