Taking Linux On The Road With Ubuntu

Zebrahead writes "Tom's Hardware has a nice review of the Ubuntu H2. How about storing your operating system, including some applications, on a highly mobile device? This is exactly what the Ubuntu H2 was designed for. In theory, the Ubuntu H2 package can be run on virtually any computer that has at least one empty USB port. A tiny 1" hard drive with 3 GB capacity was teamed up with the Debian-based Linux distribution Ubuntu. Bundling a tiny storage device with a fully-featured open source operating system enables the user to take a system installation, all its settings and applications, and a limited amount of data with him. It would be great to take this pretty interesting product to an Internet café, a computer at a friend's location, or any other system you can think of."

Comments

3GB == Tiny?

[ergo98]

A 3GB drive is decidely un-tiny.

Re:3GB == Tiny?

[punkdigerati]

I believe the Tiny was in reference to the one inch size, not the capacity.

Re:3GB == Tiny?

[WillerZ]

1inch == tiny, numbnuts.

Re:3GB == Tiny?

[Homology]

A 3GB drive is decidely un-tiny.

Indeed, but when the article suggest to put install applications like OpenOffice, Mozilla Thunderbird and Mozilla Firefox along with Evolution and rest of the Gnome desktop, you sure need those 3GB. Perhaps the reviewer was refering to the physical size of the drive as small ;-)

Re:3GB == Tiny?

[halcyon1234]

A 3GB drive is decidely un-tiny.

I don't agree. Physically, it's the same size as any other USB key. Smaller, even, since it is newer. In the grand scheme of things, a 3GB USB pen vs. 250GB internal HDD is very tiny.

Re:3GB == Tiny?

[ryanov]

I gotta agree. My Ubuntu install on this PC is 3.1GB. That includes not only more stuff than anyone would need on a mobile/temp install (wallpapers, several different media players, etc.), but probably includes some installers/downloaded .debs, and the kernel source.

What I'm guessing is that it doesn't need the 3GB, that's just the device used.

Re:3GB == Tiny?

[miscz]

Ubuntu Live CD includes all apps from normal Ubuntu AFAIR. I don't have to compare CD capacity to 3gb drive :)

Re:3GB == Tiny?

[Fear the Clam]

That's what she said, you insensitive clod.

Re:3GB == Tiny?

[Killjoy_NL]

Don't you know size doesn't matter?? ;)

Re:3GB == Tiny?

[ScrewMaster]

To quote Lieutenant Worf during his stint on Deep Space 9: "I see nothing amusing about being ... small."

Re:3GB == Tiny?

[ajs318]

Depends how big you define an inch to be, I suppose. It isn't a proper measuring unit, it's a slang term; and it can mean as much or as little as you want it to mean. Which is why TV sets have to have the size quoted in real measuring units {mm. or cm., rarely m.} somewhere in the advertising literature.

Re:3GB == Tiny?

[Nykon]

"Depends how big you define an inch to be, I suppose. It isn't a proper measuring unit, it's a slang term; and it can mean as much or as little as you want it to mean. Which is why TV sets have to have the size quoted in real measuring units {mm. or cm., rarely m.} somewhere in the advertising literature."

Inch is a slang term? Wait so the side of my ruler with cm and mm on it is the "real" and the side with inches is not real? Funny, everytime I have bough a 12" ruler is has always been the same size. Though to claim an inch can be any size someone wants.

Sounds to me like a story you tell your girlfriend to convince her that your penis "really is 8 inches".

Re:3GB == Tiny?

[ajs318]

Well, it is -- if you define an inch to be 35mm.

Seriously, though, the only officially recognised unit of distance is the metre, which is defined as the distance travelled by light through a perfect vacuum in 1/299 792 458 seconds. {Adding a multiplier prefix does not change the base unit; in "forty centimetres" you can think of the "centi" bit as belonging to the 40, and 40 centi-anythings are 0.4 of a whole one of the same thing.}

Re:3GB == Tiny?

[ajs318]

http://www.bipm.org/

Gotta Love Ubuntu

[JoeShmoe950]

I think this is a great concept, and I must say, I love ubuntu, but what about hardware conflicts. Not just with ubuntu, but with Linux in general, i've always had trouble with the combination of a PCI GeForce and integrated graphics conflicting. This can be a real pain. Any solution for thigns like this?

Re:Gotta Love Ubuntu

[arkhan_jg]

Depends what you're trying to do. If you only want the PCI geforce working, your best bet is simply to disable the onboard graphics in the BIOS.

If you wanted both onboard and PCI graphics card to work (in some form of xinerama setup), set the PCI card to be the default display device in the BIOS, as opposed to AGP (most onboard video chips are classed as AGP devices in the BIOS). A number of PCI graphics cards aren't happy unless they're the first video device to be initialised.

Once you've got the card running, you can use either the opensource nv driver that ships as part of Xorg, or you can use the closed source drivers from nvidia that are custom compiled for your distro. You need the closed-source licenced drivers to do 3D-acceleration properly, but for basic 2D work the nv drivers are fine. Depends on your distro how best to do this - ubuntu does have support for the closed-source drivers, but I believe it's a bit of a pain to get working.

As part of the wider picture though, I've always been amazed by the hardware-detection and support on linux LiveCDs (or indeed, the H2). Given the lack of co-operation from hardware manufacturers, the amount of machines that work perfectly well 'out of the box' (i.e. without manually installing drivers) is much higher than windows XP; sata drive support, for example.

Re:Gotta Love Ubuntu

[RAMMS EIN]

``Depends on your distro how best to do this - ubuntu does have support for the closed-source drivers, but I believe it's a bit of a pain to get working.''

I did this on someone else's box recently, and it's actually a matter of just installing the right package (from Synaptic).

Re:Gotta Love Ubuntu

[Korean Elvis]

The Tomn's hardware uses the warty?? This advise hazardly use for a cool or sliced raw fish for the newer hardwares. The hoary or breezy goes whith good hardware detection with stabilty realness and support.

Re:Gotta Love Ubuntu

[arkhan_jg]

I saw a number of posts by people having trouble with the nvidia-glx package when I did a few minutes research, but I'll happily take your word for it; I'm not an ubuntu user.

