Slashdot Mirror
FreeBSD Based Live CDs
Newtonian_p writes "Now the BSD world has an answer to Knoppix. The FreeSBIE project have released a live FreeBSD based system on CD. There are also plans to develop a suite of programs to be used to create a personalized disk." If it offers a painless BSD install (the way Knoppix makes it easy to install Debian to a hard drive), this should be a popular project. Reader Cronopios links to a related effort called LiveBSD which "has heavily modified FreeSBIE's scripts to allow for apache mysql and many other programs to run."
Yeah, I RTFA, but it's pretty sparse. Can anyone involved explain a bit more how this works?
I would think it would be similiar to the MandrakeMove(?) live linux CD we saw earlier this year, but bad things happen when I make assumptions. :)
IMHO the best thing to do is grab a spare computer, download a bunch of interesting distro's (Linux, BSD, whatever you want), install them and use them for a day or two.
:)
You're bound to come across a distro suited for your needs.
(server, router, desktop, multimedia system, whatever you want)
Every Linux distro has it's upsides and it's downsides (both are mostly about whether it's something for you).
As for the BSD's, I've never tried them, but afaik they're a bit more geared towards servers/security than Linux.
It still comes down to personal choice
The path I walk alone is endlessly long.
30 minutes by bike, 15 by bus.
If there's a remote root exploit, rebooting is merely going to make an attacker wait five minutes and then re-run the exploit. A better solution is a CD-RW disk in a CD-ROM drive -- you can always reboot into a clean system, but if there are security issues, you can remove the disk, fix the necessary bits, and then reboot.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
> This way, everything is stored on a read-only filesystem, even in the rare case of a BSD remote root exploit, a reboot fixes everything.
If your logs are on a RAM disk, they're gone as well...
Flash isn't blazing fast by any definition of the word fast, and it's a lot more expensive than CDs - for a 1GB flash drive you could go out and buy a copy of Windows or several copies of any Linux distro. Also remember that Flash has that whole re-writing problem - if the Flash inadvertently gets used for swap space or something, it'd die in no time. Lastly, not a lot of computers boot from USB without some CD to help them along (mine certainly wouldn't), so you'd probably need a CD anyway...
--- Bwah?
After a few months it will be a fairer comparison, if you can spare the time of course. You may find that most are good, none are perfect, and it depends which imperfections you want to tolerate. But, I'm sure you will find one that you like, and it will be of more use, in the long term, than the badly broken "competitive" products of the Convicted Monopolist, or the abominal violation of the GPL known as SCO Unix.
It's the "install them" part that takes up more time than would be ideal, and becomes the focus of too many reviews. Have you noticed most reviews of distors focus on installation and breeze over everything else? Seems a little crazy, doesn't it? I mean, even installing Gentoo or something, which can really become an experience to brag about, is generally not something you're doing every day.
Installing the *BSDs has not had the ease that many of the Linux distros have had, so hopefully this will encourage more competition, options, and enjoyment and savings.
As others have pointed out, you can indeed install Knoppix on a harddisk. Beware however that you will get a Debian Unstable system. This can sometimes lead to problems when doing apt-get upgrade (like apt suddenly deciding all by itself that KDE and all that depends on it really needs to be removed --that's why they call it unstable I guess)
If you're looking for the stability of Debian, do a "real" netinstall of the current stable version. If you want the cool new toys, then Knoppix is the easiest way to install a Debian that doesn't lag two years behind the other distros.
Installing OpenBSD was a piece of cake, just some new users might be put off by the text only installer at first, but if you can get past that, you'll realize that it is so straight forward.
One of the things I love about OpenBSD is that the documentation and man pages are so well done, having a look at the Installation Guide and the afterboot(8) man page, virtually anyone can have full fledged secure by default OS installed configured in a breeze.
Just stick the first floppy, partition, and your done. Easy as pie.
Your probably talking about using it as a server and your right, if you follow the instructions any *nix isn't too difficult to get initially installed.
