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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
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?
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to compile nearly all software on it from source code. Is there really any other way to compile?
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.
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?
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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.
No, but one might help you repair a machine, while the other will just collect dust.
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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.
The LNX-BBC doesn't need to be burned on a business-card-sized CD, it's just designed to fit on one.
Exactly. So burn it to a normal CD-R and fold it in half.
Wait a sec...
-FF
SQUEAK, the Death of Rats explained.
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).
While it's true that condoms are perfect for tying cables out of the way so you can see what's going on inside a machine, I think it's a little hasty to say that the Bootable Business Card will just collect dust. I mean, it could come in handy sometime.
This is a self-referential sig
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.
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.
--
I noticed
It's getting about time to leave everywhere
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.
It should CLEARLY be the GNU/LNX-BBC!