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Check out http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ as it runs very well on low end hardware and utilizes some of Knoppix's hardware detection infrastructure. I've got it running quite nicely on several low end laptops ie Pentium-90 w/24Mb ram with X running. No cdrom or USB can be overcome by creating an image from a well endowed system and dumping it on the low end hardware(needs floppy drive and network card) using "Ghost for Unix" aka g4u available at http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/ . Good luck in your noble endeavor.

Dominic Caffey

I have a similar policy (on a much smaller scale than Free Geek) at my shop.

With your specs, I would seriously consider something on the lines of Damn Small Linux http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ or Puppy Linux http://www.puppylinux.org/.

Damn Small now has nice options for apt, so it'll be somewhat familiar for package installation. Also, it absolutely flies... We're turning out systems as small as 166 MHz Pentiums w/ 96 MB of ram on 6 GB HD's -- and those all get DSL. Anything less that's donated usually winds up as parts.

Good luck.

Three words for you: Damn Small Linux I have a copy and it almost is that easy. I think I had to answer about three questions, and one of them was to choose a password. Of course it's a tiny distro, but for your average script-bait user who just needs to surf the web and play a CD, it's perfect. In fact, it does make for a complete distro, as long as you don't want to do anything crazy like program something. Puppy Linux is another one. Puppy is well-known for being user-friendly; it comes with a whole menu of wizards which explain everything very clearly. To do *anything* in Puppy is three steps or less. Something I don't think people realize is that even a 50 MB Linux distro, which is considered 'tiny' in the Linux world, has more stuff on it than a Windows disk (in terms of usable features and programs).

Damn Small Linux.

http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

Its pretty easy, but its very difficult to separate the 'old' docs from the 'new' info about some sections of the system.

Make a cdrom, boot a box off that, then from the menus, choose to create a bootable usb OR a usb that can be started from within Windows or Linux as a guest OS.

BUT:
Of the many hundreds of computers here I have not found one that would in fact boot from USB!

Running as a Guest OS inside of Windows doesn't provide any Network Access. Now Qemu site says its possible, but its not obvious how to configure such a thing.

Adding your own stuff. It is very difficult, for some reason, to package your own stuff for use with DSL(mostly lack of clear docs). We have our own programs we want to add, so I have to figure this out myself.

Since Windows 95 you are able to lock down suitably for the average user by using either poledit (Only run allowed Windows applications) or local group policy on 2k/xp (Home Edition has no option). So, your major reconfiguration is nothing more than what you would do with overhauling your ideal network of Damn Small Linux (I like DSL) read-only boxes or of the like.

Users are also the only reason you have a job, and when the help desk gets inundated by the "stupid" users who can't save files where they are used to, its your ass who is responsible train them to use your custom solution. On the other hand, you can use folder redirection to *any* type of server.

As for security, it doesn't stop with having a locked down workstation. It should be layered with a good firewell, good physical network topology for the proxy/gateway, and good user training.

Start wetting:

http://www.bootdisk.info/articles.php?action=cat&i d=7
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/liveusb.xml
http://frontier05.blogspot.com/2006/01/installing- ubuntu-to-external-usb.html
http://www.oreillynet.com/digitalmedia/blog/2004/1 0/utility_to_make_usb_flash_driv.html
http://rz-obrian.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de/knoppix-usb/


And, you can even buy a pre-loaded, live-USB stick:

http://damnsmalllinux.org/usb.html

These are all bootable OSs on removable drives... or did you mean bootable *Microsoft* OSs on removable drives? ... then, you're probably SOL.

Being that Linux is open source and this allows anyone to modify it to run on most any hardware..... Even Linus Himself created an Embedded Linux while working for Transmeta called Modori - http://midori.sourceforge.net/ ... and there is Damn Small Linux - http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ ....and BasLinux (Basic Linux)
http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/baslinux/ (running it on a camera????)

So what is MS really saying?

Its called Libel. And its really more against the programmers than it is against any F/OSS project(s).
It is as well very arrogant, as it insinuates that only Microsoft or proprietary works developers are capable of programming.

Microsoft has been doing this illegal act for quite some time. When is it time to have a class action lawsuite against the jackass that coined the phrase "software pirates" when he called hobbist such, when these hobbist first discovered they can themselves create and fix software?

Need Legal representation for such a case? Where is the EFF? What about funding? Considering who would lose the case and pay the bill, don't we know that teh initial money can be raised (i.e. firefox raising of funds for advertising...)

So why is MS being allowed to continue this falseness, this libel it promotes???

Or Doesn't teh F/OSS communiyty understand that teh more people using F/OSS the more backing it will receive for development and hardware support....

I was pretty much sick of the situation, myself... until I found the solution to bloat.