Re:Gotta Love Ubuntu

[KermitJunior]

I love irony. After all, that Windows LiveCD or install cd detects everything out there without having to download drivers from the manufacturer's website or use an enclosed disk. Compared to Linux which works with probably over 95% (FTR, I pulled that out my butt).

Point is, Linux hardware detection is far beyond anything else out there right now. If something doesn't work when I'm demonstrating, I normally tell people it's too new or not within standards most likely, and challenge WinXP or whatever to detect it (which it never does). They normally understand.

Internet Cafe

[Sinus0idal]

Ok, but which correctly configured public machines (schools, uni's, internet cafes etc) are going to let you boot from a usb device? Allowing booting from other media can create havoc for admins.

Re:Internet Cafe

[halcyon1234]

Ok, but which correctly configured public machines (schools, uni's, internet cafes etc) are going to let you boot from a usb device? Allowing booting from other media can create havoc for admins.

Actually, this could be one of the best things to happen to network admins in a long time. Right now, a network admin has to spend ungodly amounts of time going to local machine after local machine to install patches, fix registry errors, change /etc settings... or to run ghost floppies to restore the machine... or to set up remote scripts to do any or all of the above automatically. Basically, a royal crapton of time is spent on local OS maintenance.

If the admin were to just yank out the internal hard drive, and set the boot order to "USB / CDROM / FLOPPY", their lives become much easier. Instead of "Here's a huge list of things you are not allowed to do on the computers because it might ruin our installed OS", they can just say "Hey, do whatever you want. It's your own OS. If you muck it up, you have to fix it."

It will suddenly create two new markets as well. First, people who fix portable OS installs will see a resurgance of business. (As always, those of us who know better can just drop the 2.5GB backup of the OS image we have on our home machine back onto the USB key). Second, it will create a great secondary market for 10GB hard drives. Why bother spending the extra $100+ on a huge hard drive for a machine if it isn't needed? Just put a small hard drive in each machine that the user can mount for swap space. (I know that ever company I've worked for has had a gigantic stack of unused 2GB - 4GB hard drives in their storage closets).

Re:Internet Cafe

[jacksonj04]

Won't work. Companies and schools (at least in the UK) are accountable for what is done on their networks. Just having dumb terminals doesn't help this.

For schools especially, all internet access must be monitored, and schools in Leeds (Which ain't a small city) use an individual-user-login based service. This means a proxy server, and most kids wouldn't know what a proxy server was if it came up and slapped them in the face.

I'd love to be able to run a portable distro in school, but at the moment it's just not feasable. Even our own laptops have to be forced through the proxy to do anything useful.

Re:Internet Cafe

[GiMP]

Never heard of transparent proxies? Never hear of radius? There are solutions out there.

Re:Internet Cafe

[halcyon1234]

For schools especially, all internet access must be monitored, and schools in Leeds (Which ain't a small city) use an individual-user-login based service. This means a proxy server, and most kids wouldn't know what a proxy server was if it came up and slapped them in the face.

Much the same in Canada, but that doesn't mean it won't work. As an example, I go to Seneca College. In order to use any of their PCs, you have to log into them with your college username/password. OR, if you bring in your own computer (ie: a laptop with wifi), and try to get any outside access, then you must still log in. The system automatically redirects any outside requests to a login screen. Once you authenticate, then it will let you outside. So there is still some level of security. (And, as we all know, if someone is truly determined to Do Bad Things, they'll find a way).

Re:Internet Cafe

[ctr2sprt]

It's feasible. Think of it like this. Clearly the computing labs aren't trusted, or you wouldn't have to authenticate and the schools wouldn't have to regulate or monitor your traffic. Students are trying to get to computers which are trusted, namely the proxy and other internal servers. So what do you usually use to go from an untrusted network to a trusted one? A VPN. It'll handle authentication and do encryption to boot. As an added bonus, it can be set up to allow connections from the wider Internet as well, so students can access class materials and such from home and not just the public labs.

It will require students to install VPN clients on their "mobile OSes," but I don't think that's an unreasonable demand to make.

Re:Internet Cafe

[Al Dimond]

At this point, aren't you just as well off telling users, "Just use a laptop," and having ethernet jacks in the wall or wifi? That way you aren't putting your own computer hardware at risk. Yes, hardware can be reasonably-well protected, just as a network can be reasonably-well secured, but it would be much cheaper and easier in my opinion to just offer up tables, chairs, wifi and ethernet jacks, and allow users to use the stuff they already have (P3 laptops can be had for ~$200 on eBay... which is not *that* much more than a bootable USB HD). And that way users' OSes only have to be configured for one set of hardware: their own.

Re:Internet Cafe

[ScottyUK]

Here in North Lanarkshire (Scotland), no authentication is required to access the schools internet connection. Instead, every school/library/community centre/etc is simply connected direct to a central location at the local council, and a scoring system automatically rates each web page before it is sent to the machine. Individual department admins etc can set their own score thresholds (presumably according to council policy - for example a school might have a lower threshold than a library) and any website rated above this value due to word content, images etc are replaced with a "Denied" message and a note to contact your admin. Certain sites such as google images are blacklisted completely, and presumably large ranges of ports are blocked - most online games will not work. Most "Denied" messages are assumed to be accidental and will cause no further action but hits to certain listed websites, sites above certain scores or repeated attempts to access a denied website will automatically notify the admin.

Re:Internet Cafe

[dotgain]

Nope, none of my users have *ever*heard* of a transparent proxy.

*chuckles*

Re:Internet Cafe

[Kadin2048]

Wow.

And people accuse the U.S. of being creepy and censorious? Glad to hear that the field is being pioneered elsewhere.

Granted, I haven't been to a highschool in this country in a while, but I have it on good authority that there is not nearly that level of filtering or access control. I think most filtering here in schools is aimed at curbing file sharing, and there isn't any content filtration in any libraries that I'm aware of.

Re:Internet Cafe

[Arcanis the Rogue]

Reminds me of Quake 3, when your are about to get the quad but someone else swipes it from under your nose. Denied!

This is a really nifty idea, I would love to keep one of my favorite distros in my pocket. You can change the packets and whatnot when it is installed, right? Like change the Desktop Environment to KDE or XFCE? I'm not too fond of GNOME, first thing I change when I install Ubuntu on a box.

