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...or Live CD/DVD distro dedicated to CAD. It might be a simpler "install" process than VM, since nothing is actually installed on the student's machine. Some synergy from sites like http://www.tech-edv.co.at/lunix/CADlinks.html and http://www.linux-live.org/ might do it. -kf

Or just use the old dd command (it's short for "donvert and dopy" -- the obvious "convert and copy" abbreviation was already taken), which is found on pretty much every live / system rescue CD. I mostly use DSL or Slax, because they're small, but Knoppix works. I can't really recommend tomsrtbt anymore (shame; Lua is such an interesting language) due to the demise of floppy drives. Boot from CD, plug in and mount a USB HDD (not included; this must be bigger than the partition you want to back up), # dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/mnt/sda1/windows_image & (if = input file = the drive partition you wish to backup, of = output file = a (new) file on the HDD. You'll get a response like [1] 1234 - note down the number after the square brackets. Typing # kill -USR1 1234 -- substitute the number you wrote down before in place of 1234 -- will give you a progress report.

Later, if you're into that sort of thing, you can compress the image using bzip2 (it'll shrink well, since most of it will just be freshly-formatted disk space) and save it onto a bootable DVD. Change the DVD's /etc/motd to show the instructions to unzip the file into its rightful place (it'll be something like # bunzip2 /windows_image.bz2 > /dev/hda1 but depends on where you got it from and where you put it; do not be tempted to skip this step, because you will forget in the meantime how it was done) and put away in a safe place.

I came across this just yesterday. I think it may be just what you're looking for. It's a collection of scripts to turn your own personal linux installation into a live cd or usb boot disk. Pretty cool stuff. Hope this helps. Good luck!

http://www.linux-live.org/

The Ubuntu Customization Kit (some old version here, with screenshots) looks useful, and Linux Live looks even more general.

It probably won't work with my current or next computers (currently Debian; next most likely to be dual boot Mac OS / Kubuntu). And anyway, I have a telephone with a perfectly good MP3 player and USB mass storage. Unfortunately it's a Sony Ericsson; but I reckon I got the last laugh on them anyway since I discovered (in parallel with many others, so I can't take full credit) how to rip off CDs with the Sony Rootkit, on a PC that had already been infected. (*cough* Slax *cough*)

I have a one-word solution: Edubuntu.
Just install Edubuntu, make a live CD with the http://linux-live.org/ scripts, and install it to a USB drive- or a few hundred. There has to be some child-proofing software in it somewhere.

"What's the point? Why spend $600+ on a PS3 only to put Linux on it. You can get a PC much cheaper, one which will happily accept most any Linux distro with alot less pain.

*If* I buy a PS3, it will be so I can play cool games and watch Hi-Def (blu-ray) movies, not so I can load Linux and surf the web on a 65" screen.

Just because you *can* doesn't mean you *should*."

so do you consider $600 for a Hi-def PPC/Cell based linux to high a price for this box ?, can you do the same for less on a x86 box ?.

it seems that all the main people contributing to the advancement of PPC linux are indeed useing gentoo PPC64 and the fact is, the toolchain for devs to make use of the SPU units are right now available there throught the hard work of several good linux people.

theres a liveCD and a stage4 you can use, and its getting better every day as more and more people report their experiences with it.

see #gentoo-ppc64 for yourself, and as far as iv seen if a problem gets reported there, it gets fixed PDQ.

as easy as x86 slax to make your own personal liveCD's, perhaps not, but the devs are trying to give you a good base and write the needed Altivec/spu patches in time for YOUR benefit so give them a break and help them out were you can seems only fair.

if makeing a new PPC based slax could be your idea of fun so go do it if you like and let everyone be happy and have even more PPC FUN
http://slax.linux-live.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1 1497&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=30&sid=eb0d6b3 d5c298b5cf34bfdb2dd928fc2

if your a x86 dev looking to program the PS3/PPC/Cell/spu's etc for the first time iv tryed to put together a list quick list of the most useful links/papers here http://www.powerdeveloper.org/forums/viewtopic.php ?t=1082 if your interested in things PPC related.

