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Running Unix Entirely from CD?

Posted by Cliff on from the if-it-can-be-done-with-floppies dept.

Dasein asks: "I am working as a Tech Support Developer, and I had a wonderful idea a few months ago. After stumbling upon Trinux, I modified it so that I could run Linux on any PC with a floppy. By doing this, I was able to backup on our network valuable data on users' computers when their OS failed. This summer I wanted to develop a similar idea but this time with a CD. I was having trouble finding Linux/BSD distributions that could run solely off a CD, and I'm a bit scared to start one from scratch because I wouldn't know where to begin. Does anyone have any suggestions?" nik suggests: On the BSD front, there's the LiveCD project, which seems to do exactly what you want.

3 of 54 comments (clear)

  1. choices by LinuxGeek8 · · Score: 5, Informative

    There are several distro's that can run from cd.
    There's Demolinux, which is quite nice. It comes with gnome and kde and so.
    There's the Linuxcare cd, which is like 100 or 200 Mb in size I believe.
    There's also the Suse live evaluation cd, which I have no experience with. Suse also offers custom firewalls running from cd.

    --
    Well, don't worry about that. We can get you back before you leave. (Dr. Who)
  2. Two linuxes... by Mr.Ned · · Score: 5, Informative

    Demolinux (http://www.demolinux.org/) runs Linux + KDE/GNOME off a CD. It can optionally write to the hard drive in what they call an "anchor file".

    Devil-Linux (http://www.devil-linux.org/) is a distribution targeted at servers with a need for security. The /etc is a write-protected floppy disk, and all programs are loaded off CD-ROM.

    I remember a Slashdot thread that I can't find about floppy-disk distros - some people chimed in about a Super-Rescue CD from kernel.org.

  3. Bootable Dedicated Game Servers by RevAaron · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm not a big gamer, but I've been to a handful of LAN parties.

    Inevitably, at least at the ones I've been to, there is always someone spending half or a third of the day futzing with their spare machine to get a dedicated game server going. Which got me thinking... There are a bunch of these games with a dedicated server versions for Linux. Wouldn't it be sweet if you had, on a bootable CD, a barebones Linux install that booted straight into a pre-configured, and chock-full of maps, game server? You'd need a seperate CD for each game of course. Some games wouldn't even fit on a CD. Perhaps a bootable DVD is the answer? Or swapping CDs with 'mappacks?'

    --

    Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad