Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

``NetBSD Live!'' Boots Directly Into KDE2

Posted by timothy on from the portable-demo dept.

jschauma writes: "A ``NetBSD Live!'' CD, which boots NetBSD/i386 1.5.2 directly from CDROM into KDE, including Koffice, has been made available. This exciting development may be the first step towards 'fancy' graphical installation CDs. Just grab one and carry it around with you, so you never have to boot any other OS! See the announcement on the NetBSD News page, more details are here."

26 of 47 comments (clear)

  1. How or does it... by hackwrench · · Score: 1

    handle virtual memory?

    1. Re:How or does it... by hubertf · · Score: 2

      VM is handled the usual way using MMU, pages etc.
      If it comes to swapping/paging, you can configure a local partition to do just that. If there's no backing store, the allocating process has a problem. :)

      - Hubert

    2. Re:How or does it... by packeteer · · Score: 2, Interesting

      actually i do just that and i DOES increase performance... my win2k box has this nasty habit of needlessly swapping out data for apps suych as premeire even though i have 512 mb of ram... it seems to always want to keep 100 megs free so i set 256 or my ram to be ram disk and i set my default swap to there... i also have another REAL swap just in case i actually DO run out of ram...

      --
      unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
  2. Suse Live-Eval cd by ralian · · Score: 2

    This reminds me of the Suse technique of not actually providing installation images but providing something they call the "Live-Evaluation" cd... What it does is run the OS, with a minimum of configuration, off the CD.. nice for testing an OS withour installing, but I have my reservations - for example, you can't use the CD drive, and the lack of installation images is a real pain for actually installing the distro. I must say, it's nice if NetBSD does this, but only if they also keep providing actual installation images.

    --

    -raph

    1. Re:Suse Live-Eval cd by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      1) On the CD are tools with which you can build
      such CDs. (
      Mailing list msg announcement)

      2) The (release) isos continue to be on the web

      3) The full source is out there

      4) NetBSD ain't Linux :)

    2. Re:Suse Live-Eval cd by jschauma · · Score: 3, Informative

      NetBSD installation ISO images are available
      here.
      They just don't have the graphical KDE installer that many Linux users depend on.

      --

      -- "Tradition is the illusion of permanence."
    3. Re:Suse Live-Eval cd by brsmith4 · · Score: 1

      I am a linux user and I happen to prefer BSD's installation to any linux distro (except maybe slack ;). They go overkill in terms of giving the user power over their system. More power to them.

  3. WTF????? by fm6 · · Score: 2

    One of the ISO images is for Atari!

    1. Re:WTF????? by ActiveSX · · Score: 1

      Atari released a little m68k machine called the ST. NetBSD runs on it, as you can tell.

    2. Re:WTF????? by dolmant_php · · Score: 1

      "Of course it runs NetBSD..."

  4. Not on the *ST* ! by wsapplegate · · Score: 3, Informative

    I really doubt NetBSD runs on the Atari ST, since that Motorola 68000-based machine doesn't have an MMU (and thus, no memory protection). But it sure can run on the 68030-based Atari TT and the mighty Falcon. BTW, Linux runs on these, too! A special fork of CLinux (the Linux without MMU , aimed at embedded implementations) existed to allow it to run on the original ST line of machines, but has been discontinued. Too bad I'm far from being a kernel hacker :-(

    Remember, people: Atari LIVES ! Now, if someone would just make a PowerPC extension for the Falcon, the life would finally have a meaning :-))

    --
    Xenu brings order!
    1. Re:Not on the *ST* ! by Hadlock · · Score: 1

      actually there's a flavor of BSD that runs on 68020's (Mac LC II circa 1991), 30's and 40's, but requires a software emulaiton of a fpu, as only the 40 has an on-chip fpu. i almost loaded BSD on my LC II (My webserver), but lost interest in the project as i realized a)it's entirely text based and b) it already works great on a "security through obscurity" OS 7.5 or so and c) i found freeware web email telnet ssh2 and ftp software for it with GUI's.

      but i think you're right; i have yet to see BSD of any flavor run on my mac SE or old atari

      --
      moox. for a new generation.
    2. Re:Not on the *ST* ! by spunkykuma · · Score: 1

      NetBSD/atari

  5. Re:Sad news: *BSD has passed away by xaccrocheur · · Score: 1

    It want 96M to load in graph/KDE mode ! what's that for a boot-anywhere-on-anything CD ? You need a killer rig to run this thing.

