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Best Live Linux For Christmas Giving?

Posted by timothy on from the insert-your-favorite-winter-holiday dept.

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"."

13 of 594 comments (clear)

  1. Stuff it with games by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A linux live CD by itself isn't going to get a normal person to run it. You need to put all sorts of easy to run/access games on it, plus Firefox. Then maybe... possibly... someone will actually use it.

    1. Re:Stuff it with games by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      That would be Knoppix MAME then.

    2. Re:Stuff it with games by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      I got an AOL 9 disk for christmas last year from my cousin. Needless to say he's getting a present from my cat's litterbox this year.

  2. best? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    windows-xp-professional-with-keygen.iso

  3. other alternatives to Live CDs by Ingolfke · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'd skip the Linux live CD and give a charitable donation to The Human Fund instead. It's much more meaningful.

  4. Think Again by comwiz56 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I would think twice before doing. Seriously, how many people, whether family or friends, wouldn't think of you as a fanatic or total nerd if you went around giving Linux as a christmas gift.

    I would suggest pulling some of your more technically inclined relatives/friends aside, and just show them Linux running on your machine.

    1. Re:Think Again by IntelliTubbie · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I would think twice before doing. Seriously, how many people, whether family or friends, wouldn't think of you as a fanatic or total nerd if you went around giving Linux as a christmas gift.

      Seriously ... this reminds me of people who push their favorite book on everyone as a "gift," and then constantly harass them if they haven't read it yet. Rule of thumb: any gift that requires less effort to give than to receive isn't much of a gift at all.

      Cheers,
      IT

      --

      Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.

    2. Re:Think Again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      As a Democrat who hunts...
      Can I have your address? I have a lovely cardigan that you *must* see.

  5. you must be the tech guy in your family by terrymaster69 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    My family wouldn't know what "boot from this cd" means. Good luck!

  6. If there's one thing I know... by Chess_the_cat · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...it's that people hate to be converted and they hate to be preached to. If your friends aren't looking to change their OS then just forget your little crusade because all you're going to do is piss people off.

    --
    Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
  7. And the 2004 uber Dork award goes to... by HockeyPuck · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is like a relative trying to convert you to Colgate from Crest....

    lame gift.

    Give em a linux powered media player or something useful...

    What about putting photos and music on it and use it as the card itself...

  8. Re:There is a good point to be made from this by Tough+Love · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.
  9. Buy them a Mac by Romeozulu · · Score: 5, Funny

    Which way would you go about it for maximum "WOW"."

    Buy them a Mac