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/rant These types of solutions have been around for years. The only barrier to their adoption in "developed" countries are the MS blinders that most people wear. Not to mention, any time a non-profit thinks of deploying Linux, MS suits show up with free copies of Windows and brand new Dells. Fortunately, the "developing" world doesn't have such preconceived notions.

I would use linux as it can be as light wieght as you need it to be (Cheack out damn small linuxhttp://www.damnsmalllinux.org/) or more robust to suit your needs. Also here's a fine example of a linux pda http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT2134869242. html I personally think it is the most simple route to go as it's free and people will be more than will to make their own software for it.

> You can also get a fanless 30W PSU for both.

You can even get the power supply as an external unit.

The DSL store sells the one's with the external p/s:
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/store/

Damn Small Linux does this and does it quite well. I like the small cd idea. Do you really need a full distro like Knoppix for online banking?

DamnSmallLinux has had FluxBox for a long time, and the recent versions of it come with Firefox.

This is truly a better distro for this purpose IMO. Less stuff means that there's less stuff that can break.

DamnSmallLinux has had FluxBox for a long time, and the recent versions of it come with Firefox.

This is truly a better distro for this purpose IMO. Less stuff means that there's less stuff that can break.

I tend to agree with you on this one.

When I first ran into the idea of thin client computing, I thought it was pretty cool, but like many other folks, I thought, "Do I really like the idea of all my data being stored elsewhere?"

Like you, I decided that something similar to the USB pendrives would be more likely to succeed, but carried out to a farther extreme: Your entire system, data, OS, apps, and whatever, is stored on your portable drive. Plug it into a compatible computer, and have at it. An early prototype of this model actually exists; check out Damn Small Linux on a USB pendrive. Admittedly, there's not a lot of storage space, but there're certainly bigger pendrives that could be used this way, and storage devices are only getting smaller...

It seems a little extreme at first, and in many ways (particularly in terms of data integrity) it's not as nice as the Net-based solution.

But, most technologists overlook the importance of the average person's reaction to adoption of technology, and I think that the average guy on the street is gonna prefer the idea of carrying his "computer" everywhere with him, and plugging it into a "terminal" so he can use it.

Obviously, there are pretty big obstacles to this idea (running on all the different architectures that currently exist comes to mind, although you could probably do fairly well on that with Linux), but there are also pretty big obstacles to the thin-client computing idea, and I think people are going to be fundamentally leery about someone else handling all their data. I imagine that there will be the option of uploading data to a remote location for backup, but only the data you want backed up (ie, nothing you want to keep really secure; for that, you make duplicate drives stored in a safe place).

Thus, I suspect that in the long run, ultra-portable storage that houses your full system, OS, apps, docs and all, that you can just plug into any machine, is what's gonna win.

For anyone interested here are the links to Iomega, to QEMU, and to Damn Small Linux. I got the Iomega used so all of this did wind up costing around $50.

Giving credits to folks at Puppy or DSL? http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/usb.html
Both can be booted from an USB key Puppy comes also in a version for multi session CD, allowing you to write on it while using it as a Live CDhttp://www.goosee.com/puppy/multi-puppy.htm
A few other liveCD do this as well.
More seriously, the new is that what IBM developped doesn't mess with the stuff you already have on your cellphone or MP3 player.

As much as I love Gnome and its friendly rival KDE, I dislike how bloated it has become. It seems to tax my machine more than parliament (a little joke). I cried when I found my machine was running better under Win2000 than it was under Mandrake (I personally have switched to DSL ) .
Now, I am hardly advertising that to use a windows manager such as Fluxbox or IceWM would be the most intelligent alternative, since a lot of the 'bloat' in these window managers are features which makes said windows manager easier for those new to linux. But something has to be done; along the lines of a group to go through the source, and throwing-out weight. Removing redundant code, unnecessary code, and getting rid of as many memory-hogging resources as possible.
What I am advocating is a 'slim-fast' project, to try to modify KDE or gnome to the point that it is smaller, faster, and yet still useable by Linux newbies. A true challenge, and just as important as adding features. Remember the Soviet stance in technology - The more complex an object, the more likely it is to fail.

