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Good, Portable "Virtual" Linux Distro?
Prof. Nix writes "I have been given the opportunity to redesign the Linux course for the community college I work for. This course will be taking students from the 'What's Lee-nux?' stage to (hopefully) Linux+ Certifiable in about three to four months. However, one issue I haven't solved is finding a semi-stable, highly portable, and readily accessible platform the students may pound on, and have root access, independently of their peers. The powers-that-be have already vetoed any sort of server environment accessible from off campus. We've already tried live USB drives, but we ran into many issues with non-supported hardware on students' home computers. So I'm left with the idea of virtual machines run from flash drives. My ultimate goal is to have some sort of portable system that students can use with equal ease on lab systems and personal laptops — regardless of hardware. Preferably this system would be installable on a 4GB flash drive and run an Ubuntu- or Fedora-derived OS. So I ask the people who have been in the trenches a lot longer than I — what distros should I look at?"
Is this one?
Anonymous comments are as pathetic as the anonymous "sources" that contaminate gutless journalism from the New York Time
You can fully "undress" it, down to the bare basics, and it is incredibly stable. You'll definitely run it from a 4 Gb USB stick - and your students, most importantly, will LEARN from it.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
'nuff said.
Can't you put the virtual disk image for as a regular file on a USB stick, then load it into Virtual Box from there? That way, no purchase necessary with regards to software to run the VM, and you can issue a standardized appliance image to start with. Of course, you need to make sure that everyone has a thumb drive of sufficient size.
Is this what you're looking for? http://portableubuntu.demonccc.com.ar/en/download
You could think about running 'Ubuntu on Ubuntu' - as both the main desktop OS, and another copy in a VM running VirtualBox. Anything they're trying for the first time, or that has the possibility to go wrong, they can do on the VM and snapshot + remove it as required. Once they are more capable, maybe they can start to perform tasks on the Desktop copy. If anything goes wrong and the workstation needs to be re-imaged, there's a chance the VM could be be backed up (so the work is not lost) and it's also portable, so it can be used at home.
vmware virtual applicases(is htat a word?), OS category
You want vmtools installed for performance reasons. any mainstraim distribution will do i think.
vmware player is simple (but not redistributable i think), heavier user can use sun virtual box or vmware server.
Look at Virtualbox: http://www.virtualbox.org/ and there are portable (current) versions out there. On there, you can install Ubuntu, Fedora, what-have-you.
We all had school issued laptops. So that definately played a big part in being able to run Linux.
However, we used VMWare to launch Fedora Core 4, on some verion of a Toshiba Satelite, on a standalone network for the classroom lab. We were able to mess around learning the ins and outs of Linux off of the one CD they obtained, by handing out the ISO to each student on the first day. I've often wondered if it was legal or not, but I think their method of thinking was along the lines of "If they discover they like it, they'll look more into it and either pay for their own updated copy or go with one of the free Distros".
Come end of semester, the laptops were given back, to be re-ghosted for the next class to learn Linux.
Easy customisation to your needs, has few virtual machines as targets.
http://susestudio.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SUSE_Studio
One that hath name thou can not otter
The basic problem with your request is that it is very hard to build a virtualization mechanism that is both useful and portable.
At very least, virtualization software tends to want to install some sort of virtual ethernet device(or muck about with the tun device, if you are running on linux), so that the VMs can have network access. That is typically an operation that requires admin rights. Not uncommonly, other rather invasive install steps are involved.
Unless you are OK with no network, and quite possibly a very slow system(pure userspace instead of any of the paravirtualization tricks, you basically have to have the VM software installed, by an admin. If you do have that, just shlepping the folder with the VM config file and the virtual disk is trivial; but if you don't have that, you have a problem.
Assuming you can get the installs done, either VMware player or Virtualbox would be fine. The students can do the install on their home machines, you can provide the skeleton VM, and make sure that the software is installed on lab machines.
Otherwise, you are basically doomed.
I run an instance of XP (Ubuntu host) from an SD card no problem. It shouldn't matter what OS the image is, it should run fine.
I teach at the community college myself, and find that installing the OS is a really important part of learning to use it (creating partitions, mount points, swap, etc...) and is one of the first part that makes it very different from most Windows installation processes. Doing the install on a USB stick could result in students killing the Windows partition on the disk if they botch the install and accidentally put it on the hard disk. (I've had it happen).
Using a VM host on the lab computers (either MS Virtual PC or VMWare; assuming that your lab PCs are Windows) and then allowing them to create the virtual disk on their 4GB (or larger) flash disks will give them the install experience (without risk of damaging the host system), and allow their install to be fairly hardware independent (assuming they have the same VM host on their home PC.)
This also allows them to use a normal, general purpose distro than a stick-oriented one, that is also likely to have better textbooks available. I know any text should be good enough for derived distributions, but for students having an out-of-the-box or off-the-iso experience can alleviate a lot of first-week frustrations, and gives them a better (vanilla) resource to consult when bad things happen.
Forgive my spelling from time to time. I'm often posting during short breaks.
wubi install on old HP laptop running windows 2000 with pcmicia wireless was painless, except it took me a few minutes to figure out why the wireless wasn't working - wubi wanted the ssid, and it took me a while to figure that out
I suggest you first pick a popular Linux with good hardware support, such as my personal favorite Ubuntu. Then, offer both bootable CDs and USB flash drives, and VM images for VirtualBox. Since VirtualBox is free and multiplatform, as well as being easy to install, the students with weird hardware can use that to run Linux.
In my experience, Ubuntu just boots up and works on a wide variety of hardware. So I'd guess that many or most of your students would be able to boot their computer into native Linux. But some may want the VirtualBox for the convenience, especially if they have modern and very fast computers. The students with old computers might be happier just booting Linux directly and avoiding the overhead of virtualization.
It doesn't sound like your students will need exotic hardware to work; I mean, the free software video drivers might only support 2D for some modern graphics cards, but 2D would be enough to get Linux certified, right?
P.S. A friend of mine took a class where everyone was required to use Microsoft Virtual PC. However, it refused to run on his home computer and he had to do his homework on a different computer (at his place of work). Ubuntu Linux ran fine on the same computer where Virtual PC wouldn't work. So, when I first read the article summary I went "Huh, virtual machines to make it more likely to work?"
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
you can actually run a full-bore linux on usb hard drives, not with a 4GB limit or stuff like that.
install the distro of your choice on a laptop.
take hard drive out, put it in an enclosure.
boot to the now USB drive (with no hard drive in the IDE/SATA spot)
fix the mount points to point to the right /dev/sdbwhatevers
fix the swap space or config cryptswap (if you don't, it will trash the shit out of the /dev/sdawahtever was the old swap...i.e. the persons primary hard drive, partition x, that uses it next)
clone the usb drives however you like to do that, partitions and all, for each student.
THL phish sticks
When I was in college we used a live Whax CD (which is now Backtrack) saving our work to our own flash drive. It seemed to work pretty well.
I don't believe in karma, I just call it like I see it.
DSL works well. It's 50 MB, can boot off a USB flash stick, and comes with its own virtual environment for running within MS Windows. It's probably missing a few features you will want for teaching a course in Linux, though.