I like SLAX as my general purpose boot-and-go CD, but I'm also getting to like DSL. That will boot fine on older, slower hardware. I find Knoppix is just too big and clumsy anymore {though we should not forget that DSL is based on a trimmed-down Knoppix}.

Some versions of TheOpenCD used to include a bootable, cut-down Ubuntu; but it seems as though they're now concentrating on providing Free software to run on Windows. Which I suppose is better than trying to spread themselves too thin.

Compact Flash disks are quiet ... silent.

With unionfs, diskless/read-only-or-write-occasionionally installations are much less work.

http://www.linux-live.org/

1-2 gig compact flash is cheap, as are CF-IDE adapters.

Even fedora can fit in and run from a gig of flash.
My laptop is diskless. Sadly it has a fan...

You don't need an emulator. Just grab a bootdisk such as Slax or Knoppix. Boot from this. Although you probably won't find Kalzium on the CD, you will still be able to install it from the net. Slax accepts Slackware packages and Knoppix accepts Debian packages.

You might even find you quite like Linux, and decide to install it permanently .....

1. Download Slax
2. Boot up with slax copy2ram
3. Login as root, password toor
4. Swap Slax CD with music CD
5. Navigate to some writeable directory under /mnt/. Useful commands {this is by no means a full unix primer}: ls to list contents of directory. Blue is a directory, green is executable, red is compressed, cyan is a shortcut, magenta is a media file, yellow is a device, white is a boring old file.cd to change directory, cd .. to go to parent directory, mkdir to make a new directory. TAB key auto-completes a filename after typing first few chars, cursor up/down to go back/forward through command history. Remember there are 52 letters in the alphabet.
6. # cdparanoia -B

Exactly!

It's the same in Britain, where a person's rights of "fair dealing" generally are not specifically enumerated but are left for the courts to determine {though I believe it's already been held that recording a TV programme is legal if your TV licence was paid up at the time of recording and you only keep it for 28 days; I don't have a citation for this, and I think this would effectively outlaw the use of DVD+R media for TV recording, but you can still buy one-time-write media so make of that what you will}.

It certainly sounds as though this move is intended to pre-empt a court ruling. If they legalise it specifically now, they can regulate it tightly and include nasty provisions like "..... unless specifically prevented by technological measures" {clue: this gets around even the Sony rootkit and can be used to rip protected or unprotected CDs even on a computer which is already infected}. If they wait for a court case which will legalise it generally, then they can't include such measures. Theoretically, even anything not specifically allowed under this new law could still be held to constitute fair dealing anyway -- but the ease of getting away with disobeying an unjust law is dependent on the perceived injustice in the law disobeyed, and until you think about it for five minutes this does sound fair.

Easy to use/install
Knoppix
SLAX
OpenSuSE

First Time User Tips
The first thing a Windows User should do is find a BootDisk and boot to a Command Prompt. (This the screen is all black and the mouse doesn't work.) You'll need to use that big piece of plastic that came with your computer called a "Key-Board". Type in word 'fdisk' , then hit the enter button and the follow the instructions to 'clean' your hard-drive. Doing this will clean up all of the extra files that computer doesn't need.
OR
Before you start the computer open the cd tray and place the OpenSuSE cd in it. Feel free to use any tools you can find to pry the cd try open. Close the tray and start the computer. Once the application starts it will guide you through Updating the Operating System (The Windows).
Good Luck.

Unix in all its incarnations has always been a highly modular architecture; like a hi-fi system composed of separates rather than a ghetto-blaster. If you know you won't be listening to any LPs or Walkman cassettes, just CDs, you can build a hi-fi system with just a CD player, amplifier and speakers -- and you haven't got the excess baggage of sound sources you won't be using.

The Linux kernel is also modular. You can build device drivers right into the kernel for speed, or have them as loadable modules for convenience.

