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Four Linux Live CDs, The Executive Summary
prostoalex writes "ExtremeTech published a review of 4 Linux live distributions that do not require installation and run off a CD. Knoppix, Feather Linux, Gnoppix and MEPIS Linux were researched, with Knoppix winning the competition (and Gnoppix not graded, since it's still in beta)." One more (of the seemingly infinite number of live distros) I've recently tried and been happy with is called Slax, and is what it sounds like -- a live Slackware distribution. Slax worked great with my finicky older Toshiba laptop. (However, slax.org appears to be down.)
Im surprised they left out Damn Small Linux (http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/). It packs a complete desktop package in 50 megs. This includes:
browser
word processor
email client
picture viewer
image editor
file manager
instant messenger
spreadsheet
PDF viewer
mp3 / cdplayer
irc client
ssh clients games
sql database
web server
vncviewer
nintendo emulator..
really knoppix packs a lot of stuff, but do you need it all? 50 megs will fit on an infamous "business card cd"
There's 4 Official 'Flavors' of Morphix including:
In addition to those 4 Official 'Flavors' there's quite a few Derivitves including ones for HAM Radio users and a MAME system.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
The poster mentions Slax, and its website being down: It is currently accessible at http://slax.linux-live.org/ but not for long..
I followed these instructions on the Linux Journal site to create a Fedora and RedHat 9 based live CD:
http://linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=7233
Only sticking point was the initial partition. I tried with a loopback mounted ISO but there were permission problems. Then went to a NFS mounted share. It worked but required a second machine. Finally just stuck another drive inside and created a bunch of 700M partitions.
http://kano.mipooh.net/kanotix/
i x/T IX-X-MAS-2003- PREVIEW.iso.torrent
It is made by a german Knoppix hacker named Kano, who has a big page of patches for Knoppix here:
http://www.kano.mipooh.net/
It comes with kernel 2.4.23 patched with forcedeth and XFS.
It uses grub, Xfree86 4.3, is based on Debian/sid.
ACPI and DMA enabled by default (can be disabled with acpi=off respectively nodma)
The forum (german and english):
http://kanotix.mipooh.net/index.php
Download:
http://debian.tu-bs.de/knoppix/kanot
Torrent:
http://kano.mipooh.net/kanotix/KANO
You've got to be careful with those mini CDs. I got a copy of Damn Small Linux on a Business Card CD stuck inside the CD-ROM drive behind the tray. This went on to break the whole CD rom drive and probably the CD.
If you are going to write to the harddrive, it might as well be a full featured Linux distro, such as SuSE or RedHat. Why the hell not?
/read only/ - so you cannot possibly install crap on it, or corrupt/delete system files, etc. I don't know how stuff like home dirs work (as I've not used Knoppix personally), but at the very least you can't mess up the system for other people.
Because the Knoppix image is
doing stuff in English hardly qualifies as internationalization.
No - internationalisation is the process by which you prepare an application to be localised. Localisation means using icons, images, text, etc that is appropriate for a given country/culture. Internationalisation means making these things configurable - ie having text strings, image paths, etc come out of a config file, instead of being hard-coded. It is localisation that requires translators, but internationalisation needs to take account of things like direction of writing (right-left or left-right), what colours should be configurable (red in some countries is lucky, not danger/warning), etc. You need people from other cultures to point these things out, or you may miss something, and create an application that can only be partially localised.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Before the knoppix server dies, here's the tracker for the bittorrent so everyone can download knoppix.
here for the bittorrent client.
Also, MandrakeMove torrent
I do it already. With Knoppix 3.3 theres a program that will make a permanent home directory. Point it at your USB key drive at boot and you are laughing.
"knoppix home=/dev/sda1 screen=1280x1024"
If you figure out how to edit the ISO (I'm guessing loopback device) you could even get the CD to do this automatically.
Kurumin and Kalango (yeah, like I was going to give the links... lamer!).
;-D
They're pretty much Knoppix adaptations, knoppix options still present and all, but an interesting fact:
Some small VARs here sell computers without OSes and they demo their computers with Kurumin, which not only eases the selling process (try telling your customer to believe the computer will work), but also require much less work, since there's no installing to do... and more importantly, no uninstalling, too!