Re:Internet Cafe

[zsau]

There is actually a product called the Black Dog which is apparently somewhat similar: A Linux distro (Debian-based in this case) on a USB drive, except that the Black Dog acts as the computer, and when you plug it in it essentially turns the host into a dumb terminal (assuming it's running GNU/Linux, Windows or Mac OS X), presumably running an X server via the autorun feature on Windows or manually on GNU/Linux and MacOS X. I'm somewhat interested in one of these things (it'd be very useful!), but there doesn't seem to be any reviews for them on the web (there's a bunch of introductory-type things, but they're just regurgitating the same hype-info distributed by the company).

From what I can see, the major differences appear to be that one is just GNU/Linux on a USB drive, whereas the other is a portable screenless, keyboardless computer; and that one has a big hard drive whereas the other has a smaller, flash-based drive. I'd be somewhat wary about running an OS running of a flash drive (I understand they have a fairly limited number of reads/writes you can do), and also even 512 MB doesn't sound like nearly enough space to do anything on it.

Re:Internet Cafe

[imthesponge]

My school district had a system like this.

Re:Internet Cafe

[MECC]

Wouldn't
export http_proxy="http://user:pass@proxy.domain:port" work?
It does for me. Apt, synaptic, and aptitude all work just fine. Of course, you still have to tell firefox about the proxy.

Re:Internet Cafe

[jacksonj04]

Yes, but just because you and I know how to set a proxy doesn't necessarily mean that everybody knows how to. I have seen people open Internet Explorer, type "Yahoo" in the address bar, and use the MSN search results to find Yahoo to search for what they were looking for.

Re:Internet Cafe

[MECC]

"I have seen people open Internet Explorer, type "Yahoo" in the address bar, and use the MSN search results to find Yahoo to search for what they were looking for."

When I see something like that, I just quit watching . . .

Re:Internet Cafe

[Jaruzel]

I seriously doubt that would work with NTLM based authentication, which most IIS/ISA Proxy Servers would be set-up to use.

-Jar.

Re:Internet Cafe

[KermitJunior]

Royal crapton? I would think Royal crap-ton would be more clear. :)

Good for librarians too...

[macguys]

I've been following the issues that many librarians have with having to be part of government snooping of internet logs on their patrons. By using Linux live distros like Ubantu, this problem seems to go away. If the snoops want to snoop, they can do so further upstream and not involve the librarians.

Of course, I fully expect a new law that makes USB ports on public computers illegal.

Re:Good for librarians too...

[level_headed_midwest]

Why would this make USB ports illegal? If you want to prevent booting from USB devices, simply put the boot order in the BIOS below that of the HDD. With the average newer computer, set the boot order to be such and password the BIOS.

1. Network
2. HDD
3. Floppy
4. CD-ROM/DVD
5. USB

You have to have another computer to do a netboot, so having HDD in order above the optical, floppy, and USB prevents people from using live OSes but still allows the admin on the network to boot if the installed OS fails. And if the admin needed to do other work, hey, he should know the BIOS password and can change boot order.

Or they could use an older computer (like mine) that can't boot from USB. Most library computers I have seen are so old that they might not even *have* USB ports.

Re:Good for librarians too...

[aug24]

I fully expect a new law that makes USB ports on public computers illegal.

I really would hope to see the opposite... The PC has no hard drive and if you want writeable media you can burn a disk, read/write you need a stick. The facility can offer you a read-only image on loan to boot or you can bring your own if, say, you need a specific app.

Spamming type activities should be prevented by upstream limits or port blocking (dropped by arrangement only - for large file transfer perhaps), and any 'nasty stuff' would then have to be carried around by the perp.

Justin.

Other Distros?

[n0dalus]

Does this device work with other distros too?

Re:Other Distros?

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn Small Linux can be installed to a USB flash/pen drive, which would probably run faster due to being no moving parts, and be less expensive to optain that the H2 mini harddrive...

Re:Other Distros?

[VJ42]

Thanks for that (I'd never heard of Damn Small Linux before), I know a couple of netwoks (including my uni one) that alow me to boot from alternate devices, a small distro is a great Idea, it'll eaisly fit on my old pen drive, giving it a new lease of life.

SLOOOW....

[yourexhalekiss]

4400 RPM Hard Drive... 4-5 minute boot time? Ouch. Seriously, this reminds me of a LiveCD of some kind. I love the idea and think that some people will find the H2 invaluable, but to me it just doesn't seem very practical.

Re:SLOOOW....

[planckscale]

Yeah the only removable storage media I've been seriously considering is SATA. However, the amount of systems with externally available SATA ports is pretty small. One of those new 7200RPM laptop drives with a SATA drive enclosure would probably be a light-enough/fast-enough removable-bootable media.

Re:SLOOOW....

[dreemernj]

I feel where you are coming from. I think I would have a lot of little uses for this but still it would be slow.

Scary thing is thinking about the new Lenovo/IBM Thinkpad Tablet PC. That costs over $2000 and has a 4200RPM HD.

Re:SLOOOW....

[Wonko]

4400 RPM Hard Drive... 4-5 minute boot time?

I skimmed through the article and towards the end there is a graph of the throughput of this drive. It seems to max out at around 8 MB/sec. It is probably the slowest 4200 RPM hard drive you will be likely to find since the platters are so small. A 3.5 inch drive and a 1 inch drive using the same technology will both have save bit density.

I am sure the platters are not quite these sizes, but... The outter most track on a 3.5 inch platter is nearly 11 inches long. The outter most track on a 1 inch platter is 3.14 inches long. So the 3.5 inch drive will have over three times as much data pass under the read/write head each revolution. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the inner most track on the 3.5 inch platter is still bigger than the outtermost track on this 1 inch drive.

Seriously, this reminds me of a LiveCD of some kind.

That is precisely what it is... A live cd on read/write media.

I love the idea and think that some people will find the H2 invaluable, but to me it just doesn't seem very practical.

I think the biggest problem is the lack of machines that can boot USB drives, not to mention the machines where you won't have access to change the setting. I would imagine you'd have better luck carrying a business card cd with a bootloader, though.

I have thought about putting a bootable Linux image of some kind on my flash drive. I have tons of space free, but I don't own a machine that can boot it :p.

Re:SLOOOW....

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a terrible boot time. They really would be better off using a compressed filesystem, like the live CDs do, since almost any computer these days will be able to decompress the data quicker than it can be transferred, thus effectively giving you an 2-3x improvement in data transfer rate and you would get a lot more free space for your data to boot.

