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."

Comments

Not much info available

[Trillan]

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. :)

Re:OS Comparison

[MooCows]

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 :)

Re:FreeBSD is a solid OS

[cperciva]

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.

Re:Live CD on Flash Drives???

[Bagels]

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...

Re:OS Comparison

[tiger99]

Hopefully give them a bit more than a day or two. Try configuring printers, firewall, scanner, compiling a kernel, downloading updates.....

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.

Re:OS Comparison

[joshmccormack]

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.

Re:BSD isn't a hard install

[LoganEkz]

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.

You are missing (one of) the points!

[gosand]

Dude, If you need Knoppix to be able to install Debian easily on your HD then you need help! If on the other hand you need a live Linux distro to use in emergencies or when a full installation is not viable/ available or required, then rather stick with your Knoppix.

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?