A distribution's "standard" kernel must by necessity incorporate enough drivers to be able to boot up on a wide variety of hardware, because the distributor can't know in advance what it is being used on. And most distributions don't start by compiling a kernel tailored absolutely to your system. {Gentoo fanboys in 5 ..... 4 ..... 3 .....} And, of course, everyone experiments with several different applications in the same sphere till they find the ones that suit them. The end result is that almost every GNU/Linux installation ends up containing more than is required: a kernel with unnecessary device drivers, and some applications that never get used.

In that respect Negroponte is spot-on. We're just a bunch of spoilt, lazy westerners who can afford plenty of RAM and drive space. That's a sign that Linux is becoming successful: in the early days, Linux was run mainly on older kit, sometimes even salvaged from skips, because that was the best anyone could afford. Success will change you, however hard you try not to let it.

But since these machines will be electronically identical, it ought to be easy to create a custom kernel with drivers for only the devices actually installed. It might even be worth hacking X so as to support only the built-in display {sure, it's fun running printerdrake to set up someone else's printing from your desktop; but the way these things will be networked wirelessly, chances are they'll be near enough as you can just walk across and sort it out}.

If you want to see what can be done in not much disk space, check out Slax Popcorn Edition or Damn Small Linux.

Those who are prepared to take the time, can still shoehorn a lot of functionality into not much space. There are already appliances running customised versions of Linux on microcontrollers; and these are being made in much smaller numbers than the proposed Negroponte laptop. So it will definitely be worth the effort to trim away some of the excess, even if nothing else comes from it that can be applied to other areas.

what i'd like to see is a live bootable cd for a server that the first time you boot from it with a clean storage drive, it asks for setup preferences and writes those to the hard drive or flash drive.

Check out SLAX Server Edition: slax.linux-live.org/download.php

Documentation: saving configurations and webconfig

Features: slax features

Note: I am not affiliated with Tomas Matejicek, but his work on this LiveCD is awesome, and I use SLAX for diagnostics, to check out hardware for compatibility with Linux, etc frequently.

what i'd like to see is a live bootable cd for a server that the first time you boot from it with a clean storage drive, it asks for setup preferences and writes those to the hard drive or flash drive.

Check out SLAX Server Edition: slax.linux-live.org/download.php

Documentation: saving configurations and webconfig

Features: slax features

Note: I am not affiliated with Tomas Matejicek, but his work on this LiveCD is awesome, and I use SLAX for diagnostics, to check out hardware for compatibility with Linux, etc frequently.

what i'd like to see is a live bootable cd for a server that the first time you boot from it with a clean storage drive, it asks for setup preferences and writes those to the hard drive or flash drive.

Check out SLAX Server Edition: slax.linux-live.org/download.php

Documentation: saving configurations and webconfig

Features: slax features

Note: I am not affiliated with Tomas Matejicek, but his work on this LiveCD is awesome, and I use SLAX for diagnostics, to check out hardware for compatibility with Linux, etc frequently.

what i'd like to see is a live bootable cd for a server that the first time you boot from it with a clean storage drive, it asks for setup preferences and writes those to the hard drive or flash drive.

Check out SLAX Server Edition: slax.linux-live.org/download.php

Documentation: saving configurations and webconfig

Features: slax features

Note: I am not affiliated with Tomas Matejicek, but his work on this LiveCD is awesome, and I use SLAX for diagnostics, to check out hardware for compatibility with Linux, etc frequently.

Check out http://slax.linux-live.org/, it's a 185 MB distro. Or you can roll your own.

try http://slax.linux-live.org/download.php and http://slax.linux-live.org/modules.php?category=sy stem&id=641&name=VMwareWorkstn+5.5.1+for+slax+5.0. 6 module add the module to the disk image, burn it and your done.

try http://slax.linux-live.org/download.php and http://slax.linux-live.org/modules.php?category=sy stem&id=641&name=VMwareWorkstn+5.5.1+for+slax+5.0. 6 module add the module to the disk image, burn it and your done.