I also like Puppy Linux. I was able to make an MP3 player out of a small thin client computer and this OS. I just had to modify a few shell scripts, and plug the TC into my home stereo.
If you are going to put it into a VM, just use the one you know the best it wont care.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Have each student compile and install Gentoo -- Desktop Environment, PULSE/ALSA, X, Kernel, everything. It will prove excruciating for the students, and it's unlikely that any of them will ever have a perfectly functional install -- but, oh, it will be *very amusing* for the rest of us.
Look at vmware's site, they have a link to a second site they run which has nothing but
"virtual appliances" which are pre configures VMs ready to run for various purposes.
Included therein are VMs of popular LINUX / UNIX OSs. Most of those are of course free, though
they also have various commercial VMed applications of various sorts too. Generally the VM images
lag a few months behind the very latest releases since they're made by 3rd parties and aren't generally part of the official distribution release.
Also look at SUSE Studio, the susestudio.com (IIRC) web site has a way to make a "custom" OpenSusE
distribution using their online toolkit for customizing what you want in it. You probably can make
some kind of easily virtualized ready to run system image with whatever you want in it in the 2GB
or 1GB or 700MBy CD image or 4.7GBy DVD image size ranges.
I believe that some distributions have a XEN enabled paravirtualized DomU image which you can use as a standard installation option, though you might have to repackage that in the form of something that includes the hypervisor itself. Look at the Xen Live CD, that has the hypervisor and some kind of UNIX OS as well if I recall correctly. xensource.org / xen.org IIRC.
LinuxMint is a LiveCD based on Ubuntu that is pretty portable across lots of machines, though not obviously all possible hardware, but it may be worth a look.
The problem with a virtualized system is that the hypervisor itself may not be portable to all machines either depending on the kinds of peripherals and chipsets / CPUs the hypervisor supports. Most Hardware Virtual Machines require basic VM extensions being enabled in the CPU to work, though some virtual machine platforms don't require it when you're running a 32 bit guest OS. IIRC
you can run XEN, Virtualbox, Virtual PC VM software with 32 bit guest OSs without needing VM CPU extensions, though of course there are still only certain physical hardware types they support.
XEN based VM hypervisors with a paravirtualized LINUX guest is probably best in a slight way for performance since the guest OS itself is compiled to be very efficiently virtualized even without HVM CPU extensions, though I can say that even without HVM extensions and a paravirtualized guest OS still some VM systems do a pretty goog job virtualizing a guest in real time.
The last resort would be you could run a VM on a server running XEN or KVM or VirtualBox and give the students RDP or VNC remote desktop access to the VM's root, so they can be root and do whatever they want on their particular image, but not cause a security or functionality problem for the server or other VMs. Benefits of snapshotting / backup / deployment / resetting to a known good state apply. You could even provice some EC2 or other cloud hosted VM instances for people to play with at fairly low cost and fairly high performance if you need to scale up beyond the few dozen PV DomU VMs your local lab PCs could probably easily accommodate. Maybe Amazon or whatever has a academic pricing rate for their hosting, or someone else might.
http://susestudio.com/ allows you to make your own. This can then be done as USB stick, CD/DVD, VMware and what not. You can decide if you want it to be installable or not, add your own specific software and almost anything else you like.
How far you go to make things special is up to you.
However, you will always have non-supported hardware. Happens with any OS, except for the one that was pre-installed and then hope people have not added hardware.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
You celebrate the 20th of April? Isn't it a bit weird to celebrate the birthday of Adolf Hitler?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_hitler
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Like others mention, use a virtual machine like VirtualBox, and give everyone a virtual machine of your Linux system in addition to instructions to set up their own. This will save countless hours of helping your students get up and running.
To your question, what distro? I'd recommend Centos, which is a free as in beer version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and/or Oracle Enterprise Linux (OEL). The only real differences between the three is branding and the support contract, with a five year support plan. Both Red Hat and Oracle have a Linux certification test, if you are looking to have a 'real' certificate when they are done.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
...someone has had about 3-4 months of experience with Linux. Wow. That's almost as meaningful than the V.I.P. award I received in kindergarten!
My school simply handed out removable HDD caddys and drives. They were included in the tuition. At home, I could install the slot into my box. The school machines already had one. So it was just a question of doing a normal HDD install. No funky HW detection issues. At the end of class, you would slide your drive out of the school machine, and slide it back into your home box. Back then, we dual-booted Win NT and RH6.
C|N>K
You're wrong. You have 2 more attempts before returning to high school.
Thanks for playing.
Yours PatRIOTically,
K.T.
The advantage of qemu over VMware or VirtualBox would be that you wouldn't need to install anything.
I made a custom KNOPPIX LiveCD with my master's thesis on it, and worked out some .bat scripts to get it running it in place under Windows. (Copy it to the hard disk first for performance, no need to run off the CD if you're doing it in a VM)
http://hairball.mine.nu/~rwa2/school/ense799/arcosim_20070601.iso
You could probably adapt something like this for a more modern LiveCD / USB distro.
You can use QEMU and other emulation suits as I'm sure somebody has said, or maybe a Live CD.... I would teach them enough so they can set up a single simple pc as a relay for remote access. From there they can access the servers. It'll teach them to think outside the box.
I know it's used for multimedia purpose for artist but pure:dyne is a solid portable distro that is used for classes (but multimedia classes) - but works on mac and other hardware
Are you simply easing them into what a modern Linux desktop distro looks like, or do you want to teach them some stuff about the command line?
If it's the latter, why not just construct a Xen box and roll out a bunch of VM's that students can use remotely? Either that, or if you can subsidize the monthly costs somehow with a lab fee or whatever, you could always roll out a ton of EC2 instances or Linode slices for them to play on.
Of course, you'd have to worry about security, and it's not exactly the least complex solution, but you'd also force them to work in a command line.
"Hegelians, who love a synthesis, will probably conclude that he wears a wig." - Bertrand Russell
I think a virtual computer lab, run by the university, is the only way to go, not only for the CS students but many other classes too. Other university labs are surely the best place to find an example, every university is full of competent geeks. If the virtual machines shouldn't access outside data, a firewall should be able to do that. Barring that, I think I would recommend something like wubi for students with slower home computers, vmware or virtual box for those with faster computers. I can't figure out why wubi is ubuntu-only
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
http://www.puppylinux.com/ http://www.puppylinux.com/flash-puppy.htm
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Use Sun's version of VirtualBox, sorry the virtualbox.org version is pretty unstable. Ubuntu is easier, but honestly they'll get more mileage out of Debian and be in a better position to appreciate/hate Ubuntu if they learn Debian. You could also spend some brief time on Redhat/Fedora since it is so prevalent. An 8 GB usb drive will easily hold 2-3 VirtalBox images (not with any kind of harddrive space, they'd probably want to copy it to their user home on the comp they were going to run on).
Small, works well on most - even old - hardware
Yes I would
And you should to
... we had punch cards :-) Still, that didn't stop a friend who has since become famous from running a copy of VM on top of the mainframe's main VM system (buy guessing the backup system password), which let him run his own copy of the system that users interfaced with (albeit rather slowly.)
