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It's always fun seeing new (to me anyway) software for the first time.
interface and several apps
muse
freej

This posting reminded me of an interaction that I had with a co-worker. He wasn't a developer in the hard core sense. He was the head of the team that did the web design. He could do flash. I don't know what that entails since I was director over the development team. I don't have any experience with flash.

He wanted to set up a server for his fiance's school. They could not afford Windows and he knew that Linux was cool so he chose Redhat. I believe it was around version 7 at the time.

He would tell me his stories of frustration about setting up RedHat. Every time he wanted to change a configuration option, he would reinstall the OS.

Before the Windows pandemic, I did a lot of System V work. I switched over to Windows because I could make more money but I still would run Unix at home for personal reasons. I ran Microport Unix for a while. I believe my first exposure to Linux was a distro from Walnut Creek called yggdrasil. Now I have old versions of Redhat on both a laptop and a desktop and I play around with these bootable CDs like dynebolic and knoppix.

You can see why I didn't have any problems with Linux. It would never have occurred to me to keep reinstalling Linux whenever I wanted to make a configuration change but that was what came naturally to the co-worker.

I don't know why he made that choice and I felt a little embarrassed to ask. I guess that was the first UI he saw concerning configuration and it was easy and he didn't try to look around for any other way to make his configuration changes.

I did give him some tips and I believe that he did successfully deploy Linux for the school in the end.

Lindows is great but what I'd really like to see is a choice: Knoppix, Dyne:bolic or Biatchux. These are all GNU/Linux live bootable CD-ROM based operating systems with automatic hard ware detection, which makes them particularly well suited for such a purpose. Knoppix is a general-purpose system, Dyne:bolic is for multimedia production and broadcasting and Biatchux is a data recov./forensics anal. and incident response tool, which is great if one buys a new hard drive because one's old one contains important data but the system/security failure has made it inoperative. I do really hope more hard ware vendors will employ my idea, which I have been promoting for quite some time now as someone who is sort of into operating systems in my institute. Lindows should prepare the new ground for professional operating systems. This is great news indeed. All we have to worry about is making sure there will be no hard drives with Microsoft operating systems preinstalled, but Microsoft is a convicted illegal monopolist, so they wouldn't be able to do it anyway, thanks to DoJ verdict. Great news and a very interesting article.

Dynebolic is at 1.0beta... It's pretty nice, though it wouldn't boot on one of my boxes. Still, once they work out the kinks, it'll be a nice little linux-on-a-cd.

How about dynebolic and Gis-Knoppix?

...(Once again).

To produce this CD you need a Linux box (and only a linux box) to create the disk.

This is really pretty worthless if you have a different flavor of Unix (can you say porting nightmare), a Mac, or a Windows Box.

Dolemite
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Having a look at one of their screenshots, I noticed that the dock icons in the top right-hand corner look suspiciously like those I remember from my KDE days a couple of years back. It appears they have stolen these icons to spiff up the appearance of Window Maker/GNUStep, which IMHO is rather sneaky.

I paid $150 for a used Xbox from an EB Games in Florida, and (not technically part of the Xbox, but now intimately connected ;)) a clip-on LCD screen from intec. That was also $150, so, so far I've spent $300, but I know I need to purchase at least one more thing, which is either a modchip or a memory thingie loaded with the buffer-overflow code from the 007 game.

The reason I spent so much for a (tiny -- 5.4") LCD screen is that (so I was told by the EB clerk, at least :)) the xbox won't run without a video output connected, and I bought this to run in my car.

(Pawn-shopping, I might have found one cheaper, but ... EB I figure has a decent reputation, and if the box was broke, I'd have better luck there than at Ed's Pawn & Guns.)

I have already downloaded one live-ISO distro for the thing (dynebolic); until I have a modchip, though, it's just a clunky but surprisingly good-sounding CD player. (The speakers on the intec screen are not outstanding, but they're decent for my tin ears.)

Why an xbox for the car? You don't have to agree with my reasoning, or taste (of which I have none), but my thoughts go like this:

1) I want a CD player for the car. I don't have one, and I happen to like my head unit (an oldish but *old* Blaupunkt system with a simple, logical control layout and a line-in), so I'd rather not pay for a CD head unit. (I also think most of them have terrible control layouts, just really bizarre design decisions.) CD player is for some music, and for the audiobooks that Cracker Barrel conveniently stocks for $3/week ;)

2) I'd like an ogg player for the car. I've been compressing my CD collection to ogg, and it's a lot simpler to carry 3 CD-Rs than 30 CDs.

3) When stopped (or for passengers) I think a video screen is neat in a car. Futurama in DiVX, for instance. Frivolous? Yes. I would not like to spend thousands of dollars on a video system, but as a nudge toward the xbox as a possible do-everything car computer, it works.

4) With a USB hub attached and a GNU/Linux system installed, I'm hoping I can hook up a web cam and use is as a low-tech DVR for the car.

I don't care too much about games per se, and will probably be using a no-solder modchip with the Cromwell BIOS, so Xbox games are probably out, but Frozen Bubble ...

If anyone would like to offer a memory card with the hack that makes a modchip unnecessary (for a fair price), let me know quick, before I order a regular modchip :)

timothy

I've downloaded the ISO but not yet had a chance to burn. So, with that disclaimer (that is, I have not yet used it), I would like to point out that the dyne::bolic Linux distro is alleged to run on Xbox. (Modded only -- "of course," says the lead developer ;) -- oh well, no Xbox prize!)

If it works well for me on a standard PC, I might buy an Xbox as an in-car audio / video player :)

timothy

Although dyne:bolic seems only to provide free software, it's a little short on packages. Morphix (which is based on Knoppix) avoids non-free software as well, but includes more packages. This makes it more useful as a demonstration for free software, I think.

Note that Knoppix is way less idealistic than Debian.

Hey, thank you for pointing this out. You're right, I discovered acrobat reader on the CD. I'm now looking at dyne:bolic, on their website they claim only using free software.

While we're on the subject, these guys are putting together a decent bootable distro. I have their 0.5.2 and it boots and finds all devices on all four of my x86 boxes. No KDE or Gnome mind-you, though it uses blackbox with a choice of themes, so I'm happy (though I prefer enlightenment). It also has mozilla and found the NIC on all the boxes. And it has their MuSE software for streaming audio, which is what the whole thing is about, I think.

I heard that they're getting close on a vers. 1.0. I'll definitely be checking that out. It'd be cool if eventually you could put it on a CD-RW and be able to save your settings and work on the same disk. That and I'd like to figure out some way of cracking hard-drive permissions so it would actually be useful for maintenance on a errant machine.