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Bootable Business Card Distro Needs Testing
dbarry writes "Many here have read recently about the FSF membership program. The much-coveted membership card is to be a version of the Bootable Business Card distribution. We are curently looking for testing of our pre-2.0 releases and automated builds.
The 2.0 release of the LNX-BBC (and, thus, the FSF membership card) will use the powerful GAR build system to compile nearly all software on it from source code. As such it has changed greatly since the 1.618 release from 2001." Is it ok to covet the card but not the membership? :)
A couple years ago I was buying RAM at a store. The manager wanted $150 for 4mb. I told him that some day I would be able to buy 256mb of Kingston RAM for $40. He laughed and said, "LOL, Bootable Business Card".
Well, having a linux distrib in your wallet is much more attracting to the ladies than, say, a condom.
You can find the full details of the testing announcement here and here
But, I always carry around several cds anyway.
And with the rate I lose those, I don't want to have to carry anything smaller.
http://use.perl.org
It's also trivial to create a spare partition (or remount a RAM disk as root), install a Debian system exactly as you like it, mount etc and var on a RAM filesystem and copy contents in with the init, and then burn the entire filesystem as an ISO, putting the kernel in place with the installer build tools.
I have a similar setup which is capable of mounting ntfs and fat32 filesystems. This has saved me a number of times in repairing screwed up 2000 and XP machines. The NT/2K/XP console mode is a joke. Using this disc, I can get in to repair the install without having to physically yank the drive and install it in another box!
Just out of curiosity - why is the FSF card booting Linux instead of the Hurd?
Advice: on VPS providers
No matter what you think, having either in your wallet isn't necessarily going to get you laid. :-)
Karma: Excellent Birds (mostly as a result of listening to Laurie Anderson)
to compile nearly all software on it from source code. Is there really any other way to compile?
Oi, that could get messy. :)
Why not picoBSD? http://people.freebsd.org/~picobsd/ We had tremendous success while setting up firewalls in india with this. It's much easier to get a floppy through customs than an actual Cisco box (and you don't have to bribe anyone ;-) )
We just mailed them the floppy: pre-configured with ipfw and squid and some instructions on how to boot from it, where to plug what net cable and how to create the squid cache on the HD.
.....MP3 business cards for music distribution/promotion?
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
There was a story about the Bootable Business Card on Tech TV a few months ago. Some mom was shopping her kid around to the talent agencies. Nice gimmick and all, except this BBC fucked over one agents computer. Due to the unusual shape, it got stuck in the drive. They tried it on the show, and it got stuck in theirs too.
NOT exactly a good way to win friends, by giving them something that destroys their system...
Hey, is that a mini Linux-distribution, small enough to fit on a CD-ROM that has been cut, pressed, or molded to the size and shape of a business card in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?
Best Windows Freeware
First off, I can almost see this being successful in the sense that an administrator could carry it in his wallet and therefore use the cd to repair machines.
However, cd's are thick and hard (get your mind out of the gutter) so I really wouldn't want to put one in my wallet; nor would I want to sit down if I had one in my wallet, for it would surely crack in half.
Lastly, remember picture-disc shaped LP's? They never caught on. It's seems that abnormally shaped media is viewed by the public as a novelty and soon rejected.
Loomis
"The television is the retina of the mind's eye" - Videodrome
I have a client who is an artist and wanted to make a business card that automatically opens a picture of one of his paintings when inserted in the drive. I threw together a little .html file and an autorun.inf that uses a freeware util called shelexec to launch the .html file with the default browser.
Really neat idea, and he can include links to a website or mailto on the page with the picture.
this doesn't seem to be a bootable working distro, just a bootable disk with source code to build and install your distro. it might let you repair your system a little if you can't boot your linux system, but it's not going to let you run kde and such without some serious efforts. this is more like the gentoo stage 1 install cd's. gentoo has a bootable cdrom (with some beta game on it too) which sounds more like what you're talking about.
I've been looking for a truly "portable" OS for quite some time - one that I could fit on a single bootable floppy and have a GUI interface. Upon failing to find anything suitable, I have since started writing my own. As I have a penchant for assembly language programming, I'm about halfway done with it.
Hopefully, someday the OS will be completely irrelevant. It would be really nice if I could carry around all of my key data on a self booting floppy, rather than having to worry about synchronizing multiple data sets between different machines (work, home, laptop, etc...) That way, it wouldn't matter what OS was used on a particular machine.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
I'm not terribly sure I'd trust an application given to me on a business card by someone I don't know, much less something that boots.
Yes, it's true. I cary mine in my walet. Saved me a few times, and people always look at you funny when you pull out a cd from your wallet.