Download a LiveCD of a small Linux distro and boot to it tomorrow:

Damn Small Linux.org
Puppy Linux

This way, you have nothing to fear, safely surfing the 'Net, without the risk of compromising any of your data. Plus, you get to have a taste of what Linux is like.

The worst that can happen is that you decide you don't like that particular Linux distro. In that case, you can take out the CD, and boot back to Windows on Saturday.

You're looking at Knoppix and talking about the speed like it's surprising. Knoppix's specialty is that it includes everything but the kitchen sink. Other distros specialize in speed (or small size, which equates to most of the same thing). If I recall, Wolvix http://wolvix.org/node/25 is 128mb (or is it 256?) to fit on a USB. I've tried Wolvix and it's pretty quick. Also tried Dyne:Bolic http://www.dynebolic.org/ and it performs fairly quick considering it's size!

You know what all of the above distros have in common? They don't use KDE !!! Stay away from an 800 pound gorilla for a desktop on a live CD and you'll see load times halve right there!

PS: another tip: In a live CD, try to ascertain how much RAM it found on your system and whether it knows where your swap partitions are. Some live CDs miss out here, or need a little manual help.

look at http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ - everything you need to be 'useful' in 50mb. It is because you use windows that you expect everything has to be inordinately wasteful - everything used to come on floppy, OS installs, application installs.. my first HD was a 180mb one for my A1200 . Why does everyone think that 'these days' everything should take up more space? Obviously if you want to store full sized pictures from your camera/mp3s/movies you need gigabytes of storage, but as far as an OS distro goes, you dont *need* a lot of space.

Damn Small Linux runs on everything from modern hardware all the way back to a 486DX with 16MB of RAM. Damn Small Linux is also a modern Linux distro, so sorry for ruining your entire study, MS.

If you're going to stay offline you're still better off with Linux because you'll be able to use recent applications. They will install and be relatively fast compared to the Windows alternatives. OSS applications such as AbiWord etc may still run on earlier versions of Windows, but if all you're going to be using is OSS, then you might as well use Linux and get a more stable and faster system than you would with Windows 98 etc.

Rather than hacking 98 up with 98Lite and installing a custom shell such as GeoShell or something, you can get a more stable and faster system with Linux... try DamnSmallLinux for example. I ran that on a Pentium 166MHz with 64MB RAM and got good performance -- when I was running off the LiveCD! Installed to the hard disk it would be even faster and would probably work great on a 486 compared to Windows.

A 486 running Windows has trouble playing MP3s in WinAMP without stuttering and has trouble catching up with video on my PCI ATI All-In-Wonder (My 486 motherboard supports PCI but more often than not they don't, but these are just examples). DMA is enabled on all storage devices. However when running Linux, these problems don't exist and I can even record video with my TV tuner!

Linux distributions built and configured for modern hardware run with difficulty or not at all on archaic hardware!

Also: it's really hard to turn a screw with a hammer!

The Linux world is (somewhat obsessively) focused on choice, so choose an appropriate distro. Damn Small Linux and ttylinux come to mind. Has anybody ported Windows XP to the wrt54g yet? Has anybody ported Windows XP to the X-box?

Just pick the right tool, is all.

I think, to be honest, that all that was really shown is that popular modern Linux desktop distributions are targetted at modern hardware, and as a result don't run as well on older hardware. They ran Red Hat and Mandrake and Novell etc. 'out of the box' with no customisation to make it fit with the hardware - unsurprisingly the default install of such distros a targetted at modern systems and have hefty system requirements.

Pick up a distribution that actually claims to target older hardware, or just generally fit in smaller places, like say Damn Small Linux, Feather Linux or Zenwalk and I suspect you'll find much better performance and much lower system requirements all 'out of the box'. The counter-claim seems to be that Windows CE, with the right customisations, will run on older hardware too. Does anyone know if their is a release of CE set up for desktop use on older hardwre?

Jedidiah.

goosee.com/puppy
DamnSmallLinux.org

Sure, you can run Windows 95 (or even 3.1) on old hardware, but you can also run Linux.

Now if somebody could link me up with a tiny footprint version of Linux to throw on my key, I would be set!

Does "damn small" count as tiny? :)

http://damnsmalllinux.org/

Now if somebody could link me up with a tiny footprint version of Linux to throw on my key, I would be set!

The perfect portable "app" is the USB version of DSL. http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ You can buy the drive with everything preinstalled directly from them.

So basically you need a PC with a hard drive and a ethernet connection to be a silent web server, email server, repository, et al. You don't need a huge power supply, just something that can power those two items (maybe a CD or DVD drive).

