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I thought one of the primary draws of puppy is it was a "live" system - no need to install.

I haven't used it in at least that long, myself - so I couldn't tell you if that was changed. To be honest I couldn't tell you what it looked like! I used puppy for a very short while. For me, DSL replaced it (and even then I didn't use that long, preferring instead to just install a "normal" distro). I've used what feels like dozens of distros and I keep landing back at either Debian or CentOS even for my desktop. They don't have that big a footprint unless you install everything :)

Damn Small Linux is a modern distro. It's one made to work on things like 486's. The nice thing about Linux and the open/free format of the environment is that it's AMAZINGLY agile and adjustable. It makes the term IT RUNS LINUX into a catchphrase. Do try to keep up.

Seriously, I think you need to read up on how these technologies work.

I really do. Because I actually don't know much about, well, most of this. I'm a C developer working in avionics, not some sysadmin who has to harden networks. But the fact that your claims are refuted by the most basic of internet searches show that you're full of shit.

My point was that on average, Windows is more secure than most Linux distributions

A contentious argument, but one you're free to make. I'd suggest you put forth some sort of justification for that statement.

Due to the mitigating technologies done right...

And what such technologies would those be?
MAC, ASLR, DEP, and UAC? I've shown that Linux incorporates those mitigating technologies. Your argument is invalid. (Pft, "Done right"? Come on)

...and increased focus on security...

Sheet marketing fluff.

...resulting in few vulnerabilities.

Well Linux developers take longer to close the vulnerabilities, but look at the numbers. There are a LOT less vulnerabilities for Linux. (in 2012 at least). Furthermore, the entire report was a piece of FUD made by a MS partner who was trying to spin it best they could. I have no doubt that MS has had an increased focus on security. Unfortunately, they like their marketers more than their engineers, and they're working that propaganda machine hard. And apparently you've fallen for it. Seriously, just ask around.

What about PuppyLinux or DamnSmallLinux?

http://puppylinux.org/ http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

Both are tiny, and boot in less than a minute.

What about http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ ?

InfoMagic -> Debian (but never successfully configured the X server) -> Mandrake -> Gentoo -> Ubuntu
But I've always been dual Windows(MS-DOS)/Linux, being mostly Linux only since Ubuntu.

Also, some live distros, either on hardware or in VMs : BlueOS (Linux on a floppy ; not sure of the name), Knoppix, LNX-BBC (buisness-card sized CD distro), DamnSmallLinux...

Remember when you could install your OS with a floppy? Try a DVD now. The current Debian dist is 8 DVD's, over 300GB.

I get what you're saying about bandwidth and I agree, but OSs aren't really that much bigger, its just all the optional bloat bolted on top that takes up so much space.

Damn Small Linux can squeezes in under 50MB.

Long Answer: Reword you request and the risk becomes a little clearer. "I'm starting a new job soon, and I will be issued equipment which I have agreed not to use for personal use. I am compelled to use it for personal use anyway. How can I do that." You have to first weight the cost and the benefit. Is surfing the web worth losing your new job?

On the other hand, screw Greyface, here's how you do it. Don't try any of the approaches you've mentioned. If they have tracking software installed they may have software keyloggers and remote desktops as well. They MAY have hardware keyloggers. They probably don't, but that's the risk you're taking.

Get an live Linux distro you can boot off of USB, one that allows you to store stuff back to the USB stick. Damn Small Linux is a good one. Do your personal stuff EXCLUSIVELY when booted to the stick. That's about the best you can do. Best of luck. May the Source be with you.

Damn Small Linux is pretty featureful (especially for recovery) and comes in at under 64MB, which would easily fit in a cheap onboard flash chip. So it seems the reasons why you can't have this sort of thing in ROM aren't technical or financial.

Of course the fact that you could boot it off a USB stick on your keyring means there's an easy workaround...

Maemo runs X and native Linux apps on smartphones and tablets. I love it. Sadly, it hasn't really caught on.

Seems like it wouldn't be hard, just need an X.org or whatever with framebuffer support. X.org might be too big though, a stripped down non-networkable X might offer better performance.