For running a distro when you only have a limited amount of space I'd recommend using SLAX, it's small, fast and can run from RAM and can be easily customized using modules. If space is really limited Puppy Linux is nice aswell and packs a lot into it's small size, but a bit too stripped down for it to be comfortable for me.

Myself, I've got SLAX booting from my portable 2.5" hard drive, but I'm gonna get myself a 1GB MP3 player, with a little space set aside for SLAX and make a bootable credit card CD incase the computer doesn't support USB booting, this way it won't be a pain to take with me in case I need it since I'll hardly have to carry anything extra.

Re:SLOOOW....

[arodland]

That is precisely what it is... a live cd on read/write media.

Yeah, and as much as I like Ubuntu in general, I have to say that their live CD is about the slowest thing I've ever seen in terms of boot speed. Debootstrap was never meant to "go there" ;)

Re:SLOOOW....

[level_headed_midwest]

My computer shipped with a 4200rpm unit and cost over $2000 (granted, this was in 2002 also.) Hdparm reported the read speed at about 27MB/sec. When it died a squealing death, I replaced it with a 5400rpm Travelstar 5K100 and it is much faster- hdparm says 45MB/sec average read speed. I bet the larger 7200rpm ones are in the high 50s to low 60s, but unfortunately the Seagate 7200rpm drives are $300+ and the 80GB+ 7K100s were backordered for a month when I ordered. But of course those would pale in comparison to an average 7200rpm 300GB desktop drive :(

Poor choice of name

[tepples]

The name "H2" definitely doesn't scream "efficient" to a lot of people. In fact, another product called "H2", a gas-guzzling SUV designed as a military-style façade on a Chevy Tahoe engine, has shown itself to be worthy of the F-bomb: Fsck you and the Hummer you rode in on.

Re:Poor choice of name

[JabberWokky]

Funny, I always think of molecular hydrogen.

If you want to count by numbers, I think that the count of hydrogen molecules are a wee bit ahead of Hummers. Also by date, since hydrogen appeared a bit after the Big Bang (although it took a bit to cool enough for molecular form), while the Hummer H2 was released in 2003 C.E..

I'd imagine that hydrogen has less of an advertising budget since 2003, however.

--
Evan

Re:Poor choice of name

[advocate_one]

while the Hummer H2 was released in 2003 C.E..

wtf's this C.E. crap??? please, A.D. is the correct form. Anything else is pandering to the PC brigade

Re:Poor choice of name

[Rayonic]

Just read your H2 site, and I have to say: Jesus Christ what a big baby you are.

Go find a worthy cause to get all pissy over.

Re:Poor choice of name

[JabberWokky]

Sorry, I'll pander to you from now on.

--
Evan

Meaning of Ubuntu

[threaded]

I thought Ubuntu meant "Can't install Gentoo"?

Re:Meaning of Ubuntu

[Xarius]

Actually, it means "I can't configure Slackware"

Re:Meaning of Ubuntu

[outZider]

"No one wants to spend a week installing an operating system." :)

Re:Meaning of Ubuntu

[iggymanz]

haha, from precompiled binaries, sure. A fully customized and optimized install will take a LONG time. But some of us want to have a fully functional system in a hurry, with all devices & services rolling.

Re:Meaning of Ubuntu

[destuxor]

Dave Jones, a RedHat/Fedora kernel developer, has some interesting comments on Ubuntu and how people insist in their bug reports that "it works in Ubuntu." This blog post is certainly worth reading.

Re:Meaning of Ubuntu

[demon]

Or it could be they don't believe in VTEC stickers...

Re:Meaning of Ubuntu

[meringuoid]

I don't see why that precludes installing Gentoo. 10 minutes is all it takes.

Ten minutes?... WTF?

Imagine a Beowulf cluster of those!

Re:Meaning of Ubuntu

[outZider]

Ten minutes from precompiled binaries. So why not install Ubuntu, then? Then you get precompiled binaries AND a good package management system. I thought the whole point of Gentoo was to have everything compiled for you, to save those precious milliseconds... ;)

Re:Meaning of Ubuntu

[wolf31o2]

Ehh... no. See, that's what all the Gentoo-hating asshats that have never even used Gentoo tell you. Well, either them or the even-more-annoying ricers that think that by compiling their system with -ffast-math they're actually doing something productive.

So what is the advantage of installing Gentoo from binaries?

Well, you get a completely working system up and usable very quickly. All updates are then done from source. You can optimize your system on your own time table while still having a usable system. You also get the portage package manager, which is arguably the best out there.

Only complete idiots think that everything in Gentoo is about optimizations. The primary reason most people use Gentoo is for the customization ability. Want a lightweight version of a package and don't need to have optional ldap, mysql, and postgresql back-ends compiled into your mail client? No problem. To be honest, I would say that more load time is saved by having smaller binaries by stripping out optional support the user doesn't want, than is ever gained through aggressive optimizations. At any rate, most Gentoo users have enough sense not to overoptimize their binaries. It's just the vocal few that give the rest of us a bad name. Kind of like how a very small minority of Debian users have a seriously elitist attitude, so people relate Debian to being a bunch of elitist zealots.

It is the people that continue to propogate these myths that are the real bane to both communities.

Re:Meaning of Ubuntu

[outZider]

Nah, I'm not hating on Gentoo, more playing with the common stereotypes. It just isn't for me. When I go for a system like that, I go ahead and use FreeBSD.

To each their own, and that is the strength of OSS.

Great, but not the first distribution to do so

[plankrwf]

Nice idea, from Ubuntu. But they are certainly not the first. Of course, there is Knoppix , which runs Live from a CD. It might be made ready for USB stick also. And there are other distributions that fit on and are build for a 128Mb USB stick; for instance 'Damn Small Linux' ( DSL ), which only takes 50Mb of space...

Re:Great, but not the first distribution to do so

[Why Login]

There is also BeatrIX that would run off a USB stick.

Re:Great, but not the first distribution to do so

[Robocoastie]

yes but those are "LiveCD" distros as opposed to this which is actually a harddrive installation. Big difference. For example could you edit a short vacation film on a liveCd distro? Doubtful due to it using so much memory instead of being installed as a real filesystem. With H2 you could. This amongst other reasons is why getting Linux to install on a portable USB/Firedrive is like the holy grail amongst linux users and seems to be right up there with the "how do I get printer x or video card y to work" questions.