To be fair, we did also have a few PLATO terminals, and some VM/CMS interactive systems (using paper terminals) that you could access as an upperclassman or CS major, and a couple of Tektronix 4014s, and the various physics and chemistry labs had a few PDPs to drive hardware experiments with, but most of our work ran on punch cards.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Wait, is it legal to use/copy/share Red Hat (the real thing, not CentOS) without purchasing support?
I'm not sure about personal use, but copying and sharing would seem to be prohibited because of their trademarks.
Verbatim copying and redistribution of the entire Red Hat Enterprise Linux distribution is not permitted due to trademark restrictions. However, there are several redistributions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux—such as CentOS—with trademarked features (such as logos, and the Red Hat name) removed.
Originally, Red Hat's enterprise product, then known as Red Hat Linux, was made freely available to anybody who wished to download it, while Red Hat made money from support. Red Hat then moved towards splitting its product line into Red Hat Enterprise Linux which was designed to be stable and with long-term support for enterprise users and 'Fedora' as the community distribution and project sponsored by Red Hat. The use of trademarks prevents verbatim copying of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
Since Red Hat Enterprise Linux is based completely on free and open source software, Red Hat makes available the complete source code to its enterprise distribution through its FTP site to anybody who wants it. Accordingly, several groups have taken this source code and compiled their own versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, typically with the only changes being the removal of any references to Red Hat's trademarks and pointing the update systems to non-Red Hat servers. Groups which have undertaken this include CentOS (the most popular as of March 2009), Oracle Enterprise Linux, Scientific Linux, White Box Enterprise Linux, StartCom Enterprise Linux, Pie Box Enterprise Linux, X/OS, and Lineox. All with the exception of Oracle Enterprise Linux provide a free mechanism for applying updates without paying a service fee to the distributor.
Rebuilds of Red Hat Enterprise Linux are free but do not get any commercial support or consulting services from Red Hat and lack any software, hardware or security certifications. Also, the rebuilds do not get access to Red Hat services like Red Hat Network.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
I'm just going to leave this here...
http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=185
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I found a thing a few years ago called Moka5 LivePC Engine. It's basically a portable VMware environment that goes on a thumb drive. There were many, many Linux images available, last time I gave it a look. I think that it would be an easy, pre-packaged way to handle what you're trying to do here.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Here is what I use for the classes I have run (two so far): A server running an OpenVZ kernel with a public IP address that can be accessed from on or off campus. Then I recommend making a course container with a public IP address and give each student a user account on that container.
Then create a container for each student with a private IP address. A simple iptables line will allow you to NAT the containers with a private IP address through the host node so each container can reach the outside world.
To access their containers students would just ssh into the course server and then ssh from there to their containers. Containers don't take up a whole lot of resources nor disk space compared to a full virtual machine.
That will provide you with a virtualized environment for each student where they have full root access, can install software, and if they screw it up somehow, you can easily repair or replace it. You aren't limited to what Linux distribution you can run in a container so if you want to give them access to multiple distros, you can.
Of course that only gives you a command line only environment which is suitable for a sysadmin type class (what I teach). If you absolutely need a GUI environment, you can easily install one or more desktop environments in your containers which would be accessible over the LAN with VNC. Routing private IPs over a LAN isn't too difficult, you'd just need a static route to the host node.
Of course you could do the same thing with KVM on a server but it would require a whole lot more resources.
If that still will not meet your requirements because they turned down a server-based solution, I'd recommend external USB hard drives. You can get a fairly large one for about $80 and you'll have way less problems than with LiveUSB media that tend to mess up easily. Then you can either run a regular OS from it OR uses it to store disk images for VirtualBox or whatever virt solution the students would have to use on their personal computer.
Scott Dowdle
www.MontanaLinux.Org
"420" has a meaning that you seem to be missing...
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Awwww, come on no mention of DSL why not? DSL http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ is a great little distro and will fit in 50mb of space!
VirtualBox or VMware have always worked pretty well in my experience. VirtualBox is free, and VMware Server is free as well. I know there are Linux and Windows ports for VMWare Server (for the host OS), not sure about VirtualBox. The one problem with virtual machines is the students' computers will have to have enough resources to run the software plus the guest Linux OS that they install. Some students' home systems might not be quite up to par.
Perhaps another route, although a bit more expensive, could be to go with a computer-on-chip type system like Gumstix. They have entire kits that can be purchased for about the price of a netbook. The students would just need access to a keyboard, mouse, USB hub, and monitor. It doesn't run Ubuntu by default, but there are instructions on how to install it. That could be an interesting project as part of the class, even as a final project after the students learn how to install to the desktop. They can take that experience and apply it toward installing Linux onto an embedded device like the Gumstix. Just a thought :)
Having a smoking section in a public restaurant is like having a peeing section in a public swimming pool.
You could try to find one on this website
http://www.pendrivelinux.com/
I recommend you
Slax and DSL (Damn Small Linux)
I think Slax is the best on the pendrive linux category
30 Mb [compressed], uses minimal resources, runs on a wide range of hardware, including some really old stuff. Not ubuntu or fedora -based, but solid if minimalistic linux distro. A bit more challenging than the mainstream, in that pre-cooked solutions aren't always just a google away, which is possibly a good thing assuming you want people to learn. An aside: if you want ubunto or fedora, just use it and stop faffing about -- nothing wrong with either that some half-assed 'reskinning' will cure. It wil take all of 10-minutes of your time (including the download) to test out slitaz.
Would be possible to get a cheap low low end Netbook added on as a lab or material fee?
Everyone gets a thumbdrive, a netbook, and a semester tog et Linux booted on that thing.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
If I will see a person who learned how to use Linux by running it in VM, I will punch him in the face.
Install Ubuntu on a USB flash drive, or, if their hardware is too old to boot from a USB drive, use a live CD.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
You can download VMWare Player 3.0 for free. Then go download an Ubuntu 9.10 appliance. Or else, have them download the Ubuntu ISO and install it themselves. You can run VMs off of a thumb drive with no issues-- just make sure that your machines have adequate physical RAM to run both the VM and the base OS. A VM that doesn't know it is swapping is a real performance killer.
I frequently use both VMware and Virtualbox at work and at home. They're both great, but if you work in an enterprise IT shop, the extra features that come with the paid version of VMWare are well worth the cost.
Qemu with a distribution of your choice.
Might try contacting Tak Auyeung @ American River College/UC Davis. He does a setup like that for a variety of linux based programming classes.
Mint might be the distro you seek.
I hear it runs on everything
So...you're asking for a recommendation on a distro that students can use and experiment with completely for free on their own home computers. How about any Linux distro ever made? If I'm not mistaken, that was the whole point of Linux in the first place.
Also, you say that you are looking for a "semi-stable" distro, but then go on to complain about it not working correctly on your students computers. It sounds like what you are looking for is a "stable" distro. Fortunately they are not hard to come by.
You then say that you want an Ubuntu or Fedora derived OS -- Gee, I don't know, how about using Ubuntu or Fedora? Both have very low-impact installation methods.