If it were non-networkable, it wouldn't be X. But stripping it down hardly seems necessary; you can run Linux + X.org in 64 MB RAM (and I'm sure it can be done in less), and most smartphones have a lot more memory than that.

DamnSmallLinux is pretty cool. You can put it on a flash drive and basically have a personal OS wherever you go. The only drawback is that you'll have to figure out how to get it to save to your flash drive if you plan on using it for any sort of local work. But otherwise, they make it really easy to download free apps online, from Firefox to Nethack.

I just use Linux for most of my surfing, but light VMs are very easy to set up and worth doing for the education.

I like Portable VirtualBox for Windows use because I can make a self-extracting .rar of the complete program with VMs for backup:

http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/portable-virtualbox.html

Grab a light Linux distro like DSL (small download, speedy performance), and install to VM from the .iso:

http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

You can then play with MANY operating systems, and if they screw up, delete their VM. If you have bigger problems, reload by extracting the backup. :)

"Not if they visit using a Live CD based OS."

VMs aren't just for running "installed" operating systems. :)

A live CD image boots nicely under QEMU and VirtualBox. Grab some .isos and enjoy.

http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ is small, light, and fast, but you can run Ubuntu and similar images.

If you remaster your image with custom software, you can use it as easily as a premade .iso.

Coral Cache:

http://www.goodgearguide.com.au.nyud.net/article/351651/12_most_interesting_unusual_useful_linux_distros/

List of the distros:

• Damn Vulnerable Linux
• Tinfoil Hat Linux
• CAINE (Computer Aided INvestigative Environment)
• CAELinux
• Ubuntu Christian Edition
• live.linuX-gamers.net
• Parted Magic
• Musix GNU+Linux
• Zeroshell Linux
• Mythbuntu
• Damn Small Linux
• Tiny Core Linux

steveha

what about DSL it can be booted from inside windows (download the embedded version) using a preconfiguerd qemu can that fits under 100mb so low download time as well. http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/download.html

Awwww, come on no mention of DSL why not? DSL http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ is a great little distro and will fit in 50mb of space!

DSL works well. It's 50 MB, can boot off a USB flash stick, and comes with its own virtual environment for running within MS Windows. It's probably missing a few features you will want for teaching a course in Linux, though.

I also like Puppy Linux. I was able to make an MP3 player out of a small thin client computer and this OS. I just had to modify a few shell scripts, and plug the TC into my home stereo.

Exactly what I was thinking. This too http://tinycorelinux.com/ I run it on my PII.

DSL works well. It's 50 MB, can boot off a USB flash stick, and comes with its own virtual environment for running within MS Windows. It's probably missing a few features you will want for teaching a course in Linux, though.

I also like Puppy Linux. I was able to make an MP3 player out of a small thin client computer and this OS. I just had to modify a few shell scripts, and plug the TC into my home stereo.

He was speaking in absolute terms. Yes, the kernel could be much smaller. It is getting out of hand, relative to the simplicity of BSD and RTOS's and that means that in absolute terms it's bigger than it need be. Distros like dsl get around this by using older versions of the kernel, leveraging the brilliant Busybox (thanks Bruce!), leaving out unnecessary drivers and applications.

He could not have been talking relative to Windows. W7 x64 is a 20GB install - even before you add an office suite or the antimalware suites we've all come to know and love. Given the history it's reasonable to expect W8 will require continuing innovation in installation media.

I, for one, am glad Linus worries about such things in absolute rather than relative terms; instead of selling it to hardware partners as "it's a great way to drive adoption of new hardware!" This might mean that version 3.0 of the Linux kernel will be a total respin to eliminate cruft.

You also need good amount of CPU and RAM. Websites and especially video streaming and flash games are quite heavy, and so are the heavily-ajaxied Google apps.

To be precise : Adobe's crappy flash plugin and most current Javascript *interpreters* require lots of processing power.
What I mean is that the current slowness of Flash and AJAX is mostly due to current software not being efficient enough.

But google has quite some budget to leverage - both in terms of cash and brain power - to tackle this problem.
Their effort on Chrome's (browser) flash JIT compiler show that this is actually their intent.
(Similar as other work in other browsers. It seems that every browser conceptor is currently trying to make Javascript less CPU-power hungry).

