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MandrakeMove Bootable Linux CD Announced
joestar writes "MandrakeSoft just announced the release of the MandrakeMove release candidate, a special desktop version of the Mandrake Linux distribution that boots live from the CD and uses a USB key (included in the retail version) to automatically store personal data. It looks a bit like Knoppix, but comes with more features, such as the capability to eject the MandrakeMove CD-ROM during its use, in order to read audio or video files from another CD! The download release candidate is available here."
Since it may permanently disable the CDROM drive. ;)
Also sounds like the 'Slackware Live' cd.
Can you create your own in mandrake like you can with slackware?
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
I must assume that USB Key means thumbdrive, although I couldn't find any reference on the linked site indicating what size this might be..
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
Might be the future of school PCs, or at least computers that are open to the public without a login.
Is already in knoppix, check out the "cheat-codes" file, its a boot param which obviously isnt enabled by default so knoppix can run on systems with low memory
Gnome wasnt built in a day.
I wonder if usb hard drive (I have an Archos Jukebox Studio 10) work as well as a usb key?
Live CD's are great IMHO.
;-)
Perfect for showing people Linux, or recovering another system (especially a Windows system, because it introduces them to Linux
The whole USB idea is pretty good as well, good way to do stuff w/o touching the hard drive at all.
At the splashscreen:knoppix toram
When the source is open, the possibilities are endless.
4+Gb of opensource/free software on a single disc... why don't do a Linux DVD Live distro? ..just wondering.
A Mandrake is a plant - and plants don't normally move. But I guess it is a "live" CD...
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
Did I miss something? I thought Mandrakes focus was new users/desktop users.
This actually looks the ideal solution for people wanting to mess around with linux without messing up their hard-drive.
With the USB drive, you can do quite a bit on it, and get a proper feeling for the OS.
Death has been proven to be 99% fatal in lab rats.
think it'd be useful to know the price (obviously for the USB key) and size of the key. and perhapse a tentative release. sure, its RC1, but the final could be in a while
Why not just follow links to the Mandrake Store? The price is $59.90 and it includes a 128MB USB 2.0 key.
bp
I just installed Mepis on my laptop last night -- a Debian derived Live CD that has the ability to install direct from the Live CD. Very slick.
The SuSE 9.0 Live CD didn't recognize the wireless LAN card on my desktop, so that didn't get anywhere.
Mepis was the first Live CD that I could effectively use for work, and not just a rescue CD or quick test. I used various tools for hours on the laptop (450 MHz P3, 328 Mb RAM) and it just worked.
Live CDs are the way to go.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
This could be a plus for people that need to access the Internet in local libraries that utilize draconian filters to block out politically questionable material...unless the entire network is run through a proxy server...in which case you could use this to SSH tunnel into an unfiltered proxy server!
Mandrake has always been my favorite Linux company & I like throwing them a couple bucks for a boxed set now and then. Good work!
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Okay, I'm an idiot. I found the torrent link from the mirrors page.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
How big is the USB Drive they include? Can I use my own?
I noticed in the first screenshot : "Multimedia Player for CDs / DVDs". How do they play DVDs legally?
If I have 2 CD / DVD drives on the system, can I use both and not have to swap disks? (I assume yes, but you know what happens when you assume...)
Seems to me that these keys are becoming more popular. What seems to be lacking is the ability to install typical software on the key so that the software will run on the computer that you just plugged the key into. Yes, simple software DOES work, but once you get beyond a typical software installation with multitudes of files, your ability to run it on a "stranger" machine fades markedly.
BTM
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
Is this a troll to get some poor dudes email box full of hate mail? If so, do it elsewhere. This is Slashdot where high morals, integrity, repect and politeness abound.
I'm a Mandrake Club subscriber and have supported them for a few years now. But two weeks ago I erased my last version of it. I installed 9.2 before it went public (being a Mandrake Club member) and, desktop speaking, it's superb. Everything works out of the box, all my non-geek friends and family members used it at will.
But then I started trying to do stuff I did easily in slackware a few years back, like messing with the hardware and installing a video capture card. It became very frustrating after three days trying and no results. No kernel shipped by Mandrake would let me install RivaTV. A google search will show you that a lot of people is stuck at that point and you will not find any useful answer.
You could install a vanilla kernel, but that would break the whole point of having a dependence based distro (urpmi, apt, emerge, etc).
Trying to share a internet connection using the wizard would screw up the firewall settings, and trying to bring the firewall back up would screw the connection sharing configuration.
After a lot of thought I decided to ditch Mandrake and go for a more traditional Linux distro, being the Debian servers compromised around those days (and I believe they still are), I went the Gentoo way (I was a Slackware junkie 8 years ago) and I'm not going back.
True, you need a few days to have a full system, but you gain again control of your computer. I see Mandrake now at a very delicate point, getting each day more and more like proprietary OSes, hiding a lot of stuff from the user (even thought the tools and the utililities are open source they sometimes choose ways that are non-standards).
I loved Mandrake and I'm still going to recommend their products for newbies, heck, I'm going to renew my suscription with them just to help them out, but I won't come back.
Life isn't like a box of chocolates. It's more like a jar of jalapenos. What you do today, might burn your ass tomorrow.
Saddly, FAT16 is the standard format for USB keys, with the slow cluster chain following rather than fast inode structure, and without unix semantics like permissions, device files, hard links, and so on.
Maybe they'd allocate a big file and mount it with a loopback device? Or maybe they'll use on of the other mechanisms to make up for FAT filesystem limitations? Or maybe they'll just require the key to have an EXT2 or other "linux native" filesystem? But that would make the key unusable for the thing that makes those little keys so compelling... moving data around.
