Slashdot Mirror

Make a virtual machine with the software for a register in it. Then companies could just customize that image and deploy it on any workstation. VMware has USB pass-through, so you can use a USB barcode scanner with whatever software you make/choose for the bundle.

I'd recommend doing it on the moka5 LivePC platform. Then the VMs can be updated via the web automatically.

The system you described is what I use every day. It is called Moka5 BareMetal, and you boot into it and select what virtual environment you want to run. The virtual environments (what they call "LivePCs") automatically update when the version on the server is updated. It keeps the user data (documents, settings, etc.) separate so you can revert and update the system without losing your data. You can suspend them and they start up pretty quickly. Makes using XP and Vista a lot more pleasant, plus I have a bunch of other Linux distros installed. It's a very cool system.

To stay on topic, there is a Moka5 LivePC for HaikuOS available for download, so you can try out Haiku without installing it.

The system you described is what I use every day. It is called Moka5 BareMetal, and you boot into it and select what virtual environment you want to run. The virtual environments (what they call "LivePCs") automatically update when the version on the server is updated. It keeps the user data (documents, settings, etc.) separate so you can revert and update the system without losing your data. You can suspend them and they start up pretty quickly. Makes using XP and Vista a lot more pleasant, plus I have a bunch of other Linux distros installed. It's a very cool system.

To stay on topic, there is a Moka5 LivePC for HaikuOS available for download, so you can try out Haiku without installing it.

Check out the LivePC Engine. It lets you take a virtual machine image and put it on a USB key. You can put a secure linux web browser in a VM on the USB key and ship it to your mom. She'd just plug in and accept autorun. Every time she plugged in the key it will rejuvenate back to a clean state. You can make you're own LivePCs or use one they have made, like "Fearless Browser" or "Ubuntu 7.04"

Mind that Moka5 would be a good option as it uses the free VMWare Player, and lets him have a distribution run within Windows.

set up the laptops with a standard image that has one locked down user account that automatically signs in. then use livepc technology to let you automatically push an updated image via the web/lan to any machine whenever a user launches it. they have some smart caching technology that lets you carry the images on a usb stick so you can work off-line and it can do automatic backups to a machine whenever you plug the usb key into it. its pretty much perfect for managing a clean maintainable mobile environment.

They have a bare metal version that boots directly off the stick, so you don't need to worry about a compromised OS. I keep all my passwords stored in the Fearless Browser, encrypted with a main password. A hardware keylogger will only be able to capture my USB stick password, which is useless without my USB stick. It's an easy way to do two-factor authentication.

Instead of this, you can get Fearless Browser for free and install it on any USB drive. It is far more secure than any Windows version because it runs in a Gentoo-based virtual machine. It comes preconfigured with Tor and OpenDNS anti-phishing, and is updated frequently. I carry it around everywhere I go and use it at friend's houses and public terminals that I don't trust.

Somewhat like Moka5's bare-metal version does?

If you are interested in anonymized safe browsing, check out the Fearless Browser. It is a totally secure browsing environment that runs inside a stripped down Gentoo virtual machine. It includes Firefox 2.0, Tor for anonymous browsing, OpenDNS for phishing protection and fast DNS lookups, encrypted IM with GAIM, and MPlayer with video plugin for all your "favorite" sites. It has become my browser of choice. I carry it on a USB stick and can use it anywhere.

<shameless-plug>
You should try out our moka5 LivePC Engine. We implemented 3D graphics virtualization support on top of VMware so almost all Direct3D games run at (moreorless) full speed. We often play Half Life 2 network games in the office inside of a virtual machine. (We call it "regression testing" :-).)
</shameless-plug>

<shameless-plug>
You should try out our moka5 LivePC Engine. We implemented 3D graphics virtualization support on top of VMware so almost all Direct3D games run at (moreorless) full speed. We often play Half Life 2 network games in the office inside of a virtual machine. (We call it "regression testing" :-).)
</shameless-plug>

right, i'll believe that when winged primates fly out of my rectum... access time is one thing, but actual read/write speed is another.
http://www.moka5.com/reviews/2006/11/usbstick4.htm l
(ignore the selected drives)
http://www23.tomshardware.com/storage.html?modelx= 33&model1=676&model2=676&chart=34
right, i'm going to kill a flashdrive just so my windows will run more swiftly.
(i know this is more of the same, but i can't resist) way to go microsoft; for your next trick, are you going to shoot your other foot?