Seems like common sense
Look at this realistically.
If you aren't confident enough to pick a distro for a task even this simple, what makes you think you have enough experience to teach the course?
It sounds like you don't have a clear idea of what exactly you're going to teach, either. I suggest scaling down your scope... a lot.
Hell, don't even focus on Linux, just start from the basics - installing an OS, dealing with hardware issues, etc. You'll have enough material for far more than 3 months.
We've already tried live USB drives, but we ran into many issues with non-supported hardware on students' home computers.
Best advice I ever got, particularly with regards Linux but it's true for almost everything computer related, was from my Linux+ prof. He said the best way to learn a system was to break it and then figure out how to fix it. Frankly, the students who have hardware issues are already half way there.
Make it part of a class project to fix it, and if they don't have anything that is broken, then really break something good and then fix it. Point them in the right direction to find what they need, and let them at it. They'll learn how to learn more about the system, basically - it's a huge learning opportunity.
You're still going to want a VM with a distro on it, but I wouldn't toss the USB Live distros either.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
I'm a strong believer in immersion as the best way to instruct people how to do things.
Probably the best way to go about it would be a VM disk image file sitting on the flash drive itself. Dealing with the actual flash drive might be problematic due to compatibility.
For the virtualization, I'd probably just go with the Open Source version of Virtualbox. It can be run as a server for the lab (if need be - though not advised),
The biggest problems with going with USB flash drives are speed and compatibility, in that order. Flash drives are still very, very slow compared to a hard disk: it will jade their opinion of the operating system due to very sluggish writes (particularly due to the virtual disk allocation on top of the flash). There are also a number of limitations with the flash drive standardization themselves, as many are utter crap. Best to verify the make/model of flash drive you pick works. (Caveat: note that vendors -very frequently- change the underlying chips in the flash drives within a single model. Expect to have to buy them in lots.)
Honestly, given the cost of external hard disks, the lack of flash drive consistency, and your stated apparent requirements of them being able to use their own systems as well as the school lab, you might want to make a USB hard disk a class requirement instead of a flash drive.
But: why stop there? Honestly. When I was in school, we had a lab. I had a laptop. I brought my laptop and did almost everything on my laptop in the lab - and this was way before virtualization became commonplace (VMWare existed, but just barely). There were very few classes where I needed to have anything other than what was on the laptop - Debian Linux. Students could come and use the labs at any time (though most did not, as they had their own computers which were better).
Seriously. This is 2010, not 1998. Assuming you're not offering this as an entry-level course (you shouldn't) and you'll have at least 2nd-semester CS students taking it, there's no reason to coddle them. Just set up a CentOS or Debian system and allow students to connect to it from the campus.
On top of that, encourage them to install Linux themselves and configure it from scratch. It'll be good for them. Make obscene recommendations, like Gentoo or (god forbid) Slackware. A certification isn't going to mean jack shit in the long run (except for maybe taking a job from someone more qualified who doesn't have the cert) if they're not intimately familiar with the material.
This, like the virtualization question the other day, is yet another instance of "virtualization is cool so I want to apply it". It's not appropriate for every scenario (and I'd argue this is one of them, due to the added complexity and potential for outside cases).
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Take a look at Debris Linux http://debrislinux.org/ You will still need your own VM package, but it is a nice lightweight linux distro.
You can have a windows or mac host (or even a linux host) and run just about any version of linux that you choose.
I use VirtualBox at work on an XP host to run OpenSolaris. It is extremely easy to set up.
Those co-workers that I have turned on to VirtualBox agree with me that it is awesome!
(Did I mention that it is also free?)
Doesn't your university have a VPN? Wouldn't that allow for servers that are not accessible from outside?
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
grml is nice. deb based, zsh by default, lots of packages, etc.
Sent from my PDP-11
I just finished an Intro to Linux course at my school. The professor urged everyone to find hardware to run it on. Repartition your desktop, buy a cheap desktop or laptop. Whatever. He did discouraged the use of VM's but I don't think that stopped a couple people from using them. He taught the class using Fedora 11, but we were free to run Ubuntu, Fedora 12, RHEL, or anything else, as long as we could complete the comparable tasks... I thought this was a perfectly acceptable approach since the majority of people taking teh class are pursuing a B.S. in Information Technbology. I don't believe you should be tightly controlling the environment. Let things break; that's how people learn.
Needless to say there were people who had video or sound problems; they were helped to understand the problem and resolve it; and I think those of us that paid attn all learned something, rather than sitting in a sanitized environment where you only get the regurgitated syllabus
Using a vm brings its own problems as well- I'd say there is no "perfect, easy" solution.
On the other hand, I have had very good luck with the Mepis LiveCDs: very few hardware problems other than some wireless nics.
If you install on one computer you can also create a bootable usb drive with just a few clicks.
The BEST solution for learning purposes would be to install a distro in dual boot, but for portable use, a Mepis LiveUSB should do pretty well.
Linux computers, watercooled, photography
I used about half a dozen distros, and I never quite understood, WTF was going on. They all hid everything behind colorful clickables and other pointless ncurses-based tools (aka “Windows syndrome”), any it was really hard to get it all, because you were starting from the surface.
But more and more often I only found help on the Gentoo forums (before the search became defunct). So I thought: Why not give it a shot.
This was the first time where I had to learn the most basic stuff that everyone else hid behind an installer, as if it were something bad to know what you are doing. Luckily, the handbook and everything got me to a point, where I could find out all the rest by myself. (Something you can’t with most distros, since you wouldn’t even know what you could find out.)
Whether Gentoo actually is the best distro for everyday usage, depends on how you approach problems. But everything where you have to build it up from scratch definitely is the best to learn things.
My final task to students would be, to build your own custom distro, with everything customized. Kernel, fs, tools, desktop, basic settings, package management, booting/init, etc. This includes configuring and patching the kernel, finding out hardware information, writing bash scripts, editing every file in /etc/, automating basic tasks, and using a lot of tools in the process.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
The question is unfair. He is asking for a bulletproof way to run Linux at home. No matter how old the computer is, how much space is on the hard drive, if they have USB or not. He just wants it to work everywhere. We can't make dual boot bulletproof. We can't make usb bulletproof. We can't make a virtual machine bullet proof.
That is just to bad, and it is an unfair standard to boot. How much "required" windows software is there? At the community college I attend, Microsoft Office 2007 is a requirement. Computer to old, to bad, get a new one or use a lab on campus. The same is true if you don't have enough room on your drive, enough RAM, or your OS is buggy. To bad, you must do what you need to run Office 2007, or fake it very well. Because it is expected. If you have a problem and you are running office 2003 or Open Office, to bad. There is only support for Office 2007.
The school has set a baseline standard in choosing Office 2007, it is assumed if you are a student, you will run a platform that can support that, if not. To bad, there are computers on campus you can use.
Expecting a minimum standard for Office Software but expecting every student who runs a system that does not have office on it, who currently do there homework in the library, to now have the right to complain that Linux is not bootable at home does not really seem fair to Linux.