Re:Great, but not the first distribution to do so

[Hexact]

Humm, I don't see it, where does it say that it's the first one?

Re:Great, but not the first distribution to do so

[cheshire_cqx]

Also look at http://www.mepis.org/. Nicely done distro!

Re:Great, but not the first distribution to do so

[LoaTao]

... or SLAX which is also easily customizable with Slax modules and webconfig (for us lazy people).

USB Live HDD

[ebooher]

Another thing people could do if a machine doesn't have a BIOS that is USB boot friendly is mirror the /boot structure on a 3" mini-cdr and keep that in the case with the drive. Set the Live CD up so that it seeks out the USB drive for /usr /home /etc partitions.

The $140 price tag is a little steep for me to have something I'd only use as a toy, though. With USB keys as cheap as they are right now, I'm not sure how well the market will accept this today.

Reminds me of the Black Dog.

[Caspian]

Which, notably, is more expensive. Nevertheless, check it out.

My Nuts != numb

[ergo98]

I guess I should have just said "FP!" given how literally everyone took it. :-)

good idea, needs a better implementation

[digitalride]

This concept would be much better implemented by creating a special Ubuntu live cd to look at a usb flash disk for the /home partition or even to save all settings like http://puppylinux.org/

Not all old machines can even boot from usb, and the install on a flash disk approach doesn't make since Ubuntu would need to be resinstalled every time to get everything set up properly for the hardware that you booted with. For example, if you install Ubuntu on a machine with an nvidia video card, then try to boot that image on a machine with an ATI card, it will not work without changing xorg.conf. But a live cd configures xorg.conf dynamically each boot. If you want the speed of a mini hard drive instead of cd but still want maximum portability, put a bootable image of the the live CD on the mini hard drive but still have a data partition. Yes, it takes an extra minute to go through the debian bootstrap process with hardware detection at each boot, but if you want portability that is probably necessary.

I would love to develop a product like this, but puppy linux may already be good enough. If someone wants to work on this I'd love to help distribute the free software and sell the accompanying hardware and support, so contact me @ groovix.com.

Re:good idea, needs a better implementation

[narcc]

I have DSL Linux installed on a flash drive (50mb!) and I haven't had any problems booting on different hardware. In addition - the DSL live cd I have boots orders of magnitude faster than Ubuntu's live cd.

Check it out: http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

Re:good idea, needs a better implementation

[Rakishi]

"But a live cd configures xorg.conf dynamically each boot"

So why would that not work with a usb boot device?

Blackdog

[drrjv]

Doesn't the Blackdog Server do it even better?

http://www.projectblackdog.com/

Re:Blackdog

[digitalride]

that is truly amazing, I have envisioned something like that for years. Compared to a live cd with usb flash solution it is going to be slower and more expensive. However, not having to reboot the host machine is priceless. It will also run on a windows machine with crappy windows-only hardware. I'd like to see what the real world performance is like.

Re:Blackdog

[Steinfiend]

Being the proud owner of a Blackdog, I can answer that question. The performance is great, on the right computer. Currently Windows support is WinXP SP2 only, no other versions work. A lot of home users have XP, and should be at the latest version, so thats great when you are at your Aunts house and want to do something geeky. However, the BD would be very useful in corporate/server environments where XP isn't so widespread, so its usefuless is diminished.

Linux support is better, although takes a bit of brains to make to work. I think most people who are buying the BD at the moment are (wanna-be) Linux Hackers, so no worries there.

Ultimately, I love my BD!

Sure

[StarKruzr]

But I think he wants to be able to do some kind of nifty dual-monitor thing.

When you can't reboot? Portable Apps

[CritterNYC]

I like the idea of taking along a full OS on a portable drive. They should consider adding a virtual machine that runs under Windows and can boot it. Then, you can use it in locations where rebooting would be an issue (internet cafes, at work, on mom's PC).

Until something like that comes along... and doesn't have a 5 minute startup timeframe... I'll stick to Portable Apps.

(Full disclosure: Yes, that's my website.)

Huh?

[commodoresloat]

You're gonna plug your pocket into a monitor? That might look funny.

Re:Huh?

[fishbowl]

  "You're gonna plug your pocket into a monitor? That might look funny."

In one of the offices I travel to, I've got an LCD panel and a keyboard, I use my laptop like a workstation, out of the way. It doesn't look funny, because it doesn't look like anything at all.

Common omission

[StarKruzr]

This is the secondary definition. The primary one is "doesn't feel like running a compile-everything-from-source distribution on a Pentium II/400." :p

Re:Common omission

[arkhan_jg]

True, but how many PII/400's do you have that boot USB media? :)

Re:Common omission

[pepeperes]

I have 3 intels (AOL dot station) bought them for nothing, they are celeron 300s with 64MB base RAM, they have this nifty bios where you have all kind of boot options (including network PXE and USB...) Besides, my personal view is that you must have very specific needs, or be a student and have plenty of free time on your hands, to use a compile-all distro...

Re:Common omission

[level_headed_midwest]

I had an old AMD K6-2 500MHz machine that could not, nor can my dad's 1.8 P4, or my 2.2 P4-M laptop. I think the USB booting comes either from a special BIOS on enthusiast/professional boards or through a newer chipset than we have in our machines (newest is i845). Besides, USB 1.1 is pretty slow and the 845 doesn't have USB 2.0 on the board.

Re:Linux vs. Windows

[temcat]

Your life must be so great... why are you so angry then? :-)

Win XP SP2 + Ubuntu here.

Kinda stupid

[xenocide2]

From what I can tell this is just some retail company that decided to throw in one of those free Ubuntu discs with a microdrive, rather than anything officially supported by Ubuntu / Cannoical. Still interesting, but a little bit less newsworthy when you discover that a) the "pre-installed" OS is not pre-installed, and b) it takes 4 minutes to boot.

When you look at the graph, you see that you're getting less than 10MB/sec. Two questions: what are the numbers on the bottom referring to, and why does the graph look like it does? Is there some caching mechanism going on?

