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Specialized Knoppixes for Fun and Profit
An anonymous reader writes "The University of Puerto Rico High Performance Computing facility (HPCf) and the Puerto Rico Biomedical Research Infrastructure Network (BRIN-PR) are pleased to announce the release of bioknoppix. bioknoppix is a live CD linux, based on KNOPPIX, and specialized to include tools for bioinformatics. bioknoppix does not need to be installed on your computer, making it a perfect tool for workshops and demos. Some of the software included in the 0.3 release: EMBOSS 2.8.0, jemboss, artemis, clustal, Cn3D, ImageJ, BioPython, Rasmol, Bioperl, Bioconductor. For more information please see the bioknoppix home page." Reader
Tussinator wrote in about a new release of ClusterKnoppix.
I remember when in the days of Windows 3.1 and MS-DOS using specialized boot disks when running certain games to load only the system files that were needed for the game, no more and no less.
It seems like this is the concept that is coming back into style here. Optimize a boot-off-CD operating system to be sure that all the applications you need are installed properly, and as soon as you're booted you have everything all set up. It's great for assuring that you know everything that's running on the PC you're working with, and that there's no extra stuff lurking in the background... even if you've never met the PC before.
Linux is Linux. It doesn't really change from use to use. What we're seeing is specialization of the packages that include Linux...
Think about this. You make a custom liveCD, debug it, then deploy it on your Linux boxen. The boxes don't need HDDs, you could store user data on a network server. Even if a luser tries as hard as they can to mess it up, it's all fixed with a reboot. You could make different liveCDs for different departments with the proper apps installed (e.g. OpenOffice, payroll, accounting, sales, CRM, etc)
Anyone ever consider this?