You have to have some kind of minimum standard. Like having 256 megs of RAM and at least 6gig on the Hard drive, so you can do a wubi install of Xubuntu. Or that you can boot from a USB drive to run Linux from flash, or you can run an installer to set up a dual boot of Slax (you cant get much lighter on resources than that).
People that don't meet the minimum standard have to find some way to cope. Otherwise I have the answer for you.
The instructor goes to any students home and gets Linux working for them. I know I can install Linux on almost any PC hardware made after 2001 with at least 256 megs of ram, and if I use the right Linux 128 megs of ram. But really. I think it is a bit over the top to expect the instructor to fix every students computer so they can boot Linux in some way on it. Instead of having some sort of baseline requirement for a PC.
vi +
I like Puppy Linux for a very small portable Linux.
http://puppylinux.org/
I've used it several times as a recovery disc and booted from USB as well. Should work well in any virtual environment too.
Sitting in a tree...
Dedicated to Adolph, a man who loved - perhaps too much. A man who loved and lost.
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
It took me four years to get to that stage where I pronounce it the way Linus does.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Linus_pronounces_linux_(english).oga
Go visit http://www.mokafive.com/ Their vm operates on thumb drives and can house any flavor of OS you want. Also has the added bonus of security, versioning of vms, and streaming.
Happy birthday, Elvis!
Wait, before you mod me Troll, would you really refuse to wish him a happy birthday just because he's Elvis?
FTFY to help prove a better point.
Most people, myself included, are not in the habit of celebrating dead people's birthdays. As such, irrespective of the dead individual to whom you desire to give birthday wishes, you are, in fact, trolling.
Good day, sir.
There are plenty of LiveCD, LiveUSB, virtual machines our there, it is a matter of preference on your choice. However please take note on minimum hardware requirements for whichever choice you made, not every machines out there can run. Minimum i686 level CPUs, minimum 1 GB of RAM to run LIVECD, a bootable USB and/or USB 2.0 for decent performance for LiveUSB, minimum 2 GB RAM + multi-core CPU to "operate" VMs. Hardware are cheap these days but never assume your student will have a machine meeting the "minimum" and not forget special tweaks needed to run LiveCD/LiveUSB/VMs.
Use free VMWare Server or Free VMWare Player...
Can match up with the system that the person is running and distribute pre-built vmware environments... and mount .iso files as CD ROM devices as well.
Or use some other version of any VM environment (if FREE to use). However, with VMWare can use even Win2000 as base system, or Linux?
Can also set this up as a VM on Live flash device. But, why not require as part of the class the purchase of 32GB RunCore SATA SSD and have that SSD mounted as a bootable SSD - as the 32 GB SSD has larger room for lots of testing and experiments. AND the RunCore SSD is fast, very fast vs a Flash Stick that is very slow and you wait a long time to get anything done (when you add up the wait over many hours, that lost time adds up).
I'm throwing the Ubuntu or Fedora derived requirement out the window; along with a lot of GUI sugar. The first week would have to be dedicated to simply installing the OS; however, because it will be run inside a virtual machine, the installation will be identical for each student. You can guide them through it. I have a few reasons why I think that this is the way to go.
1) The course is about Linux. That means being comfortable with ls, grep, man, less, vi (or emacs), etc. Teach the way a Linux system is built by building it. The Arch install process guides the user though all of the configuration files. It's very educational. You install the kernel, X11, then the desktop. You configure each relevant file in /etc by hand, guided by the excellent documentation. The first week or two could be done without the students even installing X11. By the time the desktop was up and running, the students would have to be comfortable with some basic Linux tools as well as the layout of the system.
2) Arch can be built to be lightweight. It comes with very little installed, everything else is choice. The install can be tailored to the limited hardware that may be running the VM. Use the XFce perhaps. Despite the frugal initial install, Arch is a bleeding-edge distribution; the students could easily build their systems to be as user-friendly as Ubuntu (but only after learning the command line).
3) The Arch community is friendly, knowledgeable and helpful. They will also tell you to RTFM rather than give "just type this in the command line and don't ask why it works" advice like the Ubuntu community. It is more conducive to learning, even if your have to RTFM.
So if this is the future...where's my jet pack?
Linux is for people who prefers thinking before doing. As far as world is moving to "Not think too much", there is no Linux for cucumbers yet. Cucumbers prefer OS, that thinks instead of them always. Even if decisions are made in Ricmond what to do next with every next booting. * Especially interesting: Russian government seriously took into account, that MS is capable to reboot one and every MS OS remotely with new "updates" not taking into account any user preferences not to do so.
If your goal is to run it on home laptops you will have the problem that a lot of home machines will not support virtual machines properly. Intel is still selling quad processors like the Q8200 (at least very recently) that do not support virtual execution.
Another way,
I run a University OS class lab computer and I run VMware (http://downloads.vmware.com/d/info/datacenter_downloads/vmware_server/2_0) server (free version) on a Centos (http://www.centos.org/) base. Each student has a single Minux (http://www.minix3.org/) image on the VMware server. The students can access their base Linux account and Minux image. They have detailed OS projects in both environments.
For student who want to do work without a network connection I created a simple QEMU (http://wiki.qemu.org/Main_Page) image for them to use. The QEMU is pre-set in a directory for them.
I would not have a real class use a USB drive for a programming driven OS or similar class. Too many issues. Our student mostly have tablet computers. For computer engineering students one would think that they know software. Sadly, they do not.
The base computer is a quad Intel with 8 GB ram. We used a dual core blade with 4 GB ram without trouble. Only issues is disk space. Each student needs about 40 - 50 MB per class.
Good Luck
Most people, myself included, are not in the habit of celebrating dead people's birthdays.
I take it you don't celebrate George Washington's birthday, then. I mean, that one's a national holiday in the US, so I'll be surprised if you're from the United States and you don't celebrate that day.
Let q be a radix > 1. I am in ur base-q, killing 10 d00ds.
I would definitely recommend that you use Virtualbox (as many other have recommended) as it is a fully featured desktop virtualization environment and is free as opposed to vmware workstation which offers similar features. This would also allow the more adventurous of your students to create their own virtual machines and try out different distributions. To me, part of learning linux lies in learning the differences and quirks of each of the popular distributions. Obviously learning how to use bash and use the core linux kernel is going to be the most important, but learning the difference between apt and yum, etc. are also important. As for the best distribution to use for such a class, I would have to go with ubuntu as it is definitely the most popular growing linux distribution available, this would also allow for a massive amount of information and documentation online in order for students to do their own troubleshooting, etc.
slax linux is usb based, very portable and very modular. check it out at slax.org
You could pull the mainstream arena and use Red Hat/CentOS, and then introduce them to the several virtualization platforms available. Include one or two that aren't part of the mainstream, and show them how they interact. It's not hard to install an OS on a VM, so basically the virtualization platforms would be half of the criterium.
The virtualization platforms that are server-centric are: Xen, OpenVZ, KVM, and VMWare.
There's no need to use obviously geek-friendly distributions such as Gentoo/Arch Linux/Mepis/Puppy/etc. You're teaching them from the beginner status, it's best to introduce them to something that is commercially accepted at least so they can at least say "hey, I know how to use something that XYZ company uses!"