I use it mostly for testing hardware, I wish they could include FAT32 and NTFS support with samba, or atlease ftp so you can copy files of a dead windows box... Anyone know of anything like that? I'm not a programer myself.
hmm... for fun I enjoy launching DDoS attacks against 127.87.42.5
While we're on the subject, these guys are putting together a decent bootable distro. I have their 0.5.2 and it boots and finds all devices on all four of my x86 boxes. No KDE or Gnome mind-you, though it uses blackbox with a choice of themes, so I'm happy (though I prefer enlightenment). It also has mozilla and found the NIC on all the boxes. And it has their MuSE software for streaming audio, which is what the whole thing is about, I think.
I heard that they're getting close on a vers. 1.0. I'll definitely be checking that out. It'd be cool if eventually you could put it on a CD-RW and be able to save your settings and work on the same disk. That and I'd like to figure out some way of cracking hard-drive permissions so it would actually be useful for maintenance on a errant machine.
I think Micro$oft would disagree here, if Windows comes on your computer for free, then you have a pirated copy, don't confuse bundled with free, it's then, and you are paying for it (and it usually has to set itself up/install anyway).
This is not the sig line you are looking for... -- Old Jedi Sig Line Trick
Is it ok to covet the card but not the membership? :)
Who cares? It's the FSF, so just rip the card and burn your own. For added irony, you could make a point of not including "GNU/" in front of "Linux" and include free(beer)/nonfree(speech) software in your own distro.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
Unfortunately, it has been a fashion on slashdot to berate RMS. However, I am sure RMS does not mind not winning the popularity contest. Same holds true for people that appreciate his principles, ideology, and the uncompromising way he adheres to his principles.
S
Easy now Mr. Stallman. Everyone's entitled to their opinion ;-)
Please be patient, I'm a work in progress! --Alan Jackson
Back when Linuxcare was still growing, they were producing these cards like mad. If you liked Linux, they would give you a dozen for free (To pass out at Lugs and geek-parties... "FOR THE REVOLUTION!" they said). I have given a bunch of them away to friends, and keep a copy at home and at work.
I really like small tools that have multiple uses, and this Linux CD fits well. I keep one in my mini-toolkit, right next to a Leatherman Multitool and Pocket Ref.
And yes, I have actually used it when I upgraded my RH6.2 to 7.2 (The GRUB install failed miserably), and to recover data from a friends partition.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
I can just write it down!
"Whenever anyone hands me something, it's like they're saying, "Here... you throw this away."
I solved the problem of my business card being thrown away by having high-quality full-color hologram business cards made. They wern't cheap ($1.16 a piece) but they are effective. I've had people years later (I've been doing this over 10 years) call me up and say they never got rid of my card and now they had some business for me.
There is just something about baubles that make people hold on to them (just look at trade show premiums).
The TCO of the Linux Bootable Business Card distribution is much higher than standard business cards (1,000 for just $30!). Just look at the cost of business card CDRW disks!
Don't believe me? Just ask Microsoft.
So, do you distribute a less than friendly version with your competitors logo on it at trade shows? That'd be just plain evil.
Personally I don't think I'd stick any software in my machine that could boot the machine from an untrusted source. I mean, this guy you just met (otherwise you wouldn't need his business card) gives you a piece of software that basically has root privilidges on your machine or better. Atleast if someone gives you a business card with software on it that does not boot you can run the software in a sandbox.
Norris/Palin 2012
Fact: We deserve leaders who can kick your ass and field dress your carcass.
Heh.
Most browsers know how to deal with a PNG's alpha transparency natively. It seems that IE needs javurscript help. So I used the iesuckssohard.htc with some cut-and-paste IE-only javurscript and CSS to make the thing's alpha channels work.
I'm sorry that you're having trouble with it, but that's between you and Microsoft at this point. Perhaps you need to upgrade or something.
If you override the stylesheet, you should still be able to view the page. It's designed to be very lynx-friendly, among other things.
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I noticed
It's getting about time to leave everywhere
You are mistaken.
The LNX-BBC boots into a fully running system. GAR is the compile tree, and we use it to track the changes we make to the LNX-BBC.
Yes, it's true that you won't fit KDE onto th 50MB media, but we ultimately hope to use the same build tree to compile for targets like 8cm and full-sized CD-ROMs.
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A /. Editor that doesn't toe the line regarding FSF and GNU being all powerful and all knowing, and the only orginization to even think about.
How could you slight them. The membership should be a forgone conclusion, you should be trying to pay twice the dues, and signing up your friends.
You should pass on the membership cards since they should be spending all that valuable time championing the GPL. We need the freedom to live under the rule of what RMS thinks is reasonable. Since he is the only reasonable person, it is pure unadulterated freedom to live like he wants me too.
Uh... it's not like he's making this up. Just go to the site, there really is a file called "iesuckssohard.htc". I don't understand why these GNU zealots feel the urge to alienate the people that they're trying to "convert".
--sdem
So it looks like IE can't handle PNG transparency. I get Javascript errors in IE all the time. The sites usually still work...
Welcome to the club.
Several times a week, I hit a site that won't work with Mozilla, so I simply don't patronize the site. I refuse to change my Browser string.