I believe http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ can do this, using Qemu. I haven't tried it yet, but they claim the bootable USB pendrive can boot from bios or from within Windows.

Try DSL.
DSL probably won't support your fancy mouse, but you might as well give it a go.

tiny IDE/CF interface recommended (and sold) by DSL

tiny IDE/CF interface recommended (and sold) by DSL

Get the tiny Debian

Oh, wait, I found it. It requires GTK+. Hm. Are there any good WMs which don't have any gtk+ or Qt dependencies? Remember, I said GOOD. I've used wmaker and its ilk, but something a little more modern would be nice.

Oh, and I'm also familiar with DSL, but I hate Debian...

Used Damn Small Linux make sure it has the dos tools. Set up the device to be bootable or to use a boot disk.
Boot it.
At this point you can just wipe the drive and install linux :-P
Or you can mount the dos drive and copy the files over.

I have a PC with the ability to boot USB and DSL is awesome. http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

You can also put it on a micro CD or business card CD.
URL:http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/cd.html:

My advice: get DamnSmallLinux . You can install that on the compact flash (or USB stick). You can install it to work just like a live-cd. That means no writes, (flash doesn't like to many writes). Damsmall has Rdesktop and VNC, firefox already installed.

A fanless mini-itx + compact flash shouldn't need fans at all.

Also get a Waterproof Foldable keyboard. There not expensive, and keep all the dust etc. out. Very robust

Mmmh. *gets out his coding gloves and yells for coffee*...

The commercial products are slick but expensive. If you use DamnSmallLinux it becomes trivial and cheap to recycle an old laptop that you have lying around. You can pick up one on eBay with decent specs for less than $75 that will hold thousands of pictures and is even networkable. A 100MHz pentium, 64MB RAM, and 800MB HD will hold thousands of pictures, is networkable, and will consume less than 40 watts.

There's a good explanation of this sort of thing here with a program that will reduce resolution and quality of a batch of pictures so that the pictureframe laptop doesn't need much CPU power. The same program can also be used to display a slideshow, or you can use any number of script/program methods.

Good explanations elsewhere in internet on removing the keyboard and making it look less like a laptop and more like a pictureframe... or leave it mostly intact and use it to surf the web when desired.

Very true. That's why I like DSL linux which fits onto a 50 Meg credit card CD. Because it's banging against it's limit (which they won't change, that's the point of it), they only put the really good and important stuff in.

Damn Small Linux would run well on a system with those specs, but doesn't include the software you want. Check it out and see if you can modify it to suit your needs... It's worth a spin, and not that large a download. At any rate it has VNC so you could use it as a thin client.

If you can't make links by now you shouldn't be on Slashdot.

http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

I work in an assistive technology facility and most of the screen reading software we see is Windows-based. JAWS has been around since the Windows 3.1 days, so it's got a distinct advantage in both market share and code maturity. As open source software gains market share, they may consider porting JAWS to Linux, but so far they don't seem interested.

There are a number of open source projects out there targeted at creating accessible software, such as the Gnome Accessibility Project.
There's also Oralux, a liveCD distro that supports brailleterms and voice output using Emacspeak.

I find the Oralux approach very appealing since it's the first step toward blind users being able to carry a complete set of accessibility tools around on a CD that will work on stock x86 hardware. Students can access school computers without the need for accessibility tools actually being installed on the machine as long as the curriculum materials are not in a format that requires proprietary software.

What would really be interesting is to see Oralux boot from a memory card like Damn Small Linux does. Accessibility on a keychain would be rather groovy, and it would free up the CD drive.

I'm curious, will Fluxbox be on this "light" disk? I ask because the summary says that the most 'popular desktop'. That would be KDE, but light it is not!

Pure conjecture, but I expect the light CD would include KDE. I think the light CD will be quite similar to the latest Knoppix release, except with a variety of package updates. The maximum CD should have everything, including the token "kitchen sink"

It all depends upon your definition of an "older computer." Theirs, I think, is still in the P-III range (650 mhz - 1.8 ghz). Mine, however, is completely different. My primary computer is a Celeron 500 and I don't expect to upgrade any time soon. KDE is painful on my system, but other lightweight WM's run flawlessly. I beleive they're leave the "really eh'fin old" computer segment to distros like Damn Small Linux (which, incidentally, is a heavily stripped down version of Knoppix).