After you know the basics, a person can dive further. For the beginning however, it's best to use something that's designed to be user-friendly.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
All mentioned distros are ept for the given task, most specifically puppy and dsl remembering that well most people who being using linux for its contextually unfamiliar methodologies of general use and as such, it is probably best to keep things simple and small. To be honest, I think it would be best to start off on bare console, say openwrt x86 or a tiny cygwin installation but I suppose it all depends on where you are going with the course... you also don't want students getting caught into the understanding linux is archaic and boring... but which vm? Why for the love of Bob Marley has noone mentioned qemu?! It is the most flexible free vm out there, boasting the ability to launch portably from a user account! Come to think of it, there is a good distro already packaged with qemu http://www.erikveen.dds.nl/qemupuppy/#4.3.0
Try Ubuntu Live USB.
More options at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LiveUsbPendrivePersistent.
Just be careful when doing system updates or anything involving Grub and the boot sector.
Pendrivelinux uses colinux http://www.colinux.org/ to run a linux kernel as a windows process without using any general purpose PC virtualization software.
I have not used pendrivelinux 2009, but I have an earlier version of pendrivelinux based on the Qemu emulator. Here's a link to Qemu USB Pendrivelinux Persistent Linux: http://www.pendrivelinux.com/portable-qemu-persistent-pendrivelinux/
You might want to experiment with both of these options. .
--- Often in error; never in doubt!
As the GP said, if you're running into HW issues, just put the disto onto a virtual machine and run it with VMWare Player or Virtual Box. Personally VMware Player is easier to use from an end users perspective, it depends on how open you need it to be. Both can easily be installed onto the students home computers and will provide students with a stable, consistent environment that can be run from anywhere.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Grab a copy of Geexbox if all you want is a linux media player. Boot it, remove it, and it plays almost everything you can throw at it. It may be a DMCA violation in your local as it does play DVD's without the DVD consortium's blessing or license. The only downside is it is keyboard navigation. The mouse is a paperweight in the program.
http://geexbox.org/en/index.html
The truth shall set you free!
So, gmail has this (quite unique) feature that it shows you a couple IPs used to log in to your account ("Last account activity:"). However the feature is quite basic but still there can be many things to do with a little more intelligence on the client. A firefox extension could easily store all these logs somewhere and alert when it sees suspicious activity (based for example on white-listing current IP and some manually entered ranges). Anybody knows about such beast?
Slax is great, USB ready, and only a couple hundred megs. I agree Slackware would be great to learn on. http://www.slax.org/.
Say what you like about Hitler, and the evil he did, beyond comprehension.
At least he killed a lot of Jews. That's got to count for something.
I think the stumbling point of your project is Linux users (like myself at least) can't find through Google or boot loader man pages a dependable, simple way to boot Linux from a USB-stick on older computers.
I have been playing with a secure Linux on a USB-stick project. One problem is how to boot Linux from a USB-stick on an older computer. My 11 year old machine is a case example.
I reached a point of exhaustion trying to find a sequence of grub boot loader commands that would load Linux from a bootable Linux USB-stick.
I already had the Grub boot loader on the hard disk. I tried every combination of grub commands trying to get grub to read and load vmlinuz from the USB-stick.
The older hardware may never access the USB-stick at boot time, so we may need a CD or even a floppy disk with a grub boot loader program on it.
Some sites I found on search described a grub boot CD and I have not seen an example yet that I can understand, copy and adapt.
It seems to me, that the "boot a Linux USB stick on any PC with a CD drive" problem needs a documented solution.
Speaking strictly for myself, after reading some of the grub bootloader documentation, I still couldn't understand what commands to issue and in what order. Booting is no longer a matter of jumping to 0x0100.
Once the bootloader problem is solved or bypassed, there is a great sourceforge tool for downloading and burning bootable-Linux-USB-sticks at:
unetbootin.sourceforge.net
When the computer does boot from USB-sticks, I like Knoppix, Slax and Mint, all mentioned above.
I have also found the Free BSD boot loader program does wonderful things at finding and loading bootable-Linux-USB-sticks.
Punch cards? On VM/CMS?
...I heated my farmhouse with a $200,000 payroll system.
...
OMG! - what year was this?
We got rid of our 2501/2540 or whatever its number was, in 1976 or so.
In the winter of '79,( we were so hungry, bareley alive)
i.e. I took all the old COBOL punch-cards home, once they had been committed to disk/tape, and fed them in to the woodstove- box after box. (The alternative was to dump them into re-cyc,.. er.. the garbage.)
Wish I'd saved a few of my old BAL subroutines tho- they were classics.
We didn't get into VM/CMS until another 2 or 3 years as I recall... But then, my memory may be faulty.
These days, sonny. I kin barely code muh CSS & PHP
.
- aqk
F U
For a similar situation I used unetbootin (http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net) to install a Ubuntu live CD release on a USB stick - worked like a charm. I suspect this would probably install on a 2.5in external hard drive too.
Gabriel.
In my college days, I too wanted the same. I wanted a very small setup using which I can practice basic linux commands. A small distro like Puppy Linux (approx 50Megs) and an open source emulator like QEMU worked for me.A system so small is almost like running a program on host OS.
You can read about it here: http://ashishware.com/LinuxOnWindows.shtml
U3 is a technology where the USB stick appears as two separate devices, a USB stick and a CDROM.
Many laptops can't boot from a USB stick but CAN boot from an external CD rom.
U3 is now useful.. check out:
http://u3-tool.sourceforge.net/
distros to look at (ordered by what I would have picked) - debian, fedora, ubuntu, centos
Here's a link to the "lernstick" - this is what is actively being used in schools here (Switzerland) with an English description at: http://www.imedias.ch/lernstick/lernstick_en and downloadable at: http://www.imedias.ch/dateien/lernstick-testversion/
It's based on Debian and meant to be used in schools and at home; There even is a boot-cd for those olden machines that cannot boot off USB.
Additionally they have a stripped down version (lernstick pruefungsumgebung) designed to be used for exams (No Internet).
[[ iMedias is not a company but the name of an institute of the "Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz". The institutes charter is to support schools in using IT for educational purposes. I'm not affiliated with them, but happen to now some people there;-) ]]
You've already got a lot of replies about VirtualBox, so I'll spare you the repetition.
It's a decent desktop virtualization solution, free, and very stable.
What you may not know is Grml, a Debian-based installable "live" distro. I've tried quite a few of those, and that's the one I kept. I'm always carrying a Grml CD around, just in case I come across some box that won't boot. Grml has *amazing* hardware support, in addition to a very stable architecture that will fall back on whatever is supported. I have rarely seen any PC or Mac that wouldn't boot Grml - and if it really can't, it's probably not worth buying. And yes, it's got everything you need for a Linux course, including a desktop, applications, compilers and scripting languages (if that's in your curriculum).
Grml gets additional bonus points for keeping the fine UNIX tradition of unpronouncable names.
Who needs vocals when you've got phlegm?
http://grml.org/
CJ
Ah, arrogance and stupidity, all in the same package. How efficient of you. -- Londo Mollari
I highly recommend that instead of focusing on VirtualBox, VMWare or VirtualPC, you instead focus on all 3.