Now if Google also could use their resource to bring a decent open source Flash plugin that isn't a huge useless junk (For example: finishing to make Gnash compatible and making it efficient ?)

Nonetheless, there are current (closed, proprietary) implementations of flash already running on embed hardware, so it should be achievable by google.

Last but not least : CPU performance of ultra low power embed CPU is currently rising - The next generation of ARM Cortex A9 is supposed to provide dual cores for the same power envelope as current single core Cortex A8.
In addition to that, handheld and palmtop CPUs usually have some special purpose hardware in addition to the ARM CPU (usually some DSP/FPU and some PowerVR 2D/3Dcore) - so the most CPU intensive task - decompressing the video streams - could be done in hardware.

And like someone said, shown hardware had 32 GB SSD card, which isn't really dirt cheap either.

That's probably because it is the smallest SATA SSD that you can quickly buy nowadays. They just went for a quickly customised Netbook using off-the-shelf parts.

But keep in mind that Chrome OS is basically just a browser-as-a-GUI running over a simple graphic server on a linux kernel. A minimalist Linux distribution is pretty much enough.

I've personnally already managed to cram Linux installations on 4GB Compact Flash modules (you can plug them directly into a IDE connector given the proper cable. CF and 16bits PC-CARD are basically ATAPI with a miniature connector.)
You can find projects like Damn Small Linux which pack much more functionality on minimalistic LiveCDs. (On 50MB mini CD !)
As another example OpenMoko manages to cram quite a few linux tools into 256MiBytes images.

We're really far from the minimal 16GB requirement of Windows Vista and 7.

In theory you could run Chrome OS into something like a Pandora with a bigger screen. And could indeed jury-rig something like this using Beagle boards.
That means having a Chrome OS low-power machine build *today* out of *hobbyist* parts. Now think about the near future, with mass produced units.
By 5-10 years, as the GP wrote, it's entirely possible that you could find such hardware with a bigger screen and a slightly better CPU within reasonable costs.
Even earlier than that I think.

The answer to your question is "Damn Small Linux". You can install it from floppies; instructions here: http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/install_from_floppy.html. Runs beautifully on lower spec hardware than you've got.

Guess you idiots can't read as he stated the laptop he's talking about pre-dates USB and doesn't have any. Nor does it have a NIC and the HD is less then 1GB

You are an extremely rude person. Even if guides to install DSL in _exactly_ that situation like this were not so easy to find, anything you can copy to a Linux formatted hard disk from a Linux rescue floppy can generally be installed. DSL is a great candidate.

Dead you say?

http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

The site is up, the forums are running, its stable.

What is wrong with a distro MADE to run on that old a hardware like DSL? Here is a walkthrough which will show him how to network install DSL using a machine with similar weak specs and a PCMCIA card.

For what he wants DSL should give him a nice experience, although 28Mb of RAM is pretty shitty, surely he could pick up a cheap stick that'll fit the thing from eBay? But otherwise it sounds like what he wants is DSL. I have run it on some truly old an shitty hardware to make 'one off" appliances out of (my personal lowest was a 200Mhz with 64Mb of RAM and a 2Gb HDD. With DSL and Gnumeric it made a great little bookkeeping box) and for an older laptop like that straight DSL should work just fine, although again I would see about putting a cheap stick in there to kick it up to 64Mb. Good luck!

DSM Damn Small Linux fits in 16meg

http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

You don't mention if a floppy is accessible, but if it is, here you go. DSL is just about the most minimal functioning distro I have found. Of course there is always slack, but you'll have to go a few versions back to install using floppies and network. And there's always a way to get usb but I doubt you'd be able to boot from it...

Personally, I'm biased towards Debian so I'd recommend DSL. It even has a gui, if you want one! ^_^

The only issue I see is you have to make the floppy disks version from an ISO since it is not distributed standard as a floppy disk set.

Here is a tutorial to get DSL installed with floppy disks: http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/install_from_floppy.html

Have you tried Damn Small Linux It sounds like exactly what you want. It will run on a 486 with 16MB of RAM, and 50MB harddrive. It runs X, Dillo is included, and has several install methods available, not just live disks.