Kinda of a frightening experience, to see Linux in TV... to M$, of course!
Given the high chance of hardware incompatibilities when installing linux on laptops, linux live cds are fantastic for laptops. You boot the live cd, fiddle with the options, and see if the hardware you care about works (eg., display, external display, ethernet, wireless, etc.). If not, you try another distribution. I tried knoppix, gnoppix, morphix, as well as straight debian on my ibm t40p. Only knoppix was able to get everything working. After I got it working, I installed it to the harddrive. The biggest problems with knoppix are (1) it uses kde instead of gnome and (2) it has its own package structure that is incompatible with debian. So apt-get dist-upgrade or even apt-get upgrade will break everything. I've only had success upgrading individual packages with apt.
while it doesn't seem to use all of the most advanced technologies that Knoppix provides, which makes load times slightly longer, Gnoppix is rather good, and as far as user experience goes it really outdoes Knoppix with the GNOME desktop.
Software Freedom Day!.
Although I haven't used it myself it is what the slax distribution was created with.
To quote from their website:
"Linux Live is a set of bash scripts which allows you to create own LiveCD from every Linux distribution. Just install your favourite distro, remove all unnecessary files (for example man pages and all other files which are not important for you) and then download and run these scripts. "
Q.
Insert Signature Here
Straight from boot from the CD, Knoppix can use something like 6 or 7 different GUIs, including KDE, Gnome, IceWM, FluxBox, and more.
That's a useful capability that's often overlooked-- On an older machine of mine, running Knoppix in KDE-mode was pretty slow, but it ran fast as anything in FluxBox mode.
This statement is solely an opinion. Kindly take it as such in all cases.
Q.
Insert Signature Here
The next version of jollix (to appear in 2nd quarter) will include kernel 2.6.1, kde3.2.j ollix/
http://www.jollix.de
It has german language support only so far but our scripts to build the liveCD are available via CVS: http://cvs.berlios.de/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/jollix/
Most of the bash-script comments and utility-documentation (cloop, mkisofs) is in english.
Er, no... perhaps the site has simply Moved
Knoppix is okay, but I really like having a very usable distro on one of those 185mb cd's. The small cd's actually fit in your pocket (typically of my coat) so I can have a useable linux distro wherever I go, AND it works on old hardware (read: PC's that can't boot off of usb keys).
I don't have a laptop at work (don't travel enough to warrant the expense) but when I do travel, I usually end up having to "borrow" someone's PC when they aren't using it. This is pain to say the least. It is great to say: "hey, let me just use that old junky one in the corner." They usually respond: oh, you can't use that one, the hard drive is broken. Which is when I say "Perfect!", and they give me this very strange look....
That said, slax is the only 'small' distro I've found that includes the utilities I need:
1. dhcp
2. Web browser that supports ssl AND PROXIES!!! (most small distros use the dillo web browser, which does not support proxies. Without proxy support, I can't get outside the corporate firewall, which sort of makes it hard to read slashdot.)
3. ssh
4. multi-desktop window manager [click to focus] (yes, I started on windows, flame me...)
5. vnc viewer
6. reasonably workable xterm (konsole and rxvt are my favorites)
Also nice about slax is that is has full PCMCIA support. When I've used it on laptops (belonging to other people, of course) I've been able to use PCMCIA network cards (10/100 and some wireless cards) and it supports flash memory (so I can copy over my ssh keys). I love to have these features in one of those 50mb business card distro's, but they never seem to include a functional web browser, and do include a bunch of utilities I don't care about.
(sigh) I guess I'll have to build my own distro, if I only knew how/had the time to learn...
Until then, however, slax is the best distro I've found for what I need.
You can build your own distro, and not to evangelize but PCLinuxOS 2k4 makes it easy.
Basically you setup the distro the way you want it, apt-get rpms via synaptic (yes that's right, apt-get and rpm in the same sentence), setup all your bookmarks, address books, etc. Then you run the mklivecd shell script and voila! Your own distro, with everything you want and need and nothing you don't.
Go to pclinuxonline.com and hunt down the left side for the pclinuxos download link and forums link.