Device drivers

[d1rty_d0gg_]

This would be a cool idea if the distro supported a sufficiently large number of device drivers. That way you could boot off this USB drive and expect all the hardware on the host to be discovered. Knoppix would be the ideal choice for this sort of a thing. IBM tried something similar [slashdot.org] with Knoppix to allow users to carry the state of their OS around on portable storage.

Re:WOW

[Mr. Slippery]

Pretty soon you will have the computer in your pocket that you plug into the monitor.

You can almost do this with the newer Sharp Zaurus models. Pocketsized Linux box, 4 GB drive...you can even hook up a USB keyboard and mouse to it.

Supposedly there is an VGA output option, but no one seems to be able to get it to work. You could probably get it going to display on your desktop machine with VNC or with X Windows somehow.

The Zaurus C3000 rocks. For the past few months it's replaced my trusty pencila and notebook for writing poetry and journaling. Gets lots on envious looks when people see mine; unfortnately they're not marketed in the U.S., but a few companies import them and convert them to English from Japanese.

(The clamshell form factor for small electronics is much more common in Japan, widely used for electronic dictionaries and translators.)

This idea is not new..

[3seas]

its an idea that has been around for alt least 8 years, probably more like 20.
It's nice to see others comming up with it too, as that keeps it from being bitch slapped with patent crap.

The smaller the OS the more room you potentially have for applications and data.

Its obvious that technology allows storage media to get smaller in size, bigger in space and faster in access.

This is where virus, worm and whatever badness can be stopped cold in its tracks.

Whan you have write protected media to hold the OS and applications you don't have to worry about getting corrupted, like a CD ROM. And as storage of the multi-write once kind comes along of inexpensive, small and terabyte size it'll be enough to never really need to erase anything, but only disable access to old or bad stuff.

Even today this sort of thing is possible though on a much reduced scale.

OS and Applications can be pretty much static, so upgrading would only be making a new rom device with whatever upgraded software you want. A secondary device for your personal data and configuration...

A device that combines both .... something to patent bitchslap and crap?

Two USB based drives on one comnnector, providing two write protect switches.

Like car keys --- you physically take it with you and plug it into whatever hardware you have access to.

Now here is the most interesting part of such a personal device.....you no longer need the overhead of multi-user security.... And removing it provides a huge boost to speed and user friendliness.

A small OS like AROS (an open source Amiga Research Operating System) will do well with such a device.

I am a ubuntu user, A knoppix user, an Amiga use...and less and less a windows users.

Puppy

[HermanAB]

3GB??? What the heck? That is small, cheap and convenient nowadays?

Puppy Linux runs off a 128MB USB memory stick. That is 24 times smaller and it also does everything you need and it boots about 10 times faster too.

Re:Puppy

[MichaelSmith]

3GB??? What the heck? That is small, cheap and convenient nowadays?

A 60G iPod is equally cheap and convenient. Just not as small.

Re:Puppy

[Delos]

Might I not want to take some data with me, too?

Re:Puppy

[HermanAB]

There is lots of space left, even on a 128MB device: http://www.goosee.com/puppy/

Re:Puppy

[Professor_UNIX]

A 60G iPod is equally cheap and convenient. Just not as small.

Where can I get a 60GB iPod for $138? Don't say eBay either since I prefer to buy new equipment not someone else's used garbage with a questionable history.

Re:Puppy

[Granis]

How can there be a lot of space left, when there were not even a lot of space to begin with?

Re:Puppy

[Anonymous Coward]

That is 24 times smaller and it also does everything you need and it boots about 10 times faster too.

How is it you already know "everything I need"?

It doesn't, actually, seem to have all (or even most) of the applications I need on a computer. It does have a lot of games, though. Draw your own conclusions...

Re:Puppy

[HermanAB]

Puppy Linux only consumes about 60MB of disk space, leaving 68MB free on a 128MB drive. It is so small, that if your machine has 128MB RAM or more, then it will load and run completely from RAM, making it screamingly fast.

Go here and download it. Since it is so small, the best way to explain Puppy, is to try it:
http://www.goosee.com/puppy/

Mediocre Experience

[Seumas]

I'm been a Debian-only guy since early 2002 and when it was time to get a new laptop, I decided to go with Ubuntu, because of that "heritage". Unfortunately, it still had a lot of problems that are not entirely due to Ubuntu itself. Problems such as it never remembering the wifi card and network, so it'd have to be setup every time you logged into Ubuntu. Problems like there not being any solid driver's for the graphics card (unless you wanted 2D only - even screensavers chugged the 2.4ghz, 2gb RAM, 128mb ATI 9800 system down to a crawl.

There were a number of other issues, too. In the end, I wiped it and gave it to my brother as a Windows system for school. I could probably have resolved all the little issues with a bunch of elbow grease, but I don't have that kind of time and thought maybe Ubuntu was ready for prime-time easier-than-redhat installation. (Or at least, what I'm told is easy -- I haven't used Redhat except for a couple months back in 1997).

All in all, I was impressed with Ubuntu and I think it shows great promise of all the current desktop distros. And frankly, as long as you still have apt-get, what's not to like? :)

Re:Mediocre Experience

[Rakishi]

"128mb ATI 9800 system"

ATI is well known to have shitty Linux drivers, if you wish to complain then please send a letter to ATI asking them to make better linux drivers. In general, for desktop linux you need to pick hardware which will work with it.

Re:Mediocre Experience

[ajs318]

You would do better sending a letter to your elected representative, demanding full disclosure as a precondition for approval for sale. At the moment, manufacturers are allowed to get away with deceptive practices such as selling "5 megapixel" cameras with a 2MPx sensor array, and hiding behind "software copyright".

The Ubuntu H2 can be ordered online here.

[herve76]

The Ubuntu H2 is on sale at: http://www.zinside.com/index.php?main_page=product _info&products_id=46

I think you lost this...

[Winckle]

</i>
but you can have mine ;)

Re:WOW

[rdoger6424]

Mac Mini! You just need a huge-ass pocket.

This is a nifty idea, but not really practical

[WestCanadaCitizen.ca]

I love Ubuntu and I've ran it on my desktop and my notebook for almost a year now without a hitch, but I don't see the upside to using it for this application. Portable units like this are generally used for rescue service or showing off Linux to would be converts. And although Ubuntu has good hardware support, etc. it's not an overly zippy distro to begin with so running it off of a USB hard drive is going to slow it down so much that anyone watching you wait for 4 minutes to boot up your new, supposedly better OS is going to laugh at you and run back to Windows (especially when they see the default Ubuntu theme). As far as rescue service goes, Knothing Beats Knoppix. So I'm just wondering what niche this would fit into.