Let me introduce you to Slackware. Slackware requires:

        * 486 processor

        * 64MB RAM (1GB+ suggested)

        * About 5GB+ of hard disk space for a full install

        * CD or DVD drive (if not bootable, then a bootable USB flash stick or PXE server/network card)

Let me introduce you to Damn Small Linux. Damn Small Linux requires:

  * i486
  * 24MB RAM
  * 50MB of hard disk space for install with X-Window environment
  * CD or DVD drive, or USB flash stick, etc to install.

If you are running something that low of RAM you would probably be better served by one of the distros that specialize in older machines, like DSL or Puppy. Of the two DSL is probably the most RAM frugal, but I prefer Puppy thanks to "puplets" which are pre-built Puppy derivatives, everything from super light DEs to even a mini LAMP/XAMP server.

I may be a Windows guy, but I also believe in using the right tool for the job, and below 256Mb DSL or Puppy would serve you better than XP or a mainstream Linux like Ubuntu. If you've never tried either one I would go for Puppy, as the puplets make for a smoother experience with less of a learning curve. They even make a few with an XP or Vista skin, if you prefer to keep the Windows "look and feel".

Damn Small Linux and Puppy Linux work well on older machines. Give 'em a try.

http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

www.puppylinux.org/

Replace the 5.25" floppy disk drives with 3 1/2 inch and download DOS from some site. As to what you can run on it, you may have better luck with one of the smaller Linux distros, like Damn Small Linux

And... who says 64MB isn't enough to be interesting? ----> http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

The OLPC package is nice, but I still would prefer DamnSmallLinux http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ for this sort of thing.

You're seriously suggesting elementary school students use DSL?

The OLPC package is nice, but promotion words promotion description blah blah DamnSmallLinux http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ blah blah advertisement promo.

err.. how much are the DSL devs paying you for this promo? Let me know as I am interested in a piece of the action, dude.

The OLPC package is nice, but I still would prefer DamnSmallLinux http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ for this sort of thing.

If you want that "Wow" feeling from a machine with those specs you really need to run DSL, DSL-N or Puppy, in order from fastest to slowest, although Puppy is still awfully fast.

IMHO both the mainstream Windows and Linux have simply gotten too bloated for the low spec mobile devices, hence we have things like Moblin. But I don't see how even Moblin can touch something like DSL-N for "wow" speed factor when you can load the entire OS into RAM with the TORAM flag and only be using 100Mb of RAM. So if you are wanting the "wow" speed over the pretty I'd try those three and see which you like best.

I've been giving DSL-N to customers with battery issues and since it is so light on resources you can actually squeeze some more life out of your battery by going with an "ultra low resource" OS like DSL-N. And who wouldn't rather how more battery life than bling bling effects?

If you want that "Wow" feeling from a machine with those specs you really need to run DSL, DSL-N or Puppy, in order from fastest to slowest, although Puppy is still awfully fast.

IMHO both the mainstream Windows and Linux have simply gotten too bloated for the low spec mobile devices, hence we have things like Moblin. But I don't see how even Moblin can touch something like DSL-N for "wow" speed factor when you can load the entire OS into RAM with the TORAM flag and only be using 100Mb of RAM. So if you are wanting the "wow" speed over the pretty I'd try those three and see which you like best.

I've been giving DSL-N to customers with battery issues and since it is so light on resources you can actually squeeze some more life out of your battery by going with an "ultra low resource" OS like DSL-N. And who wouldn't rather how more battery life than bling bling effects?

Here is the link for DSL, here is the link for DSL-N, and here is the link of what you get for DSL-N. If the laptop is gonna be used in class I would recommend DSL-N over DSL due to the fact that it comes with Abiword over Ted and Gnumeric, as well as Gaim and pretty much anything else you would need to stay connected. it also runs on the 2.6 kernel as opposed to 2.4 for DSL, which is really for older hardware.

