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GlobeTrotter: Mandrake-based 40GB Linux Mobile Desktop
joestar writes "Mandrakesoft & LaCie have just launched "GlobeTrotter", a ultra-compact 40 GB bootable USB hard-drive pre-loaded with Mandrakelinux 10.0 Official. It may be plugged to any available PC with a USB 1 or USB 2 port, automatically recognizes the host-PC's hardware, and then is ready to use. Multiple uses can be imagined, from the office/internet workstation to the multimedia jukebox! The concept is quite similar to Mandrakemove, excepted that it's way more powerful than a USB-key based system! And for $219 it's a credible alternative to a laptop."
How is this different from just using a regular external hard drive? My roomate has installed Mac OS X on his iPod and exclusively uses that as his mobile platform. Just find a Mac and plug it in.
First off, I think it's great that a distribution is doing this. If you're a Linux evangelist, I would imagine a Live-CD may not do everything you want to do.
But, the main point of this post is to ask how is this a viable alternative to a laptop? I always defined viable alternative as a product that offers a similiar product set designed to do the same job. How exactly is a hard drive loaded with Linux comprable to a laptop?
Very true unless there's no hard drive in the workstation. If everyone using it is also using this external HD one wouldn't be needed.
"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity but they've always worked for me" - HST
- If the CD only needs to boot, load USB drivers, and hand off control to the USB drive, it can be shrunk to a business-card CD. I'm guessing that a business-card CD + 2.5" hard drive isn't any less convenient than one full-size CD.
- With 40GB available, you can have 58 times as many programs available as you can with a 700MB CD.
- Hard drives can be written to as well as read from, so you can use it to carry documents and MP3s along with you, and don't have to stream these over the network like you'd have to with Knoppix.
In short, it's waaaaay more functional than a bootable CD.Well it's a simply registry entry to log reboots into the system log.
It's much harder to log remote desktop connections.
So in answer to your question, most companies with any real admin would log it, even for the simple case of 'you say your system is unstable, but it's only rebooted once a day without any program crashes'
With 40GB available, you can have 58 times [google.com] as many programs available as you can with a 700MB CD.
If we're talking typical case (knoppix) then since the harddrive likely won't be compressed, its only a matter of 20 times as many programs.
Moving on to the days of DVDs things are going to get even less impressive in that regard...
Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!
Maybe when windoze is in airplane cockpits we'll have to worry about USB ports in chair arms. Maybe somebody will hijack the headrest-mounted Playstations. Oh, wait, I think playstations and DVDs are just in JAL/INA.
Imagine how bloody angry ms would be if someone placed windoze on USB sticks. That could really mess up ms' licensing scheme.
Regardless of which OS is on a USB stick, what really will become a problem is abusers who use customized "OS-Sticks" (a term I'm coining and will continue to use even if some big powerhouse pickes it up and tries to hijack it as their own...) to wreak havoc on the Kinko's and other places where computers might be carelessly (by then) be deployed with their peripherals ports left (physically) unsecured or left installed.
With an OS-Stick, the user's privileges are all in hand, unless the BIOS of more or all computers has control over the data flow and control of the machine.
"Firewall-in-a-BIOS", anyone?
David Syes
Let's start displaying Tux with a family (wife/partner/spouse/whatever (industry/standards bodies), along with offspring or adoptees (we users and adoptees/friends of FOSS/Linux/GPL, etc)...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"