Re:This is a nifty idea, but not really practical

[bcrowell]

I don't see the upside to using it for this application
Say I'm traveling, and I don't want to lug a laptop with me. With this thing, I could run emacs, gimp, etc., in internet cafes or at friends' houses.

And although Ubuntu has good hardware support, etc. it's not an overly zippy distro to begin with so running it off of a USB hard drive is going to slow it down so much that anyone watching you wait for 4 minutes to boot up your new, supposedly better OS is going to laugh at you and run back to Windows (especially when they see the default Ubuntu theme).
Last time I tried Knoppix, the performance wasn't any better than what they're quoting in this article.

It's going to be really cool when CD drives and/or USB drives like this get fast enough that there's no longer any performance hit. It could really make a drastic change in the way we think about using computers. Computers could become interchangeable utility boxes.

Re:This is a nifty idea, but not really practical

[WestCanadaCitizen.ca]

You're right about Knoppix not being any faster, but it does look better (and I'm a GNOME fan). So at least when you're showing your MCSE brother in law what this new fangled "Leeenuks" thing is he can see some bright colors and flashy things to keep his attention span. Also, if I remember right, Mandrake / Mandriva has / had a similar idea, with Mandrake on a portable hard drive. Does anyone have any idea how that sold?

Re:You have to REALLY hate windows

[RealBeanDip]

I hate to agree with you, but I do. Seriously, I'm wouldn't waste 4 minutes waiting for this thing to boot.

What I need is a stripped down installation that boots to a minimal GUI, has firefox installed so I can check my gmail (and not use a public computer/logon to do it). I'd also like a bash shell, ssh and a few utilities - should be able fit easily on a 128 meg USB stick.

..and it has the same old problems

[Hakubi_Washu]

Hardware drivers that is. Taking the OS with you is only possible if it contains all hardware drivers it may ever need (Loading them from the "stationary" part is not a good idea, since all benefits would then be void), and taking only rudimentary ones isn't good, you need working scanners, printers, graphics, sound, etc.
And, to be absoluetely safe, you'd need to carry the BIOS on that stick too + have a way to determine there is no malware abstraction-layer between your USB port (that's where the problems begin) and the CPU. Maybe it'd be better to carry those connections with you as well? Wait, that's a mobile computer... How much sense does this make?
I don't want to start on how you'd probably like the hardware to work without a OS-stick inserted, as public service terminal...
You could go in the other direction and demand a minimal OS installed and Read-only, carrying only your home dir and settings with you, but then you'd need a unified OS, or at least home/settings structure.

In the end, all these options have their merits, but none seem too convincing to me.

Re:Linux vs. Windows

[Hakubi_Washu]

Interestingly, for me it is exactly the other way round, I couldn't do university work on windows, I need a mature and stable system. But then I study computer science...

Burning Dinosaurs

[Doc Ruby]

When we store all our data remotely, and can reinstall our SW environment with apt-get against our packages configs, we can have our entire familiar desktop wherever our way has been paved with all those "legacy WinTel" machines. These thumbdrives are the key to the hiway.

Re:You have to REALLY hate windows

[bcrowell]

A: Hey, thanks for letting my stay at your place while I'm here in town. I really appreciate it.

B: No problem, it's great to get a chance to get together. The spare bed's all made up.

A: Oh yeah, could I use your computer tonight? I have some work I need to do.

B: Yeah, no problem.

A: I have all my data here on this keychain drive. Do you have Gimp, Scribus, emacs, pdftk, ImageMagick, and Inkscape installed?

B: Huh? No.

A: Oh, no problem, it'll just take a few minutes to install them with apt-get.

B: Apt-what?

A: Oh, you don't run Debian? That's cool, what distro do you use?

B: Windows XP.

A: Oh...I guess I'll go out and buy copies of Photoshop, PageMaker, InDesign, and Illustrator to install on your machine. Shouldn't be more than a thousand bucks, total, and I don't think it'll be too much work to convert all the files, work on them, and convert them back again.

Re:You have to REALLY hate windows

[say]

Could I suggest a USB stick with Firefox for windows binaries, configured to run with the profile directory on the stick; bash for windows and putty.exe? It would fit on a 32MB stick, depending on what your few utilities are. It would run a minimal GUI, Windows' is kinda minimal until Vista hits gold.

Nice one

[FishandChips]

Kudos to the developers. I guess this is more for experimenters and early adopters but it's great to see. There are surely going to be a great many experiments along these lines in the next few years. Whover gets the paradigm right is going to be making billions, most likely: intelligent key -> dumb terminal -> network -> master server running back the apps, with everything just the way you like it from your preferences data. As with mobile phones, I guess the keys/thumb drives would end up being almost given away to secure a monthly network subscription. Hmmn, tasty. Flash memory will need to change and improve first, though. We'll need masses of it, and cheap.

Re:You have to REALLY hate windows

[darkwhite]

Actually, that's what laptops are for

Mepis on the go

[twitter]

Mepis on the go uses a CD for the OS and USB for your home. This way, you get a fat distribution and a big writable space. The penalty is speed, which Puppy overcomes.

The more options you have, the better things are.

Re:When you can't reboot? Portable Apps

[CritterNYC]

Damn Small Linux can be run inside an OS, but it's rather slow that way.

Yup, I played with the Portable Virtual Privacy machine which runs DSL. It was just too slow.

Time

[solarlips]

I used to be a Linux advocate / snob citing stability and coolness as my reasons for using it. Honestly, I find that Linux holds me back from doing simple things that I take for granted on Windows. To get many apps to properly run I needed to download its package making sure that I installed the correct dependencies beforehand. I was definitely not a Linux power user, more of an advanced beginner. (Yes, I know there are programs to resolve the dependency issue automatically.)

Open Office just seems to lag compared to Microsoft Office, and its memory utilization is huge. I'm also an avid porn junky; when I was using Linux trying to playback various media types was a pain, downloading appropriate packages again... and every so often not having a certain media supported. With Media Player I can do everything with 1 hand!