That said: The error message is a little immature. Sometimes people say "IE Sucks" when really the problem is with simply that MS chose a different implementation from Mozilla, because the Standard is not clear.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
A designer friend of mine made her own business cards out of some thin steel sheets with a piece of cardboard sandwiched inbetween with her name on it, various artsy cuts and engravings on it, and all the business info on it. I still have it, as well.
Linux: The world's best text-adventure game.
They are about impossible to find unless you want to buy them in bulk...
The small round ones you CAN get ( still in *way* overpriced packs of 50 ) dont fit in the wallet very well.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
There's nothing wrong with it. I'm in the same boat with the author, in that I want the card, but not the membership. I don't especially disagree with them (well, actually I believe a creator has the right to decide what to do with their work, but if they GPL it that's great), but I don't feel passionately enough about it to feel right about calling myself a member.
What blowhard decided dark blue links on a black background was a good idea? I'm not design guru, but I at least have a little common sense...
Linux: The world's best text-adventure game.
They have something like that now...
:)
it's called spam
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The LNX-BBC uses the El-Torito boot standard, which actually uses a 1.44MB bootable floppy image to bootstrap into the CD at power-on. Have a look at the GAR tree, and you'll find that lnx.img and root.bin are there to make a boot floppy image you can dd to a diskette if you don't have a bootable CD-ROM.
The guy with the non-booting SCSI CD-ROM drive could even use this technique.
We actually use a compressed loopback filesystem, so our "singularity" file is pretending to be a disk drive with compressed disk blocks. Cool stuff!
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My computer came with Emacs and GNU/Linux.
;)
ObOnTopic: Get your FSF membership number before we run out of 3-digit numbers -- your low number will be worth serious geek cred in the future. But not as much as mine, which is #3
Become a FSF associate member before the low #s are used
You can burn the root.bin off of the CD onto a floppy, and boot off of that. The BBC uses the El-Torito boot standard, which basically defines a header for the location of a 1.44MB FAT volume. It's loopy, but it works on the widest set of machines.
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I noticed
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Ive not seen a 'slot drive' in many years on a pc.. Even then they had those damned 'carriers' so they wouldnt be an issue anyway....
Seen plenty on mac's but this doent apply to mac hardware anyway..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I must admit to using a full-sized CD for most of my rescue work. I'm very fond of Knoppix, and boot it in "blind" mode (text-only) with no swap. It has a lot more on it than the LNX-BBC, auto-detects everything and will mount all sorts of local and remote filesystems. Plus it has VNC, SSH, parted and so forth.
:v)
I did put a LNX-BBC in my wallet and it snapped in half. Given that business card CDs seem to be an expensive novelty in NZ and generally only hold 35MB I have yet to repeat the exercise.
Vik
...where, in the Metaverse, passing around globs of information was done by "visually" passing around things like business cards. The act of accepting one transferred the data, so you didn't just blindly accept one from someone you didn't know.
Plus the scene where the hero, uh, I mean, the protagonist, uh, I mean, the main character takes a card that represents a lot of data, and as the card passes from another person's hand to his, the world becomes slightly blocky and pixelated. His computer is so busy chunking down that much info that the refresh rate of his virtual eyes gets lagged. :-)
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
And I do not mean the T.V. channel. I have a BBC, and yes on a 52 meg business card. And I keep it with me where ever I go. Sure it's too geeky to admit to some one but it has helped me out numerous times, when some one fudges up their system at work, or even a laptop that craps out. Not many people have a restore disk or a Live CD available then. Plus with it you can get a basic Xserver with xterm, and Black Box as the WM. Can mount many file-systems, setup networking....This could also be a great hacking distro-but I'm sure some else already has done it.
This SIG pulled due to lack of funding. (This damn war is costing too much!)
I just finished a course on self employment and one of the things discussed was business cards, and if when you hand yours to someone and they don't say "hey, nice card" (or similar), change it. If it's not something that's eye catching it'll be put in the persons pile of cards and dumped to the trash or forgotten until they clean up their work area, and then it'll be thrown out.
Something like the hologram or sandwiched steel is exactly what they mean, it's not something that's easily forgotten.
I bought 7.3 redhat box for installations i did while back and the box included a rescue cd that was the size of "business card". Well, allmost. The cd was actually few millimeters too wide to fit into wallet's "card compartment" and nice idea was totally useless.
Hopefully FSF gets their business card to the right size..
yush
It should CLEARLY be the GNU/LNX-BBC!
"this doesn't seem to be a bootable working distro . . . "
Not true - you can start up X-Windows and do quite a bit with this BBC. Ideal for running remote X Sessions, for example.
** The opinions expressed here are my own, and do not reflect those of my employers - past, present, or future**
This is a test release. Do you think you could have filed this in our bug system like we asked? Whingeing on slashdot isn't going to fix anything.
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I noticed
It's getting about time to leave everywhere
(did a google search on qnx demodisk)
Copyrights, Patents, Trademarks: temporary loans from the Public Domain, not real property ("intellectual" or otherwise)