There's a powerful incantation specially designed to deal with shopkeepers:

Sale of Goods Act 1979, as amended.

The mere mention of the phrase is enough to send a shiver down the spine of even the hardest retailer; junior sales assistants have been reduced to gibbering wrecks by a particularly powerful rendition. Goods must be of merchantable quality and fit for the purpose described. If you explicitly mentioned at the time of sale that you intended to transfer it to an iPod and were not advised that this would not be easy, then the album is not fit for purpose and you are entitled to a refund. Even if not, if you were given reason to expect that this would be easy, then you might have a case.

But in any case, you can rip DRM-protected "CDs" to an iPod. You might need Slax if you aren't already a penguin-shagger. Even if your PC is infected by the Sony rootkit, Linux has its own set of drivers and will see the audio tracks just fine.

This practice is legal as long as you don't get caught. If you are unlucky enough to get arrested, insist to go to Crown Court. As long as there are two people on the jury who have ever taped an album, you'll walk free -- and establish a precedent. The case is most likely to collapse before it gets to trial, so don't bother booking the day off work.

Run your machine with a live CD.

http://slax.linux-live.org/modules.php?category=ne twork&id=588&name=Mozilla+Firefox

Australia, Australia, Australia, amen!
You can stick it in a thumbdrive
You can hold it in your hand

I personally like SLAX. It makes it easy to roll-your-own with SLAX modules. Check it out.

The sad thing is that this "DRM" doesn't actually accomplish anything except false description, trespass to chattels bordering on criminal damage, misuse of a computer and aiding and abetting criminal damage and misuse of a computer. And it only manages to rack up that charge sheet under Windows!

Quick way to get around it: boot up a copy of Slax using the cheatcode slax copy2ram, swap the CD, cd into your hard disk {it'll be under /mnt somewhere} and you can then use # cdparanoia -B to rip off the audio tracks with no problem. You can even go
# for i in *wav; do lame -h $i; done
or
# for i in *wav; do lame -h $i && rm $i; done
if you don't care about keeping the wav files.

FeatherLinux http://featherlinux.berlios.de/
Slax http://slax.linux-live.org/
FlashPuppy http://www.goosee.com/puppy/flash-puppy.htm>

Good Luck

"I wonder how long before someone makes up a "copy your CDs" image that can be loaded to a USB dongle, and boots into a copy of Linux with a pre-configured ripper." are you refering to SLAX http://slax.linux-live.org/

Thanks for posting that link. I tried it out, and it was ok, but on the page you linked to, there was a distro called Slax. I'm in it right now :)

What's interesting is, (and maybe this is common, but if so, I didn't know it) you can run this small but full featured distro completely in RAM. It even ejects the CD when during bootup. It's pretty fast to begin with, and even more so when it's running entirely from RAM.

Give it a shot if you haven't seen it yet. http://slax.linux-live.org/

SLAX Linux is perfect to start with, Hand out some SLAX Mini-CDs. Have two choices, SLAX KillBill for Intermediate Computer Users, and SLAX Popcorn for Novices. SLAX

A better alternative to damn small linux is austrumi. Full versions of Abiword, the Gimp, gnumeric, mplayer etc., rather than the cut-down alternatives DSL tends to include. Also, in the medium range I recommend SLAX.

In my humble opinion (and having used BartPE before) I think it might have been a better idea to use one of the abundantly available Linux LiveCD's (Knoppix or variant, Morphix or variant etc) purely for security reasons. A custom built live cd using one of the freely available script sets would probably be the best route to go.

I tested Ubuntu live cd, and found the menu was stripped down, similar to what is found in Beatrix Linux.
Also, did not like the file manager provided, I'm an Emelfm fan.
Tried to listen to internet radio stations on Shoutcast, and found that Ubuntu only does .ogg stations, so had to google that to find an alternative. There is no alternative to Shoutcast, really, so they need to fix that. Almost all the livecd distros have some kind of shortcoming becomes noticed with testing and use. I try and work with each one for a while to see just what I can get it to do. Keeps me busy.

One gets used to the Gnome wm in Ubuntu, but I would like KDE. Sorry to see Debian going without KDE.
In my Knoppix remaster, (screenshots in signature), I default to IceWM to keep it lite, but also have Fluxbox and KDE. One can switch back and forth if needed.
It's true that Knoppix puts all kinds of programs in the menus, and that probably is confusing to a Windows user trying a Linux desktop out. That's probably why Ubuntu limits the menu, and it is nice and simple to be sure. Very much like Beatrix.
Other problem with the livecd Ubuntu is the long bootup. Knoppix is much quicker, and does provide a way to restore personal settings. I did not find that in Ubuntu anywhere.
I'm running SLAX 5.0.5 now, and can restore my programs and settings at bootup from a big file called slaxconf.mo on another partition.
SLAX uses KDE, but can boot into Fluxbox. I added Firefox and Opera8, and the SLAX configsave did keep all of that, something that Knoppix cannot do in a restoration. It takes a remaster to do that.
The latest Knoppix has Firefox, almost everyone else has put it in their livecd distro by now, including a new SLAX popcorn edition.

I've used (formerly Mandrake) Move, Knoppix, SLAX, and Mepis. Most people I know who have heard of the live CDs have heard of all of those, and a bunch more.

I use LiveCDs quite a bit but almost strictly for repair or support of an existing system. I will often find myself needing to boot up a LiveCD in order to bring peace back to the troubled partition.

On another note I specifically find the lightweight LiveCD Slax to be one of the best. A really nice feature it has is if you have at least 256MB of RAM you're able to load the entire CD into the RAM Disk and effectively run it without a CD.

While knoppix is good I find slax better. It had writing to everywhere on the filesystem before knoppix, better init detection stuff (IME of course), includes koffice which was unfotunately dropped from knoppix for space reasons, and is generally much nicer. Fits in a much smaller space, which makes caching the whole thing in RAM a real possibility (with knoppix this is impractical with less than a gigabyte), and is generally faster and lighter (it can manage with 32mb ram). It's also modular in a really easy way (I've made my own modules, which is something I never managed with morphix) Get it here

With the advent and subsequent improvements of LiveCD distros, it should be relatively painless for the average /.'er to:

* Create a multi-session CD/DVD with your favorite Linux LiveCD distro
(or roll your own and create an ISO for future use)

and

* Backup email files to said CD/DVD
(I suggest a set of re-writable media of good quality to play it safe.)

Further suggestions:
1. It would be advisable to split your archives (ie. Mail2004, etc.), especially if you plan to retain a sizeable amount of mail.
2. Convert archives from older mail clients before creating backup, or use a newer mail client that can read the old files with ease.

Good luck!

• There are some apps I know from Windows that I can use in Slackware. Firefox, Thunderbird, Citrix etc.
• There are some bundled KDE apps that are pretty self explanatory: a CD player, mp3 player, instant messenger etc. They're all easy to find and labelled clearly.
• The K menu widget is easy to use if you've used the Windows start menu.
• Fast autodetection and set up my video card and all drives. Nice.
• I can open .doc, .pdf files sent to me by my colleagues.
• I can cutomise the wallpaper, theme the menus etc. This means a lot to most people.

• I had to configure my network and soundcard from the command line. The soundcard was easy to to configure though alsaconf, though.
• I'm still not sure how to get access to the network printer... CUPS has offered to portscan the company network, but that makes me look like an attacker.
• There's no one way to copy and paste, which is confusing.
• The different KDE panel widgets have different context menus; some can be removed from the context menu, some cannot.