You might as well go Mini-ITX, with the Via EPIA platform. They make small motherboards that fit anywhere (with on-board video and Ethernet) and direct-to-mobo 60W and 70W power supplies that only need a 12V external power supply brick. I have a EPIA V10000 that's running Gentoo Linux.

http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ has a Mini-ITX store, and some ideas are at http://www.mini-itx.com/

The Damn Small Linux folks have a version that runs inside Windows. I have not tried it. There's a link to it on their main page. DSL linux is a remaster of Knoppix linux. I note that some of the versions of the IBM screensaver linux are also based on Knoppix, if not all. Might be able to use any knoppix remaster or linux based on knoppix. IBM's documentation looks like it would work, if one wanted to go to the trouble. The DSL version puts a functional linux in a window on your Windows desktop. One time I did find a screenshot of that, but can't locate it now.
Kind of crazy, really, to put a little linux in a window on a Windows XP desktop, I would rather just dual boot. I have a couple of boxes that do that, using loadlin and a batch file from Windows 98 F8 choice 5 bootup to access a /KNOPPIX folder on the hard drive. I remastered DSL for those, so it looks very nice, and does what I want it to. That setup does not run knoppix within Windows, once you exit knoppix, that's it.

These days there's no need to boot off a thumb drive to run Linux off it. Many distros come with QEmu and all you do is run a batch or script file to launch the emulator and a full Linux session in either Windows or Linux. Note: the machine would have to be x86. For an example check out http://damnsmalllinux.org/

...and throw your money on these linux guys http://damnsmalllinux.org/store/TFT_LCD? After you're done, THEN you decide whether the car or the house gets the lil box...

Search Ebay or ask around for IBM Thinkpad laptops. I've been able to get my hands on many, all for less than 50$. Obviously you aren't going to run Fedora or Windows XP on these. However, Windows 98 or NT [or 2000 even if you've got one with 32 megs of RAM or more] should run just spiffy on one of these. Obviously there are also the dozens of tiny Linux distros like DamnSmallLinux that work like a charm on hardware like this.

The older Thinkpads are built rock-solid and are great for debugging machines. Dead batteries aside, the only problem I've ever had was a screen that died on a model with a known-flaky screen [avoid the 365XD if you can]. I'm not sure how the newer Thinkpads are. I've never really used them since I've had no need to upgrade.

For a newer Mini-ITX that runs DamnSmallLinux, check out the DamnSmallMachine.

The point is that OS X is a unix-based system, shipped with an X implementation AND a load of (closed source) other stuff. All you're doing by not using OS X is removing the 'other stuff'. Look at darwin-ports for the equivalent to apt-get...

Yes, but maybe it is necessary to remove the 'other stuff'. I just read a few posts up that this laptop will only have 1GB of storage space and 128MB of RAM. If you look up the requirements for OSX on Apple's website, it says that you need twice as much RAM and three times as much storage!

I literally just googled "LiveCD 128MB" and on the first result I found Damn Small Linux, and if you take a look then you can see what is possible with a Linux system. If you can figure out a way to make OSX occupy 50MB of disk space and run in 128MB RAM without a GPU to draw the desktop either, then awesome, I support the use of OSX! But I don't think you can. Maybe if the whole of OSX were open then it would be possible to tweak it and make it run on the laptop, but it is not, and that is the problem that makes it unsuitable in this situation.

XMMS (MP3, CD Music, and MPEG), FTP client, Dillo web browser, links web browser, FireFox, spreadsheet, Sylpheed email, spellcheck (US English), a word-processor (FLwriter), three editors (Beaver, Vim, and Nano [Pico clone]), graphics editing and viewing (Xpaint, and xzgv), Xpdf (PDF Viewer), emelFM (file manager), Naim (AIM, ICQ, IRC), VNCviwer, Rdesktop, SSH/SCP server and client, DHCP client, PPP, PPPoE (ADSL), a web server, calculator, generic and GhostScript printer support, NFS, Fluxbox window manager, games, system monitoring apps, a host of command line tools, USB support, and pcmcia support, some wireless support.

Too bad no emacs... that probably would've tripled the size ;)

I have DSL Linux installed on a flash drive (50mb!) and I haven't had any problems booting on different hardware. In addition - the DSL live cd I have boots orders of magnitude faster than Ubuntu's live cd.

Check it out: http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

Nice idea, from Ubuntu. But they are certainly not the first. Of course, there is Knoppix , which runs Live from a CD. It might be made ready for USB stick also. And there are other distributions that fit on and are build for a 128Mb USB stick; for instance 'Damn Small Linux' ( DSL ), which only takes 50Mb of space...

Debian is at a comparable tech level with that hardware [/me ducks]. But seriously, Debian Etch/Sid on my P166 notebook runs Gnome 2.10 under an Xorg Xserver fine. But I did feed it lots of RAM. Before that it was running DamnSmallLinux installed to the HDD using the supplied scripts, taking up less than 300MB. It uses Xvesa and Xfb and a lightweight window manager; Dillo works great for a web browser, but Gecko-based browsers are a bit memory hungry.