Using the VHD container format http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VHD_(file_format) you can create scripts to load a single virtual machine image in Virtual Box, VMWare or Virtual PC. These images are quite efficient as they can dynamically grow with needs. Then students can just move them to a bigger stick if they so choose.
I do agree with many posts regarding using SUSE since their agreement with Microsoft makes them possibly the most "windows integration friendly" solution at the moment.
So, you don't need to struggle entirely based on size or based on which program to use. After all, if a student comes and complains "virtual box is crashing on my system" then you can say "try vmware player instead". It might end up being a pain in the rear initially, but it won't take long to work out the kinks.
Companies like VMWare are pretty good at fixing compatibility issues and so are the guys on the VMWare mailing lists.
I would pressure you however to make sure the virtual machine format is targetted specifically to use only a single core since this is still a major compatibility problem between vendors.
Couple years ago I worked on a High Performance Cluster in Seattle. One of the things I did was create a modified version of Red Hat 7.3 that ran entirely in memory so I could ssh into a node and tar, dump, fdisk etc the hard drive. Late last year I visited the site again and my former coworkers told me they still use that method, but in slightly different manner, they permanently run it in memory instead of using it to prepare the hard drive. So recently I redid the project it with CentOS 5.4 and got it to run entirely in memory on various types of hardware. No X though. I took the CentOS 5.4 Live CD and made a custom bootable DVD with stuff I want in it and I did get it to run on various pieces of hardware with different hardware specs from a Laptop w/ wireless to a Desktop with an old video card. It is an interesting project and it really a great way to learn how Linux works, from how it boots up, to initrd, how ldd works, and identifying hardware and getting firmware to load. My point is that I would not deny this opportunity to learn a lot of details of Linux from your students.
My advice is to let the students decide what they want. Find a few for them to select from, give a short intro to each and show some screenshots and make the students select one. This way you'll get experience on which one is the best for the next course and make the students part of the course design. If they've had the chance to select their flavour, they'll be more likely to like it! And if you can find a few good, working solutions that cater to specific needs (like ease of use, security, nerd flavour, etc.), the better for everyone!
As an anonymous coward pen-named ThoDin (thodyn at gmail), I have a plethora of private experience (at least 15yrs.) installing and re-installing and multiple installs/boot systems on a wide variety of end user and private sector hardware ranging from the proprietary AST x86 machines to the most recent to my portfolio, the ASUS eee SeaShell w/ intel Atom core. ---(bad grammar, i know)--- My reasoning for the installs varied from "...sound works but, joystick doesn't - time to try something else..." al the way to "...how many different OS's did they say could work on one machine? Betcha I can do twice that!". OS's tried also range from my very first install of any type of NON-MS system, Slackware. then there was one of the smallest and simplest I've tried, BE-OS, It was a 30-45 min install, 3 min. boot, and BLAMMO - dial-up and/or broadband internet was up (early to mid 90s). The one that continues to keep me amazed though, because of it's abundance and variety of software, as well as it's ability to operate (almost) flawlessly on so many different PCs that I've visited, used, and/or owned, was a live cd called KNOPPIX from knopper.org (DVD and CD versions). I'm sure everyone familiar with *nix's "31 flavors" has heard of this, but for those who haven't; it a derivative of debian linux that can be run solely from the cd with no touching of the other drive devices or, installed as a minimal image running from an HD or other partition source OR, completely installed as a main, alternate, or solo OS. Although, your schools policies may potentially conflict with some of the installed software, a listed txt of "stock" software is there along with the instructions on how to modify the disk's installed software to suite your needs. Depending on your skill level and experience with *nixes, even this process should be fairly easy at minimal time consumption. All of the other mentioned by the posters (at a glance) appear valid for a variety of reasons, but if II've understood correctly, a varied skill level AND hardware is the prime issue. That being the, I mention KNOPPIX. Good luck on your choice. -Dave
what about DSL it can be booted from inside windows (download the embedded version) using a preconfiguerd qemu can that fits under 100mb so low download time as well. http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/download.html
You should use an emulator like Qemu, or maybe Bochs. Then you're completely isolated from any hardware compatibility problems (virtualizers run directly on the physical cpu and thus can introduce incompatibilities when an image installed using one cpu is booted on another). Or if you only have short term projects (they don't need to save their data), then use the ttylinux or dsl linux demos in JPC at: http://javapc.sourceforge.net/demos_linuxdemos.html
Perhaps he's forgotten due to a few too many 4/20's.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Mandriva flash comes with an 8gb key, they are open to "mass" deals (so if you buy 30 for all your students it will be cheaper), it comes with a bunch of codecs, etc...
and it does a fair job of supporting most HW.
http://store.mandriva.com/product_info.php?products_id=407&cPath=149
Full disclosure, I used to work for them...
Most people don't celebrate the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr or George Washington's birthday. I don't think that most people celebrates jesus birthday.
After a yum update, my VirtualBox CentOS 5.4 disk image is only 1.5G. Point them at VirtualBox, a decent distro's download page (specific version) and hand out the flash drives.
Other folks will mention their favorite virtualization toolkits. I'd like to mention that if the students expect to do serious work, such as rebuilding interesting packages to get their feet wet, they may well need more than 4 Gig of space. They may need swap space if their laptop or host machine is underpowered, and after you get done installing compilers and development libraries and Gnome or KDE, there's surprisingly little space left on a 4 Gig disk. Also, if they attempt to build RPM's in the chrooted "mock" or "mach" environments for stability of build environments, that's another chunk of space.
So if your budget can stand it, try to get 8 Gig USB sticks.
I'm teaching a class where I asked students to install a VirtualBox of Ubuntu (which I had customized by installing a bunch of bioinformatics software and loading a bunch of sequence data). For most of the students it was extremely easy. These were not computer science students; they're biologists. Only a couple of students had problems. One of them had an old PPC Mac, which isn't supported by VirtualBox, and the other one only had 512k memory, which isn't enough to boot the virtual box. For these two students, I had to set up lab computers for them. So, as long as you have a plan for students who don't meet the hardware requirements, I think a VirtualBox of Ubuntu will be a very successful strategy. Installing and running it was a no-brainer, even for students who were afraid of computers.
No idea what that level of certification means, but I have been using Linux exclusively since around 2001, first dabbled with it around 1998. The first thing I ever did on a running Linux was to learn the basics of vi and then went on building my own custom, static kernel without module support.
And I still learn new things every week or two.
according to Bill Gates you need 640k maximum ..
If you're just looking for an easy to use Linux Distro that can be run from a USB drive instead of virtualizing it, check out SLAX (www.slax.org) it's got a great "module" system for adding software and it's pretty forgiving if you screw something up.