Speaking of older hardware I have an old Compaq 733Mhz desktop with 384Mb of PC100 RAM, and just to give you an idea of the RAM usage with the TORAM flag set at bootup I am using 62Mb of RAM in DSL and 97Mb of RAM in DSL-N with ZERO swap usage in both. This makes even a machine as old as that incredibly responsive and a pleasure to surf with. As I said I have had quite a few customers come to me with the laptop battery problem and having the entire OS loaded into RAM not only helps responsiveness but also helps with battery life since you don't really need the HDD.

Both DSL and DSL-N are so small I've found they run quite well from flash or CD with the TORAM flag and therefor your HDD need never be touched. Unlike many of the "micro distros" DSL and DSL-N are quite user friendly and GUI based so no problems if you need to let a classmate borrow the laptop occasionally. On something like a laptop where every watt counts I would highly recommend them over Ubuntu and Fedora, and since with TORAM you can run off flash or CD Rom without messing up your install all it takes is a little time to play with it and see if you like it. But I can say that my customers with battery issues really like the easy interface and the extended life they get with the DSL distros. And hey, who doesn't like getting some extra battery time for free?

Here is the link for DSL, here is the link for DSL-N, and here is the link of what you get for DSL-N. If the laptop is gonna be used in class I would recommend DSL-N over DSL due to the fact that it comes with Abiword over Ted and Gnumeric, as well as Gaim and pretty much anything else you would need to stay connected. it also runs on the 2.6 kernel as opposed to 2.4 for DSL, which is really for older hardware.

Speaking of older hardware I have an old Compaq 733Mhz desktop with 384Mb of PC100 RAM, and just to give you an idea of the RAM usage with the TORAM flag set at bootup I am using 62Mb of RAM in DSL and 97Mb of RAM in DSL-N with ZERO swap usage in both. This makes even a machine as old as that incredibly responsive and a pleasure to surf with. As I said I have had quite a few customers come to me with the laptop battery problem and having the entire OS loaded into RAM not only helps responsiveness but also helps with battery life since you don't really need the HDD.

Both DSL and DSL-N are so small I've found they run quite well from flash or CD with the TORAM flag and therefor your HDD need never be touched. Unlike many of the "micro distros" DSL and DSL-N are quite user friendly and GUI based so no problems if you need to let a classmate borrow the laptop occasionally. On something like a laptop where every watt counts I would highly recommend them over Ubuntu and Fedora, and since with TORAM you can run off flash or CD Rom without messing up your install all it takes is a little time to play with it and see if you like it. But I can say that my customers with battery issues really like the easy interface and the extended life they get with the DSL distros. And hey, who doesn't like getting some extra battery time for free?

Here is the link for DSL, here is the link for DSL-N, and here is the link of what you get for DSL-N. If the laptop is gonna be used in class I would recommend DSL-N over DSL due to the fact that it comes with Abiword over Ted and Gnumeric, as well as Gaim and pretty much anything else you would need to stay connected. it also runs on the 2.6 kernel as opposed to 2.4 for DSL, which is really for older hardware.

Speaking of older hardware I have an old Compaq 733Mhz desktop with 384Mb of PC100 RAM, and just to give you an idea of the RAM usage with the TORAM flag set at bootup I am using 62Mb of RAM in DSL and 97Mb of RAM in DSL-N with ZERO swap usage in both. This makes even a machine as old as that incredibly responsive and a pleasure to surf with. As I said I have had quite a few customers come to me with the laptop battery problem and having the entire OS loaded into RAM not only helps responsiveness but also helps with battery life since you don't really need the HDD.

Both DSL and DSL-N are so small I've found they run quite well from flash or CD with the TORAM flag and therefor your HDD need never be touched. Unlike many of the "micro distros" DSL and DSL-N are quite user friendly and GUI based so no problems if you need to let a classmate borrow the laptop occasionally. On something like a laptop where every watt counts I would highly recommend them over Ubuntu and Fedora, and since with TORAM you can run off flash or CD Rom without messing up your install all it takes is a little time to play with it and see if you like it. But I can say that my customers with battery issues really like the easy interface and the extended life they get with the DSL distros. And hey, who doesn't like getting some extra battery time for free?

I think that at this point it's getting unacceptable to have a gigabyte OS and it still doesn't do anything will out adding more software.