It's be pretty sad to have to carry 2 USB keys around, one for moving data between systems and a second one for MandrakeMove (or other distros that follow in their footsteps).
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
Gentoo have a Gnome/KDE liveCD for PowerPC.
From what I understand, the retail version is the only version that SUPPORTS the USB key. It doesn't say anywhere that it comes with one.
One of my favorite uses for a USB key is for showing off Opera to people still using IE. It installs perfectly, plays nicely, and doesn't throw things in weird locations. You're right about complex software, but that's no real surprise.
Auto-reply to ACs: "Truly, you have a dizzying intellect."
Could someone set up a bittorrent link or a north american mirror?
I've been working on a linux distro for a few months now that is using this combination of technologies. It definitely appears to be a configuration of growing use and interest.
I added the cryptographic iButton to the list as the only piece missing from the live CD / USB fob picture is secure authentication so that when you are accessing your files remotely from any location, you need not fear about Man-in-the-Middle attacks or insecure password / authentication allowing attackers access to your data.
I talk about some of the features I want in this thread of wanted features / technologies
The future trends are moving quickly towards seamless access to data via mobile devices and wireless communications. A trusted operating system on a mini-CDR with a USB key fob storing dynamic data and strong authentication via cryptographic hardware is all you need to access files, music, movies, anything back at home or work with complete security (or, as much security as you can provide given a good OS configuration)
And the best part: it fits in your pocket. You can take it anywhere. You can "phone home" via wireless and reach everything there as if it was local.
With AES encryption of sensitive data on the USB fob you can prevent any kind of unauthorized copying that would reveal private data, and compression added to the mix lets you store a lot more than 256M or so of data as well.
The latest USB devices are capable of throughput in excess of 6 MegaBytes / second, which is more than adequate for most tasks.
Userspace / overlay filesystems with selective encryption, networked access, and secure decentralized distribution are going to make this kind of setup extremely sweet.
I can't wait for it...
Quack, quack.
"This is Slashdot where high morals, integrity, repect and politeness abound."
That comment actually made me look up for a moment to make sure I didn't typo the domain name.
"Derp de derp."
Are here on the preorder page. I haven't downloaded the beta yet, but in the past Mandrake included things like stock (vanilla) versions of Xine *without* css support. They may still, but I'm so in the habit of installing the PLF files before doing anything that I couldn't honestly tell you if 9.2 came with being able to read encrypted DVD's out of the box. FWIW not all DVD's are encrypted and having a non-css DVD player *is* useful, just not as useful.
Quack, quack.
Considering how long distros like Knoppix have been around this product is hardly pioneering, but may be useful for Mandrake users who don't want to use any other distro.
If you want to check out a neat Knoppix based distro that's only 50MB check out, Dam Small Linux.
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/
It obviously doesn't have the same amount of apps that Knoppix has, but for checking out linux, surfing the web, using IRC, and doing some light office editting its pretty cool. It also unlike Knoppix and I'm sure Mandrake will run on a 486 with 16MM ram. So if you bored or on dialup check out Dam Small Linux.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
SCO wouldn't bother buying Mandrake, because they probably think they already own it.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
Knoppix has supported a USB homedir for quite a while, Mandrake's may be more integrated, but it's not a new concept.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
and
the MandrakeMove Boxed Edition provides the ability to save configuration and personal data to a USB key.
So this release canidate cannot save to the USB key, and it looks like a download version may never do that, since they emphasise that it's the Boxed Edition that does that. Bummer.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Ok, you can't have it all. As you mentioned: your non-geeks friends and family are having fun with Mandrake. However you want to install and compile things, and Gentoo is more like what you want. Cool again. That's what free software is all about, freedom and choices.
But this needs to be clarified:
This is inaccurate. First of all, Mandrake is much, much, much closer to debian or whatever distro you could think of, than it is to proprietary OS's. You get the damn source, period Also: Mandrake is LSB (standards) compliant. Another period ;-)
Now, what you propably would agree with me, is that Mandrake has become too agressive in their customization of free software packages, and this includes the kernel. IMHO, they would be much better off shipping vanilla packages plus a minimal set of patches. Take for instance the kernel, they should (IMHO) jus add supermount, and add the third-party modules as they do, and that should be it. All of this on top of the latest vanilla stable kernel.
If you follow cooker or read the changelogs in their RPMS, you'll notice that they spend a lot of energy backporting things from development branches for several packages. Notably, they do it with the kernel. This precious time would be much better invested on improving their own tools, which as you said, have some flaws, but as you also said, give you overall a great distro working out of the box.
In the end, even when mandrake can be improved, you have to realize that you can't have it all. You either put a lot of your own time on building your customized distro from scratch (or a la gentoo), or you take a distro that does it for you, and yes, it will make some decisions for you. It is your choice, enjoy freedom ;-)
Actually, knoppix fully supports USB drives for home dirs.
Not sure if it's included with the base knoppix yet, but there was a version if knoppix that will AES encrypt the home dir stored on the usb drive.
Of course.
A seperate project related to Mandrake and Live CDs is livecd, which has some tools available for making Mandrake-based Live CDs.
mklivecd is a simple tool to generate a live CD, and it is included in Mandrake 9.2 contribs. Basically, you can do something like this to try it out:
# urpmi mklivecd
# mklivecd livecd.iso
There are some issues, which have been addressed in the CVS version.
Also new in CVS is a seperate minimal CD-to-HD installer.
I have made about 3 Live CDs based on Mandrake 9.2 using mklivecd.