If you want to run an os from flash, I think Damn Smalllinux is the best.
Damnsmall has the option to perform a 'frugal-install' This will install the live cd on the cd on such a way that it runs exactly like the live cd. That way, no writes are performed if you use it. Since flash don't like to many writes, that important. Also it allows to add extra apps through the MyDSL system and allows for restore state partition (yes that means writing, but only just prior to stopping the system).
So you even though it's a live system, you can still update and save stuff.

Try the Damn Small Linux bootable 128MB thumb drive. Sure, it costs more than a 128 MB thumb drive should cost, but you're supporting a cool Linux project. (Note: I have no affiliation with the DSL project)

If your friends boot it and don't like what they see, they can alway reformat and have a handy thumb drive.

As an aside: While DSL is cool, it is not the best presentation of Linux to a first time user. Its minamilist configuration (under 50 MB) is a little too sparse... Anyone know of a good distro that aims to stay under 128MB that's a little more full-featured and will fit on a cheap thumb drive?

Try DamnSmallLinux. It can fit on a business card size 50MB live CD. It's chock full of some brilliant apps, and can easily be configured to fit any system. The CD works on even older CDROM drives. Plus, it's lightning fast :)

I run Firefox 0.9 on a remaster of Damn Small Linux 0.8.2. I don't need much of a hard drive, especially if I use a usb pen drive for the restoration of my personal setting for this Live CD OS. Can't afford Microsoft products, so I have to make my own...

I recycle old computers. My house overfloweth, my garage overfloweth, my warehouse overfloweth, my dad's garage overfloweth, etc..
You would not believe some of the Dino's I have. Some of the best stuff of "the glory days".
I have a genuine IBM XT 5160 with 640k, 10m "hardcard" and IBM color display. I keep it to play **OLD** Sierra games.

I really want to put it on my lan somehow so I can download games on demand from my big machines because of space on the 10m..

I've got other Dino's too. A few years ago I finally scrapped out my Burroughs B700 and my B730 mainframes. They had dual 15" removable hard disks of a whopping 5 megabytes each!
I fired up the B730 and my neighborhood went brown out just before my old time screw-in fuse box burst into flames... So much for that.
I gave all the cards to my dad so he could miser the gold out of them.

Seriously, it's SCARY the stuff that I have. If you want to walk through the past, my house is the place.

I pickup old computers and refurbish and repair them. Very few are not repairable.

I can install Damn Small Linux on even the oldest clunkers and turn them into usable internet terminals for people that don't want to or can't spend much money on a computer. We're talking cheap... (and to the smart-alecs that visit my website just to beat me up, ignore the prices, they are NOT valid, MOST of the stuff I get in I GIVE AWAY FOR FREE to my son's church.....)

Anyway, don't throw old computers away, fix them up and have some fun. I could crap when I see people gut out old computers and electronics and replace the insides with modern stuff. I was aghast when I saw what some moron had done to one of those cool ass old Predicta TV's a few months ago.

If you just can't stand looking at it anymore, send it to me but for god's sake, DON'T TRASH IT!

Wonder what linux they run, probably they need the RAM for something, so Damn Small Linux would be the right distro for them.

Sorry if it's unrelated

Don't forget to support DSL by buying a USB (2.0) pendrive with it already installed:

http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/usb.html

Not only will it be useful for projects such as these, but will also help you fix friends computers (quickly check if it's a hardware or software-problem etc); and you can have a lot of "look, I erased Windows and installed Linux for you while you were away"-fun... ;-)

You could check out Damn Small Linux, which is a very small Linux distro.
You can install it to your hard-disk, too.
I, for instance, installed it onto a 200 MB hard-disk in my PentiumMMX. Runs really well.