I know we're supposed to be used to ACs making dumb comments, but seriously. There are plenty of small or potentially bare bones FOSS operating systems available.

I can't comprehend why they'd be using anything other than NetBSD in space anywayz.

Here's a sort of corollary idea... HyperSpace or ESXi with DSL or similar runs on the machine (from flash, of course) and if you want to run something more complicated you load it in a virtual machine. One possible virtual machine would be a LAMP appliance that would make the browser in your machine more useful by hosting web applications; another one would be a storage appliance...

I know its a bit tacky to respond to your own post but looking at http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ it seems like advertisers are already exploiting NoScript's implementation to let its ads slip by. Just visit it with ABP + Noscript then let the scripts run (for the damnsmalllinux.org and googlesyndication.com

Didnt take Google very long to exploit this now did they?

What the hell are you doing using computers that aren't yours? Even worse, you're using Windows while doing it! You should keep a copy of Damn Small Linux on you at all times. This will prevent you from having to use Windows and help protect your freedom.

DSL

I'll bet I could make FreeDOS work if I really tried. Not that it would be useful.

I prefer DSL on business card CDs.

Alternatively, you could stick with "standard" Linux (like DSL on your SBC and then run another GUI than X11 + Gnome/KDE/etc. I played five years ago with an Agenda PDA (remember those??), which was running a tiny Linux with FLTK (Fast Light ToolKit, pronounced "fulltick") on top. Developing in FLTK was very straightforward, which is probably important for your Industrial Contol application. And it is pretty portable, I ran the same applications on my Agenda PDA, a Linux Desktop or on my Windows PC.

Now you could also argue that Android on your SBC would give you a better choice of GUI-ed apps on your device like a browser and email. I guess that that's what finally will drive your decision, do you prefer "standard Linux" with all its tools, as long as they are non-GUI, or are the GUI-ed tools that come with Android the right ones for you.

You might like to see what I've been keeping an eye on then:

This site has kind of a turn-key feel to it for my hobby needs:
http://damnsmalllinux.org/store/motherboards/EPIA_5000

Here is some other mini board news etc.
http://www.mini-itx.com/

and of course, newegg is your friend:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813121342

I'm experimenting with the various junk cases I've got in order to do something that is retro, not steampunk, and qualifies as a useful hack. Seeing an old VCR in the entertainment cabinet is cool, better if it is a mythtv system with wireless keyboard/mouse. Small odd looking cases is just some how more aesthetic than standard white box cases that 'look' like computers. I bought a computer credenza recently (used for $20) that needed a leg repaired. I'm thinking about embedding the mobo etc. in the underside of the desk. That won't require small parts etc. just some plexiglass to keep fingers and cats out of the electronics.

I know a little bit about this because I am one of the developers for TurnKey Linux, a new opensource project which builds small installable live CDs (we're up to 9) optimized for various mostly server-related tasks. I've been investigating supporting live USB mode.

Your generic run-of-the-mill USB drive has about fourth-half the read/write performance of your hard drive nowadays (10-15MB/s). Since there are no moving parts (spinning platters), usually the seek times are very good.

There are several things you can do to optimize the performance of an operating system running live from a USB drive:

1) buy a faster USB drive: a good USB drive (e.g., Lexar JumpDrive) can have 2-3 times the performance of a generic.

2) Use a Linux distribution with a smaller footprint such as DSL (50MB) or Puppy Linux (standard edition is 68MB): the smaller the footprint, the less your drive has to read, the faster your system will load.

3) Try loading the operating system system into a ramdisk: many live USB distributions have the ability to load themselves into RAM. With some you have to add a cheatcode in the bootloader. Others do it by default if there is enough memory (usually not a problem with small distributions and modern computers).

4) Try turning on readahead: many distributions which are designed to run from a live CD or live USB have a feature that reads ahead various files important to the boot sequence sequentially. Whether or not this helps depends on the characteristics of the storage medium you are using, but you should investigate it.

Didn't read the minimum requirements? No donut.
Didn't look for alternatives? No sympathy.
Not to sound heartless, but no *buntu is exactly light.