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Best Live Linux For Christmas Giving?
trustedserf writes "This year I am including a bootable Live Linux CD in many of my Christmas cards. As I'll be making the copies myself I may even change the default desktop background to something personal, or Christmasy before running it off on cheap CD-Rs. The objective is to show people the easiest possible route to using a linux desktop so that they will be: A) Aware and B) Pleasantly surprised. About Christmas they may also have more time to try it out too. Naturally, I'm thinking of Gnoppix, but there are other options.. I use KDE, so I have to decide between it and Gnome. Bearing in mind my objectives, what distro would you choose. Also, importantly, is it possible any of them will damage their hardware (monitors with incorrect refresh etc.) I would be *very* unhappy if that happened. How many of them would fail to boot, leaving a bad impression? Which way would you go about it for maximum "WOW"."
Mandrake has a live cd, and seems to be the best solution for a beginner. I have converted several people to Mandrake and they all seem to be happy with their solution
Mepis Linux is another good choice. It's also very easy to install to the hard drive if they are impressed with the LiveCD version. It's also just one CD. http://www.mepis.org
That would be Knoppix MAME then.
That means http://sourceforge.net/projects/knoppixmame
People who disagree with you are not automatically evil, greedy, or stupid.
has a lot of punch... Firefox, Multimedia and easy set up....
Mepis is Debian based; much lower barrier to admission than other Debian distros.
Well, what I'm thinking is that since a lot of people have numerous guests around during the holidays, if you have nice furniture these discs could make cool extra coasters to keep your relatives from sloshing their Scotch all over your new coffee table.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Check out Ubuntu. From what I've heard (friend of mine tried it) install should be rather painless.
Here's the Ubuntu About page for more info.
.: Max Romantschuk
The people that say that this smacks of conversion and fanaticalism are correct.
See, given your comments below, that's why you need the CD.
What about a seriously generic Linux distro where a newbie like myself could put it in his CD drive, it would boot into some sort of DOS like equivelant where it would ask some simple questions about partioning and formatting the drive, then 20 minutes later it would finish the install and boot me up to a GUI desktop with video drivers installed (well generic ones at least), sound drivers installed and firefox installed.
I've got news for you, the CD's we are talking about here go way beyond that. It's basically just put it in your CD drive and 1 minute later it's up and running a full GUI with your browser connected to the internet and solitaire ready to play. Not to mention having a _full_ office suit ready to use.
Still think it's not something you want to find in your XMas stocking?
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Did you even READ the sumitter's question? "This year I am including a bootable Live Linux CD in many of my Christmas cards.",
He's giving it out in his Xmas cards which generally are just a card and a signature, perhaps a "Seasons' Greetings" or something scrawled in there as well. This is added value over and above a simple card. At no point was the submitter suggesting that this was in lieu of "real" presents. This instead seems to be an added bonus for his acquaintances that would otherwise just be getting the $0.25 card mailed to them. Sounds fine to me.
One thing to note here is that if you use mini CD-Rs and are sending to non-technical people, do them a favour and add a note that they shouldn't use the disc in a slot-loading drive. Most slot-loading drives (mostly found on laptops) can't handle these discs, where they jam and can damage the drive.
There's nothing worse than getting a gift that forces you to send your laptop in for repair.
Yaz.