This caught my eye:
and is optimized to run well on older hardware. Even old Pentium PCs run well on this distro
Not because I want to spend way more than is practical to upgrade an old box, but because it will run on old computers, and perhaps on a lot of different computers.
Why is this important? What has come about to make me want to know if it will run, etc.
Download the latest Damn Small Linux, burn it to CD, and get back in here with your results as to whether or not it runs on your box!

Here's a little adventure with a 486.. So first-generation Pentiums should do the trick.

A friend brought me his machine to upgrade.
A Frys cheapo Linux special, originally it came with a 30g, 128m ram and Thiz Linux. I Thized the disc straight into the trash and installed Suse 9.0 on it for him when he first got it.

Well, as time went on he realized that his system needed upgrading. So I sent him to the store and he brought back another 128m ram, a 120g drive and Suse 9.1 Pro.

The plan was to have the old doggy 30g as his boot/OS/work drive (hda) and his new 120g as /home (hdb)....

Well, booting up 9.1 does not come up and say
"Hey, I see you have data on your drive already and a new blank drive. Would you like to move it around in anyway before we procede?"

No, Suse just suggests that you wipe everything out and start over. Even if you tell it you want to do an upgrade, it has NO PROVISION what-so-ever to allow you to format the new drive then move your old /home from hda to hdb then reformat hda and partition it up in a useful way.

Ok, so in light of this, I took Damn Small Linux 0.8.2
and booted up. Opened a root terminal, fdisked hdb, formated it for ext3 then moved all of his old /home data from hda to hdb.

It copied EVERYTHING. Hidden files, configurations, email, cookies, bookmarks, music, photos, the whole works.

When it was done I booted into Suse 9.1 pro, did a NEW INSTALLATION and wiped hda clean, installed the OS on it and told it that /home is on hdb1.

I created the same user and password as the old system so Suse looked at the /home on the new 120g drive and asked me if I wanted to change the permissions and ownership over. I said yes.

The install proceded normally to completion.
When it was finished and I rebooted the system, it was identical to the way it was brought to me except that he now has a 120g /home directory instead of the 10gigs he had before.

Damn Small Linux is the very best tool a tech can carry with him. I keep a copies on biz cards in all of my tool boxes and in each of my vehicles.
I don't leave home without it.

I also carry standard Knoppix in case I run into a case where I need k3b on the ailing machine.
I have several other versions of Knoppix I keep handy for various network jobs, like knoppix-std
and a few other network related Knoppix knock offs..

I've been doing this with my 128mb USB watch for quite awhile now. There's a few USB jumpdrive linux distros out there.

Here, Here, Here, and Here too.

But this is all provided whatever PC you hook it up to allows to boot from USB (usually USB-ZIP).

While not 10MB, Damn Small Linux at 50MB would be doable overnight.

Alternatively, you could try ordering a full set of Fedora, Mandrake, etc. CDs for under $5US, which is pretty minimal. Certainly within a budget for trying out a new OS.

How about tiny linux

... a small Linux Distribution for i386 derived from SuSE 6.4. In the base version it just contains the things which are necessary to run Linux. Therefore the base package is rather small and requires approx. 7MB./SNIP

or DSL

.. a nearly complete desktop, including XMMS (MP3, and MPEG), FTP client, Dillo web browser, links-hacked web browser, spreadsheet, Sylpheed email, spellcheck (US Engli /SNIP

Or go with my favourite and install just what you require...

Admittedly you can't get the source to the OS or the Win32 API but it generally isn't necessary

You were talking about hackers right? Having the source code to the OS and the API's is actually a HUGE bonus to hacking around on your system.

And in the grand scheme of things the development tools typically comprise only a small amount compared to the other development costs.

Yeah, you're talking about development in a professional sense. Hacking encompasses alot more than that.

How about some real "mind-boggling" advantages?

I think if you decided to be honest, having the source code to your OS, applications, and utilities would be a mind-boggling advantage for hackers/programmers.

I am playing devils advocate somewhat here - I _like_ Linux as a development platform. However, to claim that Windows is "infinitely worse" for programmers and hackers is far from what I've experienced..