    --
    pX
  6. Image in German only? by Thing+1 · · Score: 2
    I haven't downloaded the image, but from reading their release notes it appears that this is only in German:
    Because of the lack of further space on the CDROM only German locales are installed.

    Can anyone who has a faster pipe verify this?


    The release notes appear to be hastily translated from German -- there are a couple "ist"s (where there should be "is"s).

    --
    I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
    1. Re:Image in German only? by quantum+bit · · Score: 2

      Zep, I'm, running it now and not only are the instructions in German, but it think's that I am using a German kezboard, too!! Argh, z and y kezs are swapped! and all of the shiftßcharacters are changed around.

      I managed to get into kde, sort of. it onlz seems to work as root. There's a "user" account too, but kde won't start with it... i can't understand any of the configuration screens so I dont know if that's how it's supposed to work.

      Oh, btw, "kbd us" at the text console will change the kezboard map to a US english layout, but I don't remember how to change the keymap in X... oh well, time to reboot

    2. Re:Image in German only? by jschauma · · Score: 4, Informative
      Yes, it's only on German. That's why the README states:

      This NetBSD system uses German keyboard mapping for console and X. You can change this by typing wsconsctl -w encoding=<language>
      Also, the scripts to create the CD are included, so you can re-create it with whatever language settings you prefer.
      --

      -- "Tradition is the illusion of permanence."
  7. Re:Sad news: *BSD has passed away by EchelonZero · · Score: 1

    I wonder if the new Cray in Alaska can handle it? I hear they have 128 MB of RAM now...what will they think of next!

  8. Re:Sad news: *BSD has passed away by spunkykuma · · Score: 1

    Are you poor or something? RAM is cheap to get, most of us has well over 256MB in our systems these days. And don't forget this is KDE2...resource hungry, of course it wants adequet RAM to operate smoothly.
    On another note, I already tried this ISO and it seems to freeze the system at a certain point (I'd have to look at the last line again) but it's right after "Plug'n'Play" section. I already run NetBSD on this system (it's a Duron 900, 256MB RAM), suppose the GENERIC kernel has too much enabled to cause this.

  9. Am I Mising Something? by RAMMS+EIN · · Score: 1

    ``This exciting development may be the first step towards 'fancy' graphical installation CDs.''
    I don't know what exactly what is meant by ``'fancy''', but I think Linux has had graphical installation for ages. Not to mention Windows or MacOS... Or are they talking about NetBSD only here? Just a little confused...

    --
    Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
    1. Re:Am I Mising Something? by denisbergeron · · Score: 1

      Of courses he talk about BSD, you are in the BSD forum, and this is a news about BSD !!!! And the only bsd you have an graphical installation is Solaris !

      --
      Ceci n'est pas une Signature !
    2. Re:Am I Mising Something? by cant_get_a_good_nick · · Score: 1

      only bsd you have an graphical installation is Solaris

      Solaris 2 (what folks generally call Solaris) is SVR4, not BSD. SunOS = 4.1.4 was BSD. SunOS 4 was retoractively called Solaris, in a marketing move.

  10. What's the use? by evilviper · · Score: 2

    Now, this would kick great deals of ass if it was:
    A) On natively rewritable media &
    B) On media better suited to random access than CD (Just try accessing large numbers of small files on different secontions of the CD... Your CD will be about as fast as a floppy.

    As I've been saying religiously for some time now, if all new system were sold with PCMCIA front-mounted slots, we'd finally have a format that could completely replace floppies, put CDs back in their place, and make it super easy to add any hardware you might want in your system.

    --
    Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
  11. Re:Sad news: *BSD has passed away by Arandir · · Score: 2

    Remember, this is a CDROM. It's read only. That's mean you won't have a swap partition. Think about it.

    --
    A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
  12. Re:Hard Times for *BSD by posix4 · · Score: 1

    losing market share take a look at osx buddy

  13. Re:*BSD is dying by Zero+Sum · · Score: 2
    I like your jive joke, but seriously, there is one thing you are forgetting.

    FreeBSD has good Linux emulation. It runs all software that runs on the Linux kernel. As long as just that is maintained, BSD can survive.

    Yes, in smaller numbers, but smaller numbers are a smaller target and, well, more geekish...

    When Windows dies, how you Tuxers going to handle being the boreing mainstream?

    --

    Zero Sum (don't amount to much). [root@localhost]