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Ok, strange enough the link is: http://www.partimage.org.

I've used the latest versions of Mandrake, RedHat, Debian, Slackware, and FreeBSD. I'll stick with Gentoo, as it gives me everything I want, and nothing that I don't want. I can be on the 'cutting edge' of software, and still be stable. Paired up with PartImage I can back up my system with a few clicks, update the packages with 'emerge --update world' and in the (VERY) RARE instance I have a problem, I can restore my system from a set of CDs, or another disk in my system. I'm not a newbie, but not a super-duper-l337-advanced user either, but Gentoo's allowed me to learn a ton more than the RH-based distros ever would have. And, it's friggin lightning fast on my VIA C3 900MHz system w/ 512MB RAM.

agreed, I would still be working on those problems where I simply booted my trusty trinux iso, fired up links(text browser, better and smaller then lynx) asked google about tools like "partition recover", downloaded the binary

I used it

-with partimage to do some quick cloning

- with gpart to recover partition of some guy who didnt

Well, yeah, if you are sticking with windows and Messy-DOS, then yeah, you do have to pay out the ass.

Now that they are going with a linux solution, they may as well use it throughout the process.

Click Here for a GPL clone of Symantec's Ghost Cloning software. Works wonders with various non-free OSes, too. :)

>I will absolutely bail on DriveImage the first chance I get.

Click us now.

Runs on a commodity Pentium-class or higher (assume approximately ~166 MHz or higher) x86 hardware, 32 MB of RAM, preferably within 16 MB of RAM.

Sounds reasionable. Use Keith Ps TinyX X server, which is used on Microwindows any many oother embedded Linux systems.

Is very barebones - I do not need a full distro. Under ~128 MB in size would be great.

My work does embedded Linux consumer devices for Large Unnamed Japanese Electronics Company. 128MB is doable.

Pico or VIM is okay for a default editor.

They're unecessary too. Obviously the end user won't modify text files. Keep the whole development on a seperate OC and cross compile - this keeps the shit off the small box and means you can compile things faster.

Requires no user intervention to boot, get a DHCP lease, load X-Windows, start the rdesktop client, and connect to a machine with the DNS name of "termserver" or other similiar handy name.

Cool. Autologin to X by a particular user is supported by most display managers. Then in whatever users .xinitrc or .xsession (I can never remember which is which) put:

START

#!/bin/bash

# Change the background color and cursor
xsetroot -solid rgb:39/6d/a4 -cursor /terminal/cursor.xpm /terminal/mask.xpm

# Set the variable lasthost to the content of the .rdplasthost file
lasthost=`cat .rdplasthost`

# Set the variable host to the stdout of Xdialog
host=`Xdialog --stdout --icon rdesktop.xpm --no-cancel --ok-label "Connect" --inputbox "" 400x200 $lasthost`

# If we can ping the host, continue. If not, fuck off :)

# Seems good. Lets remember it for next time.
rm -rf .rdplasthost
touch .rdplasthost
echo $host >> .rdplasthost

# Run an rdesktop session on the host
rdesktop -g 1152x864 -f $host

END

Provides a clean, friendly method of powering off the machine without causing data corruption on the file-system level (ie, after disconnected, will prompt for re-connection or shutdown).

Have the button on the front force a shutdown. This is easy with most embedded hardware. You'd also use a journalling filesystem.

Supports at least three commodity network cards

Linux can do that if you want, but I don't think you want that. Buy an untra tiny embedded box from Advantech that fits in the back on an PCD display. This way the hardware is a `known quantity' and problems are a lot easier to troubleshoot - less variables equals less things to go wrong, which is important to anyone making embedded boxes. How often do you change the hardware on your NCD thinterm RDP terminals? That's right - not very often.

Supports a VESA standard SVGA video card, with X-Windows running in 800x600 @ 8 bit color (256 colours). The Windows 2000 Terminal Server will not support anything higher than 256 colours so its not needed to support high/true color modes.

Cool. But fuck 800 x 600. Give them 1024 LCDs. You know you want to, and you'll sell more boxes.

Hides all boot messages from the kernel etc, and instead replaces them with a friendly "Please Wait" message.

Linux Progress Patch will do exactly that.

Is distributed to me in the form of a ghost-compatible image that when restored to disk is ready to run as described above.

Ghost is a waste of money unless your doing multicast installs. For the rest of us, PartImage will perform the same function more reliably with
far less expense.

Testing under VMware shouldn't be a problem, but again, I'd test on the actual device.

Everything I've mentioned is BSD / GPL license compatible (including PartImage).