My point is for the distro-of-the-week, dual-booting, desktop nix using, Slashdot majority who will probably need help once their beyond the basic initial install. For them the idea that any BSD is a "painless install" is a bit of a misnomer. The real test is getting X working at the proper resolution and refresh rate. Getting all of your multimedia apps running. And getting your printer, digital camera, scanner, and palm pilot working on your PC. In that respect unfortunately the BSD's and many linux distros simply fall down. Personally I think its worth the effort, but you have to be realistic about who is reading your comments and what they might have to go through to get a perfectly working desktop. That painless install you promised just turned into their biggest nightmare.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Dude, If you need Knoppix to be able to install Debian easily on your HD then you need help!
Yeah, so what if we do ned help? I hope you're teasing us for trying to learn this stuff. It puzzles me that it saddens you that not everybody is as elite as you. Some of us are bound to be newbies. Right?
Personally, I've tried installing Debian a few times, and given up just as many times. Half of those, I couldn't even get my (plain vanilla) keyboard to work in the installer. And I freely admit it -- I do need help, because I can't seem to figure this out by myself. I'm used to linear installations, not this flat one-level menu with no clear ending. But rather than trying to use Knoppix as a katalyst, I've just switches horses and am now fiddling with Mandrake instead.
Using a live-cd as a "template" to learn from -- and build upon -- is in essence using an "easy installer" and choosing the "default" configuration, as opposed to pulling sources via FTP and rebuilding everything to custom specs.
We may get there some day (or we may not), but if we get help for the first feeble steps, that's excellent.
"Good news, everyone!"
i agree completely(talk to my isp, they know) about trying lots of different distros. i also agree with another reply to yours that said give it a little longer than a couple days.
i have one small thing to add about what youve said, however. not a correction, just an addition. something a new linux user need to think about is the speed of the machine used for testing versus that of the machine it will be used on. if you are blessed enough to have a spare machine that is up to standards, then by all means, do it that way. however, if your spare machine is a little older like my pII450, some distros may behave a little worse on it than they would on your main rig. mandrake with kde(i just took the defaults, havent looked into any lighter display or window managers, yet) is slow on the aformentioned 450. its great on my 1GHz amd, however.
all that to say that make sure you understand the performance differences between the distros and the machine you test on vs the one you plan to use it on for real.
use your turn signal! you people act like it's divulging information to the enemy
If you download the full CD set or purchase a book that comes with one, the 3rd CD is a live system disk.
Wow, are you missing it! How many CDs are there in a Debian distro? In any distro? LiveCDs are 1 cd.
LiveCDs are fantastic as emergency disks, but they are even better as installation disks. You get to SEE and USE the system before you install it. I have considered switching to Debian a couple of times (mainly because of apt-get), but it is a much bigger deal to backup, install, and try it out than to boot it and try it. Forget using a spare machine. Why would I want to spend hours when I could be up and running in 2 minutes?
These things are fantastic, and will only improve over time. The only thing a distro offers that these don't is configurability during the install, where you pick and choose what you want to install. But that is a minor point IMO, and will be fixed if the need is really there.
I have several different LiveCDs, and you know how many times I have used them for emergencies? None. I have performed several installs off of them though. Why would you deny one of the major benefits of these things?
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
" If it offers a painless BSD install "
I was shocked, yes shocked, at how easy OpenBSD was installed on my intel machine. The mac install was another kettle of fish but the intel install was the easiest install I've ever done. FreeBSD wasn't exactly a difficult install either. I don't remember NetBSD being hard come to think of it. Actually, has anybody found an intel BSD OS difficult to install?
"Painless BSD install" means "I don't need to know what I'm doing."
FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD have *detailed* installation instructions available on the project's homepage. I've installed OpenBSD as a BSD newbie on a laptop without any serious problems.
Why is reading the manual considered so un-user friendly? After all, you are installing megabytes of binaries onto varying architectures with countless permutations of additional hardware. Then you are probably planning to add additional software to the system (additional countless permutations). Finally, the chances are good that you are going to hook the system up to a world wide network full of hostile machines.
Call me an elitist, but perhaps the OpenBSD way is the best -- rather simple install (if you are willing to read the Instruction Manual) and services turned off by default. If you need something, you need to know how to configure and activate it yourself.
Don't get me wrong -- I have nothing against end users, and I am not advocating a difficult UI for them. I have no doubts that I could set up a BSD system that's user friendly enough for my mother. But using a system is not the same as installing it -- no more then driving a car is the same as designing a car.
Just my $.02