Hey, if you haven't ever wanted to peak under the hood of your OSs kernel, opened up the source code for your word processor, or wanted to see what made your filesystems repair utility ticked, then good for you. But I would question whether you are a hacker or a professional programmer. That's according to my definition of hacker tho, your mileage may vary.

Here's something fun you might get a kick out of, I did...
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/
I've already added a couple of my favorite tools to this distro. A full working, useful OS on a business card CD. Try that with Windows.

I should add, I'm generally not a windows basher. It's great for Joe user to get his work done, among other things. But in the context of hacking, forget it, windows isn't even close to Linux.

Ok, I see that improved laptop support is one of the touted features here. My question is, how good is it?

I just switched back to windows (rather painlessly, thanks to the excellent QtParted and, strangely enough, a windows ME boot disk [for an XP machine--needed to restore the MBR]). I can't tell you how greatly it pains me to do so--as far as i'm concerned, linux is ready for the desktop, and has been for some time. ACPI-based laptops though, are another story. I've been trying for weeks to get my battery life to come close to what's possible under windows, and while the Software suspend project seems to work for a lot of people, i could never get it to work on my laptop (or maybe just my kernel). I've tried various distributions, from suse to xandros to straight debian to knoppix and even the simpler ones such as DSL and none of them allow me to really use my laptop for more than about an hour (give or take a quarter) without plugging in, which is just unacceptable for my purposes.

So i finally gave up and dropped the linux partitions and reinstalled the boot sector (oh how that final 'fdisk /mbr' pained me!) but at least i can spend three and a half hours at a coffee shop without needing an outlet. cygwin takes the edge off, but its a bit like methadone if you asked me.

so anyway, for anyone who's tested and/or used the new version of MDK on a recent laptop, what's your experience with the ACPI support? Battery life? Suspend functionality? dare i ask--functional keys? (yes, i know that's not really related to acpi, but mandrake is generally pretty conscientious about things like that, i thought perhaps they might have integrated a solution.)

Someone please fix the URL. It should be:

http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

Thanks.

Damn small linux (D.S.L) points to http://www.damnsmalllinux/ which makes some browsers, think it should slap a .com (or whatever) onto that and end up on a advertisement page. Now http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ is the correct link. Just FYI.

I've been running Damn Small Linux at home lately, another business card sized linux liveCD.

I'll take a look at feather. Sounds interesting.

What we're really looking for is a live CD with decent CD burning capabilities (to test hardware on the road). (I think we might have more luck with a USB or Flash based boot though)
Anyone has a suggestion on a live CD that includes "friendly" cd testing/burning software?

I've got DSL running on a laptop with a dead HD and screen, PII-300 with 96 megs of RAM. Luckily the CD-ROM still works fine. It's chugging away seti@home work units quite happily, and I've got Nethack installed on it O:)

10:21:12 up 86 days, 16:17, 1 user

Damn Small Linux is really good. 50 Mb of Penguin Power.

DSL has been doing this since at least 0.6.x. See: DSL USB + Floppy ~ 50 Mg and change the /dev/hda3 entries to /dev/sdaX, whatever your USB block device is recognized as. From damnsmalllinux.org, see the save settings to HD, and again use the USB instead. Rather amazing what they include on just 50 megs, and all apps are light weight enough you may actually get some work done.

Another similar distro is Feather Linux. And for the google-challenged, here are the links to damn small linux and dynebolic: DSL, dynebolic.

I hope you recheck this posts to get this, because wow what a shit response you got from slashdotters! I have been trying to do the same thing for the last week or so and have found some good resources. Wierd that all the slashdotters say is "get hard drive". Yeah, thanks for that one!

One of the best resources I've found so far is over at damnsmalllinux.org (in the forum, here they have a pretty good how-to on this. I also found a really good discussion of it in the Gentoo forums somewhere, but I forgot to sync my firefox bookmarks today, so I don't have it.

For the project Im working on I can't use a hard drive, but Ive got heaps of memory - so Im just going to use ramdisk for swap space and stuff. That gets around the trashing your key thing. Probably not an option for an old lappy though! Good luck!

That's just not enough! For all your swearing and tiny linux needs, try Damn Small Linux