I work for moka5, and you can do this with our software. The LivePC Engine lets you run virtual machine images (like your favorite distro) from a USB drive on a windows computer. There are some Linux-based LivePCs on our website, and you can easily create your own. It's a free download -- hope you try it out. We can answer any questions you have on our forum or via email.

I work for moka5, and you can do this with our software. The LivePC Engine lets you run virtual machine images (like your favorite distro) from a USB drive on a windows computer. There are some Linux-based LivePCs on our website, and you can easily create your own. It's a free download -- hope you try it out. We can answer any questions you have on our forum or via email.

I work for moka5, and you can do this with our software. The LivePC Engine lets you run virtual machine images (like your favorite distro) from a USB drive on a windows computer. There are some Linux-based LivePCs on our website, and you can easily create your own. It's a free download -- hope you try it out. We can answer any questions you have on our forum or via email.

I work for moka5, and you can do this with our software. The LivePC Engine lets you run virtual machine images (like your favorite distro) from a USB drive on a windows computer. There are some Linux-based LivePCs on our website, and you can easily create your own. It's a free download -- hope you try it out. We can answer any questions you have on our forum or via email.

There will always be exploits. Some jerk can always dig through code or disassembly and find a way. This means that our computing environments are inevitably disposable once they become popular (aka targets). One could accept this and use a technology that works for this model. If for example you made a Norton Ghost image of your computer once it was set up properly and then restored from this whenever things went awry, you'd only have to avoid browsing the sketchier parts of the web until you got your security updates. Some people are working on making this much simpler. If you were to browse inside a virtual machine that rolls back to a safe state each boot, then you would automagically throw away any exploits than dug their way into your system.

Check out the bare metal version of our moka5 LivePC Engine. It is pretty much exactly what you are referring to: A tiny, stripped-down version of Linux made for running VMware virtual machines. It includes some neat features like being able to publish and share your virtual machine with others, "subscribe" to a virtual machine and automatically get updates, and demand-page and cache virtual machines so you can run them without having to download the whole thing.

There are already lots of preconfigured Linux environments that you can download and try out with a single click. My favorite is the LiveCD feature, where you can try out a LiveCD without having to burn it or even download the file - the system demand-pages only the blocks that it needs. Pretty slick.

Check out the bare metal version of our moka5 LivePC Engine. It is pretty much exactly what you are referring to: A tiny, stripped-down version of Linux made for running VMware virtual machines. It includes some neat features like being able to publish and share your virtual machine with others, "subscribe" to a virtual machine and automatically get updates, and demand-page and cache virtual machines so you can run them without having to download the whole thing.

There are already lots of preconfigured Linux environments that you can download and try out with a single click. My favorite is the LiveCD feature, where you can try out a LiveCD without having to burn it or even download the file - the system demand-pages only the blocks that it needs. Pretty slick.

Check out the bare metal version of our moka5 LivePC Engine. It is pretty much exactly what you are referring to: A tiny, stripped-down version of Linux made for running VMware virtual machines. It includes some neat features like being able to publish and share your virtual machine with others, "subscribe" to a virtual machine and automatically get updates, and demand-page and cache virtual machines so you can run them without having to download the whole thing.

There are already lots of preconfigured Linux environments that you can download and try out with a single click. My favorite is the LiveCD feature, where you can try out a LiveCD without having to burn it or even download the file - the system demand-pages only the blocks that it needs. Pretty slick.