SLAX using unionFS has been in development for months now. it would be out, but unionfs still has a lot of weird little bugs that need to be worked out before the whole thing will work well. fabian (from knoppix) has been posted a bit with tomas (from slax) at the unionfs bugzilla, as well as on the slax forums: http://slax.linux-live.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3 790&start=15. as can be seen from that link, an alpha using unionFS has been released. careful though, it doesn't include ALL of the apps that are normally in SLAX, it's mostly a check if it will boot and load KDE on a wide range of hardware.

Or combine Slackware with a Live CD like Slax, or my own Audio/MIDI tuned Slackware LiveCD, m-dist.

klax-install

There's a plethora of Live CD's to choose from at the live cd list. As for customization, check out this how-to or this site dedicated to making live cds.

So, flame my flaming n00bness, but how do you customize a live CD distro and then make a new live CD distro out of it?

Is Linux really, truly, more secure that Windows? or does Linux have the same problems as similar M$ products but because of the lower market share, the problems don't get the same publicity?

It is ... inheritably way more secure.
Even Sun Microsystems (a competitor) acknowledges that.
Most Unix-systems are ..

Goes without saying even Microsoft uses Linux webservers (akamai) to fend off DOS attacks to their site.

If Linux surpasses Windows in market share, how long before the adware/spyware/malware/virus/pop-up writers start coding for Linux?

That will take a long time because Linux is not so easily exploitable. There is a bureacracy of permissions, policies and layer restrictions in Linux that makes the environment quite hostile for such exploits. That can also be offputting for the user.

Nothing is impossible but :
1. It would take extremely talented hackers to write such malwares.
2. Whatever exploit holes appear they should be closed almost immediately unlike what happens with Microsoft.

The commercialization not the popularization of Linux could make it less secure. Because people prefer to double-click executables rather than going through a whole series of procedures to install the application.

Best advice is to try a live-CD such as Knoppix or Slax for yourself.

Don't believe anything you read (pro or anti Linux) - but try and research for yourself.

There is no way to find the right Linux distro for you unless you try some out and that is the beauty of these Live cd's. When looking for a new car do you get overwhelmed because there are about 5 bajillion different make/model/options when looking for a car? A computer is the same, you must do some research and do some test driving first. First of all writeups like these should be of some help to you though you might also want to find a friend or someone you know that uses Linux and get their opinion. Obviously since you are a "power user" you should be able to handle it just fine.

For some recomendations I would check out SLAX and Ubunutu (Live cd download is here

I personally use SUSE, but their Live-CD sucks. If you decide to go with a KDE based distro that is what I would choose. If you like GNOME more I would go with Ubuntu. Also, although a lot of people seem to like Knoppix, I have never really liked it too much (mostly because of the messy menu structure). So there you go, try them out. What have you got to lose (besides some time downloading, bandwidth, and a couple blank cd's)?

If preventing physical access entirely is not possible, it's best to make sure that you have a tough BIOS password and booting from CD disabled. Just about anything on any hard drive can be accessed with a custom built linux Live CD. In a world with free 250MB web-mail accounts, you just e-mail anything you find interesting.

I generally recommend Slax as a good place to start when making a custom CD.

Aero

Well, now that you mention it, Slax is a pretty nifty bootable Slackware CD. Of course it's not full to the brim with apps like Knoppix is, but that's also not the Slackware philosophy.

The latest is 180 MB so it can fit on one of those small CDs, the "Professional" edition is 234 MB, and the "Frodo" edition is only 34 MB (console only, just the way we Slackers like it). It's pretty useful for futzing about with a system. It's got very good hardware detection (in my experience), KDE, fluxbox, and the programs you'll probably want for a nice minimal live CD. And I really like the KDE theme. :)
--
"Donkey, if it were me, you'd be dead."

Parent has it right... I'll take Slax please.

Austrumi is a better business card CD. And for a mini cd, try SLAX.

Live-CDs aren't only good for test Linux, but Live-Cds are wonderful rescue Cds and make Linux-boxes where only windows is available.
I usually use Slax because it fits on a small 8cm CD-RW.
Gentoo it's another Live CD to add to the list whatever I can i'm goint to test this one.