Run Linux as a Windows Screensaver

zornorph writes "A software engineer at IBM has come up with a way to 'construct and package a Linux® LiveCD so that it will install using the standard Microsoft® Windows® install process and will operate as a standard Windows screensaver.'"

Comments

Why not stand-alone?

[xorbe]

The article doesn't make it clear why it should run as a screensaver... is the ISO interactive? How does one escape the screensaver? Why not just run it stand-alone?

Also, this was surprising: "OS/2 is finally being withdrawn on December 23, 2005. According to the IBM Web site on OS/2 Warp migration (see Resources), there is no replacement product from IBM. IBM suggests that OS/2 customers consider Linux." They should at least recommend a specific product, else the remaining OS/2 userbase will entirely fragment. Recommendations are not irresponsible, only the customer blindly accepting it would be.

Following the instructions in the article is not for the faint of heart!

Re:Why not stand-alone?

[afidel]

Uh, two years ago I did a MASSIVE rollout of OS/2 under Virtual PC. The client was replacing dual workstation and KVM's with single, more powerfull machines running OS/2 under VPC. This was for tens of thousands of seats nationwide with single sites consisting of several thousand workstations. And then there all the ATM's which run OS/2 which will now have to be converted to much crappier, more failure prone windows models. Of I don't know why IBM doesn't steer people to eComStation. It's the product of the company that bought the rights and code to OS/2, so if you have a custom app and need it to run on more modern hardware they are the people to talk to.

Re:Why not stand-alone?

[rapidweather]

The Damn Small Linux folks have a version that runs inside Windows. I have not tried it. There's a link to it on their main page. DSL linux is a remaster of Knoppix linux. I note that some of the versions of the IBM screensaver linux are also based on Knoppix, if not all. Might be able to use any knoppix remaster or linux based on knoppix. IBM's documentation looks like it would work, if one wanted to go to the trouble. The DSL version puts a functional linux in a window on your Windows desktop. One time I did find a screenshot of that, but can't locate it now.
Kind of crazy, really, to put a little linux in a window on a Windows XP desktop, I would rather just dual boot. I have a couple of boxes that do that, using loadlin and a batch file from Windows 98 F8 choice 5 bootup to access a /KNOPPIX folder on the hard drive. I remastered DSL for those, so it looks very nice, and does what I want it to. That setup does not run knoppix within Windows, once you exit knoppix, that's it.

Re:Why not stand-alone?

[cHiphead]

This article seems a bit late and the screensaver angle makes it useless. I've been running colinux as a service on my windows 2000 box for almost a year. I can apt-get anything from a debian/compatible repository...

where's the news?

Cheers.

Re:Why not stand-alone?

[dryeo]

OS/2 supports lots of modern Hardware. Its true that your v3 and v4 won't install out of the box. V4.5+ will install on most hardware and with a fairly new kernel even the fastest P4s and 64 bit AMds (in 32 bit mode). Pretty well all display drivers are supported (by scitech), even under winos2, though only 2D. IBM paid for ALSA to be ported so pretty well all sound cards supported under Linux work under OS/2. USB support is pretty good as well.
Same with Printers, pretty well if they work with Linux they'll probably work on OS/2.
Basically if hardware works on Linux it'll run under OS/2.

Proof of concept?

[cytoman]

Is this just a "proof of concept" and not really something useful? I mean, if it shows Linux running in screen-saver mode, any disturbance of the keyboard/mouse will bring back windows...am I missing something?

Still, pretty cool!!!

Re:Proof of concept?

[Anonymous Coward]

You've never used any of the after-dark screen savers have you? They are fully interactive.

Maybe there is a point...

[fmaxwell]

A distributed computing project (ala SETI) which relied on Linux could run this way.

Choice quote from TFA...

[Anonymous Coward]

Most computer users are familiar with a Microsoft Windows environment and with the variety of screensavers available to prevent unauthorized access to the data on the computer when unattended.

I imagine running Linux instead of Windows would help solve 99% of all "unauthorized access to the data" problems people have in an office environment.

Strange to see

[oztiks]

Whenever you see a screenshot of MacOS its always with a shot of Safari, ITunes or Corel Draw. Whenever you see a screenshot of Windows its always the Control Panel, Windows Media Player, MS Office, or IE.

Whenever you see a screenshot of Linux its always with shots of people using Fractial Apps, drawing PCB Diagrams, or something to do with the planets orbit.

All they need to do now is to be able to the same with MacOS and then you'll be able to download mp3's and draw pictures with one os, watch porn and write word documents with the other, and lastly be able to discover the cure to cancer the last os and the great thing is you'll be able to do this all off the same computer.

Re:Awesome

[CastrTroy]

That's OK, just use the joystick to control Linux. For some reason windows doesn't think the joystick is primary input, so if you're using it for an extended period, then the screen saver turns on. This feature is great during games. Always seems to pop up at the most inopportune moments.

Re:Isn't this just the same thing...

[tyler_larson]

They're using Qemu.

Good idea, but I like coLinux better

[n2rjt]

According to the article, this runs Linux in emulation mode, which is slow. CoLinux runs Linux as a Windows application, which is faster. CoLinux, however, lacks a graphics interface. I use it with X, but that doesn't work out of the box with existing live CDs.

Running IBM 370 VM on an IBM 370 VM

[billstewart]

Back when I was in college, and we had to walk uphill both ways in the snow to get to the punch-card computer center, my freshman roommate was a ham radio operator, and was friends with another ham, Phil Karn, KA9Q, who you might remember from TCP/IP on DOS and other projects. Phil had a job one year as a computer operator. The computer was a mainframe that lived out near the airport, and there were a bunch of punch-card/printer computer centers around campus that needed operators to feed them. The mainframe was an IBM 370 with VM and a variety of guest operating systems on top of it, including CMS and several batch systems. Phil guessed one day that the password for the backup administrator account (a 4-character uppercase password) might be BKUP, so he was able to access a copy of VM and run it on top of the main VM. The client OS on top of that ran v...e..rrrr..yyyy s...l...ooo...wwww...llll...y, and remember that that's a definition of "slowly" that considers punchcard access to a ~1 MIPS mainframe to be "not slow" :-)