The folks at mp3car.com claim to have Nano-ITX motherboards in-stock. They also sell a complete system in a spiffy blue case.

The fine folks at Damn Small Linux also have a Nano-ITX system. There are several versions of the machine at the bottom of this page.

Looks like I gotta stop calling it "Nano-ITX Forever" ...

The folks at mp3car.com claim to have Nano-ITX motherboards in-stock. They also sell a complete system in a spiffy blue case.

The fine folks at Damn Small Linux also have a Nano-ITX system. There are several versions of the machine at the bottom of this page.

Looks like I gotta stop calling it "Nano-ITX Forever" ...

The thing is, even all those cheap computers you see, come with only 256 MB of shared ram, and integrated video

Computers easily meet the requirements of most users these days. Damn Small Linux distributions come in 50MB and can run on a Pentium 1 if need be. For that, you get email, web-browser, word-processor and a variety of tools, including wireless connectivity. What's missing in a set-up like that? High-powered graphics, basically.

We've already reached the stage where there is no further need to upgrade hardware for most users, especially for office workers. Home users could make up the shortfall with consoles and media centres. For this reason alone, Microsoft could loose the business market. The moment Western society has an economic problem and people take a good look at what they actually need, the hardware market is going to shift its emphasis from latest and greatest to cheap and good enough.

- Vista Secure Edition
http://www.openbsd.org/
- Vista Compact Edition
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/
- Vista Instant Edition
http://www.knoppix.org/
- Vista Grandmother Edition
http://www.apple.com/
- Vista Open Edition
http://www.debian.org/

You use this nifty registry editing boot disk to fix the registry

And you use the linux NTFS tools and TestDisk to undelete/unformat/rebuild lost or damaged files and partitions. I use these all the time, they work REALLY well.

I carry around a copy of Damn Small Linux on my USB key, customized with above tools and including an image of the registry editing floppy and endless other utilities. Not to mention, DSL Linux gives me full access to the Debian APT repository! It serves me very well, especially since it can boot entirely into RAM, so I can take my key out and boot additional system.

...because Damn Small and Puppy can both do that, too. And as far as I know, it doesn't violate any license agreements either.

DSL is a linux distro.

John Andrews, the guy responsible for Damn Small Linux, also has a store where he sells Mini-ITX systems suited to running DSL. He recently announced his Damn Small Machine, which may not be enough to do the job, but a noiseless, no-moving-parts machine is still interesting.

John Andrews, the guy responsible for Damn Small Linux, also has a store where he sells Mini-ITX systems suited to running DSL. He recently announced his Damn Small Machine, which may not be enough to do the job, but a noiseless, no-moving-parts machine is still interesting.

Hell, if you're too lazy to do that, just grab one of these babies:

http://www.vectorlinux.com/

http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

http://www.goosee.com/puppy/

You *have to* check out "Embedded" Damn Small Linux. ~50MB download, extract to your USB key, and run a full blown Linux distro in QEMU (Linux and Windows QEMU included).

Heh! I also have a PII 350 covered in dust and an interest in learning about linux. After struggling with many installs, i found that the BX440 chipset screws many distros. Meh. My advice would be to go for http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ It can get to your windows shares, you can use it from the livecd till you have got the hang of it, then install it to hd. Re-install is quick and easy when you break it.You can put together a useful 200mb mini-cd (i can't find any shops with 50mb credit card sized cd) that you can carry with you. All-in-all, I found it the best thing for experimenting and learning the linux system.

or even Damn Small Linux

(Never post from work...)

Almost sounds like it's using an autorun to run something like QEmu (See Damn Small Linux embedded for an example, link here: http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/ damnsmall/current/dsl-embedded.zip
Main site

Even smaller, really. ~50MB. DSL could probably do it. Have a look.

How about some CD's (or wallet CD's) that have open source software on it. You can get them started with the OpenCD, then Damn Small Linux, then maybe Knoppix. Try demo'ing them.

Ive known that most any system that can boot from usb was vulnerable for at least a year now. I keep DSL on my thumbdrive and need to get it onto my ipod shuffle now too.

Once it goes over 1 CD, I guess, Ill move to some other small distro which serves my purpose of emergency repair (like puppy which is what I use now-a-days)

DSL (damn small linux) was designed for you !
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

There is a Linux distribution called DamnSmallLinux which is a Knoppix derivative, takes only 50Mb and can be booted from CD, installed on a USB key, your hard drive, etc. One of the cool things they do is include QEMU and a "bat" file so you can boot DamnSmall in QEMU and be running Linux as a process under Windows. I have a Pentium M 1.7Ghz system and it runs pretty well.