I haven't played with Linux for a while, but until I find a distribution that has a great office package and media player I won't be switching. Tom's Hardware cites instability... as a reason to use Linux; Win XP seems to be pretty darn stable when I use it. The time that it takes to setup a Linux distribution and get the same feel for it that I have with Windows would amount to a lot more time than the time I'm setback by Windows crashing. Plus a 4 minute boot time with this Ubuntu / H2 setup is nuts.

This is where OSX bridges the gap, a commonplace OS with standards and the benefit of Unix. I can run Microsoft Word and have the ability to compile just about any Linux app. Maybe Microsoft should take a similar move as Apple did in developing OSX. Completely redo their OS and base it on BSD... create a good emulator (Wine like) to appease software developers for the meantime and stray away from the old Win32 development stuff. This way they could corral the whole Unix / Linux threat and create an OS that appeals to all parties. Then again why should the dominant player by leaps and bounds in any industry have to do something so massive, they don't have to.

Re:Time

[level_headed_midwest]

I'm also an avid porn junky...I can do everything with 1 hand!

At least you're honest.

Re:You have to REALLY hate windows

[level_headed_midwest]

That's when you carry around a live CD of the same version as is on your machine and a USB stick or little HDD so you can do what you said.

The hard part is when you made a document in one of those programs and try to send it to people. When they can't open it, they get ticked off. Even though almost all the apps have Windows ports and are free to get- it's too much trouble to select the program listed under the "find program using the Web" find page when XP does not know what the file is. I have ticked off a few when I have forgotten to convert .odt files to .doc files or compressed a files as a bzip2/gzip instead of .zip.

I think a lot of people are lazy and anything not automatically done for them sets off a panic sequence.

Re:When you can't reboot? Portable Apps

[Barbarian]

There is always colinux for running linux inside windows.

Buyer Beware!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

this is a great concept, but these drives are made by a comany called cornice. The company i work for has sold these drives (w/o ubuntu) for a few months. Many of them have gone bad.

I'd recommend a good flash drive set to boot slax, feather, or dsl. (Much faster too)

Re:Linux vs. Windows

[PitaBred]

c'mon, don't you like, need a media player that's capable of playing all the porn vids you can find, though? That's what college is, right?
Not to mention installing a backdoor dialer to Uzbekistan on every other page, or a ActiveX rootkit. Where would college students be without Windows as a "grown-up" OS?

Re:You have to REALLY hate windows

[zsau]

A laptop still costs a decent chunk of money. Not everyone can afford to have a desktop computer for what they need the desktop for, and a laptop for the occasions when they're out-of-town or whatever to run GNU/Linux on.

Re:lol, geeks like you should be shot

[chthonicdaemon]

I know I shouldn't feed you, but I guess I'm feeling in that mood.

Popularity and ease of use for the novice user is what made Windows what it is. Fortunately one does not remain a novice forever, and once one starts wanting more power, one starts looking at stuff like Emacs. I have not found (and believe me, I have looked) a Free editor that has even half the power of Emacs for the stuff I do (like LaTeX editing, multiple language coding in the same environment). If you have an alternative that will make me more productive than I am using Emacs, I would be happy to suffer the same learning curve I went through with Emacs. In fact, if you could point me to an alternative to LaTeX for typesetting my PhD that would be as easily automatable and customisable as LaTeX, producing the same or better quality output, I would also be happy to investigate.

Some people use what they use because they have tried all reasonable alternatives and chosen what works best for them.

Re-inventing the Wheel?

[VxJasonxV]

It may have been already said...
But what happened to Black Dog Linux which does exactly this?

http://www.projectblackdog.com/

Re:Linux vs. Windows

[Hakubi_Washu]

http://www.videolan.org/, takes care of most things I need to watch (It's a bitch to install on SuSE, though), though many porn sites cater to their users' needs and offer MPEGs instead of WMV9s anyway, interestingly I never encountered a porn DivX. The other complaints I'll regard as humorous, alright? :-P

BTW, I still have a WinXP in dual-boot, it's just for gaming and it isn't the one coming up automagically...

Re:general

[buchanmilne]

I don't like mandrake too much because of the intense amount of preinstalled mumbo jumbo

Uncheck all the software categories at installation time, and there isn't any.

Ubuntu.. and their hardcore promotion of the word "Free" is also quite a plus..

But, doesn't help people understand the difference between price and freedom (ie access to source code etc etc).


i'll be damned if i ever pay a flippin' dime to RedHat, Mandriva, SuSE, or whoever else makes you pay for their crap..


Neither Mandriva nor SuSE make you pay for their normal distributions, although they do make money off selling them.

And, Mandriva's development model/process is more open than Ubuntu's (or Fedora's, or SuSE's).


Ubuntu is a prime example of how LINUX is supposed to be idealogically.. and they certainly execute that idea..


We'll still have to see how long they can survive on Mark's money ...

It's been done

[linforcer]

There was this company who sold mp3players with a tiny (much tinier than this) linux distribution on it. http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/15/025823 3

Re:general

[meringuoid]

and their hardcore promotion of the word "Free" is also quite a plus.. i'll be damned if i ever pay a flippin' dime to RedHat, Mandriva, SuSE, or whoever else makes you pay for their crap..

Free Software is free as in free speech, not necessarily free as in free beer. Nothing in the GPL says you may not charge people for software.

Re:general

[ajs318]

Yes, you can charge money for GPL software; but at the same time, you can't stop someone across the road from giving it away for free. Over time, the price will tend to approach what the market can bear.

Hmmmm, not convinced.

[wraith0x29a]

If this is aimed at first-time Linux users I think they will most likely be put off Linux for good by the unavoidable shortcomings of the device and OS.

They will not think 'Damn, you'd never get Windows running off a USB drive like this - funky!' they will think 'Damn, six minutes to boot and no support for [insert crappy never-heard-of-it-before on-board sound chip here] and no [Insert favourite windows-only game here] either!'. I suspect they will not 'get' just how hard this sort of thing is to pull off elegantly.

Don't get me wrong, it's not the idea that's particularly bad (hint: I already carry a small console-only linux on my thumb-sized mp3 player), I just think it's just aimed at the wrong target audience. Then again the only target audience I can think of (hackers, showoffs and vagrant sysadmins) would likely just build their own version to suit their needs.

User Friendly

[tGGnota]

Ubuntu is probably the most user friendly Linux distro there is, but I still prefer the command line to any X11 environment.