Check out the bare metal version of our moka5 LivePC Engine. It is pretty much exactly what you are referring to: A tiny, stripped-down version of Linux made for running VMware virtual machines. It includes some neat features like being able to publish and share your virtual machine with others, "subscribe" to a virtual machine and automatically get updates, and demand-page and cache virtual machines so you can run them without having to download the whole thing.

There are already lots of preconfigured Linux environments that you can download and try out with a single click. My favorite is the LiveCD feature, where you can try out a LiveCD without having to burn it or even download the file - the system demand-pages only the blocks that it needs. Pretty slick.

Check out moka5 http://www.moka5.com/ it may be just what you are looking for. This was a project out of Stanford and was presented at a Usenix conference last year.

- Joe

Why not just have a PXE server on hand to quickly and easily image your computers over the network? If a system goes down, it'll take only a few minutes to image it with a sysprepped base install and bring it back. Acronis SnapDeploy http://www.acronis.com/enterprise/products/snapdep loy/ provides this functionality quite handily, bundling the PXE server and image deployment in one nice little package. This is quite a viable solution if you don't have too many hardware platforms to support, or one need a few basic images of a locked down XP workstation.

With VM's, aside from the bandwidth and performance considerations, realize that the host machine could just as easily go down. Then you're stuck again. Though this is less likely, it is a possibility. If you do decide to go this route, do consider cacheing the downloaded VM between sessions (so the mass download every morning doesn't happen).

I've heard of a company, Moka5 http://www.moka5.com/, attempt to do something similar. I'm not sure what their status is, but it might be something to look into for the future.

Though this is an interesting idea, there are a number of detractions. I'm a huge fan of virtualization, and have found it great for development, testing, and on server platforms. Rolling it out on desktops as primary workstations seems a bit ambitions. However, I still wish you the best of luck.

Roy Shi.

• Mobility. Your "machine" is just a bucket of bits. Once your "machine" is virtualized, you are no longer tied down to a single piece of hardware. You can sit anywhere and have your complete environment. Having a hardware issue? No problem, just walk up to another machine and start using it where you left off.

• Isolation. Once everything is wrapped up in a virtualized sandbox, many security problems become a lot easier. You can easily isolate and monitor what the guest is doing, and it's darn near impossible for even malicious software to cause serious damage. User screwed up the configuration or got infected by spyware? Just roll back to an earlier VM snapshot. Better yet, have them boot into a pristine image every time. Thus, the solution to just about everything is just a power-cycle.

• Easy management. Running on a virtual machine gives you a standard platform, so you can keep a single golden image instead of the N different images for each piece of hardware. Just keep that image up to date, and periodically push new versions out to users. User having trouble? You can get an exact replica of their whole environment for debugging, without the user having to do anything.

Disclaimer: I work at moka5, a startup company out of Stanford that does desktop PC virtualization. We have a beta product called "LivePC Engine" that adds a demand-paging layer to VMware, so you can run your PC environment from anywhere (without having to download the whole thing), share it with other machines, and subscribe to other people's shared LivePCs and automatically get updates as they are posted.

Or, another approach would be to just carry an iso for any live distro on the USB drive... You don't even have to "install" a VM per se. Instead, just create a VM, configure it to boot off the CD-ROM, and attach an ISO to the CD-ROM, power on the VM, voila you have yourself a live instance of an OS. This is what I have done:

*) Installed VMware Server 1.0 on my SuSE box
*) Created a VM with a minimum disk space (100MB) allocation
*) Carry a Slax ISO http://www.slax.org/ on a USB drive
*) Mount the USB drive
*) Attach the Slax ISO to the VM (VM/Edit Settings/Use ISO image)
*) Power on - boot slax using the following parameters "slax autoexec=startx copy2ram"
*) unmount the USB drive - Voila, you now have yourself a truly virtual instance of a LIVE OS - all in less than 10 mins (YMMV)

I'm currently playing around setting up virtual desktops, the next logical extension of the virtualized enterprise,using this approach. I wonder what http://www.moka5.com/ has been up to though ...