It's related to our teeth our teeth gives a reasonable manner. Who ever this kind of teeth does not hurt. Alta White Teeth
Portable VirtualBox looks interesting, but it also looks like it requires the user to have admin privileges on the Windows machine that's hosting vbox. See the documentation here:
http://www.vbox.me/?path=./Description&file=ReadMe.txt
"VirtualBox needs at least main user rights, there 4 Services
(VBoxDRV, VBoxUSBMon and if not already installs VBoxUSB,
the VBoxNetFLT and sun_VboxNetFLT) to be furnished and
VirtualBox must in " Ring-3" - Mode is initiated. The drivers
the network become with snetcfg.exe (from the ms DDK 2003)
merged. So that they are loaded, must into that Attitudes of
Portable-VirtualBox, under the rider " NET" , this to be
selected. For security, which one installs, must for the
installation be agreed. After terminating Portable-VirtualBox
the drivers become and files again removes!"
When did you last use Linux, 2000?
No kidding. The only time I've ever had to search for a module like that in recent years was when trying to install a version of Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex on an AMD64 laptop back in 2008. Before that, I can't remember for the life of me when I had to do that type of search (97-98 maybe.) Maybe this guy was trying to install a long-forgotten slackware CD (circa 1995) - downloaded via CompuServe to boot - on one of those 486SX Frankenstein computers we used to build from cannibalized parts.
Linux installs have gotten so good (they have been that good for quite a while), that you have to have some weird combination of hardware (say really old-tech parts put together with really, really new-tech parts) to get severe installation problems. The only Yaaargh! we get to say now is at the sound of the linux distro spinning flawlessly (most of the time) on the CD/DVD player.
I had great success with Knoppix. It works on almost any hardware and is very easy to customize. There is a ton of information online. You can put it on a USB and / or CD. http://www.knoppix.net/ good luck, Yosef Shevah Porat
Because of the prevalence of Redhat Enterprise Linux in the enterprise, you would be doing your students a huge disservice not to at least highlight the fact that they can get RHEL Desktop for $30 at an academic rate (server for $60). Fedora is a great substitute, and I believe version 13 and above will be a hybrid ISO image - that is, the ISO image can be either written to CD or laid on to a thumbdrive with no additional steps. In addition, there's GUI tools for Linux and Windows to perform this step. Don't get me wrong - I'm a Debian user myself, and there is definitely much to gain from Slackware and even Gentoo - but the *primary* distribution you should put your students on should be RHEL/Fedora and use RPM for managing packages.
I usually lurk here. Had to create an account to mention archlinux, which is a streamlined, eminently customizable distro. It installs a base system by default and the rest is up to you. It is also a rolling distro with binary packaging for i686.
I know that it's not an "Official Distro" but if your just going through the rudimentary basics you could try pUbuntu ( http://portableubuntu.demonccc.com.ar/ ). It will run without the need for commercial virtualization software. It uses a Co-linux setup and the slirpnet driver for network. There is nothing to install in windows, and I don't think you need admin rights to run it.
Studio is a great place to start. Dead simple to manage, and easy to churn out revisions. You can even include the Suse virtualization stack, which provides most of the functionality of Xen's 'official' server release. Put OpenXencenter http://www.openxencenter.com/ in the live release, and you're set.
If hardware support is an issue, have them generate a support email with a basic hardware profile. Add appropriate packages to the Live DVD, and repeat.
Caveat: It's invite only, and it make take some time to get one through the site.
In any case, virtualization is a great way to go, especially if you're arming these students with life skills. The physical disk (heads, cylinders, sectors, tracks) is all but abstracted, as is the concept of IRQ, bus mastering, and most of the day-to-day of ten to fifteen years ago.
A focus on mass implementations and the real-world fallout from those applications is something I would like to see in a class. Forget about baby steps, let's get this whole awesome thing in motion and leap some real hurdles - SAN concepts, multi-homing, foundations of capacity concerns, network-scale monitoring, and configuration management should shed enough practical exposure to the real aspects of implementation (shell access, users/files, networking, filesystems, hardware, etc.) as to keep it relevant and entertaining.
Good luck.
1. Get them to use a bootable CD/DVD first Try Knoppix for hardware problems, it is best I know for irregular hardware. Reason to avoid a destroy Windows HD by trying to get a USB linux first off (very easy to do).
2. Once familiar with Live CD continue with Knoppix or move to regular CD/DVD of Ubuntu,SuSE or Mandriva.
3. Then and only then have them make a biggish USB Linux persistant system and crash or mode to heart's contents.
4. Slackware for knowledge but it is a hard slog!
5. You want students to get results not put off by failure/risking their own laptops, unless you use old cheap laptops hose them and load any system including Puppy etc.
Regards Eion MacDonald
Hardware replacement is an option.
In order to replace an unsupported or binary-only-supported *cough*Broadcom*cough* WLAN card in a laptop PC, as I understand it, yyou have to replace the whole laptop. Or what am I missing?
"pay me $10" for the wirless card and I will toss Linux on your system and you will never have another virus again.
After the user runs sudo apt-get install wine in order to put the games and genuine Microsoft Office software back on, can't the malware run just as easily in Wine?
I would put qemu for windows on the usb drive with an iso image of whatever distro you choose and have a batch file with the proper command line you will need (to start a nic). then you can put this in a autorun.inf file so everything starts upon insertion. I have used this for several years and it works great.
I'd say stick with bootable USB sticks - and offer a special boot CD (or diskette?) that boots the USB stick when they need it.
I am not devoid of humor.
Students have to learn a lot in a short time, you need to optimize their time.they can't be mucking around with hypervisors, getting the os to boot, and every possible problem they can meet to get an OS to run, every time they boot it, they don't know about dozens of these concepts and there's no time to learn absolutely everything, the course material is enough already. They need persistent changes, every place they boot their pendrive can't have a different problem, and not have the system exactly as they left it. So therefore I vote for OpenVZ on a shared server, perhaps with CentOS. There are other virtual computing labs around.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
I know you asked for a USB/flash drive solution, but what about using the cloud. Assuming you have network connectivity, this could be a cheap run-on-demand solution with consistent results.
http://www.ubuntu.com/cloud
you wouldn't need to worry about users with different laptop capabilities.
Per my subject-line above, and of those that are in my major (CSC), there's around 5-10 of them I have found to be pretty impressive (12,000 students in the school, & comp. sci. + comp. info. systems (CIS) are at an all-time HIGH in enrollment in the U.S.A. by the by) actually. Of that ten or so, many are RIT, RPI, MIT, or other good reputed CSC program kids (many of which were also in the SUNY systems' 4 yr. program schools initially, but couldn't make the costs) who couldn't afford to go to a higher level college in the first 1-2 yrs. (freshmen/sophomore level) anymore because of rising costs of education (scholarships + good grades & all, it happens).
Of that 10 or so, 5 of these guys ARE already "professional calibre" imo & yes, experience (16 yrs. on the job professionally as a programmer-analyst/software engineer + network administrator in the mix there too)... & as good as any colleague of mine I've had "on the job" the past decade & a 1/2++ really.
So, yes - they're THAT good!
In fact, in 1 of these young folks' cases? Well - while I was cutting my teeth on Client-Server in early Win32 (& 16-bit DOS + Windows before that circa 1991-1993 or so, & years of midrange/mainframe experience before that in academia + professionally in the 1980's also)?
Two of them told me (these "whiz kids" I met, yes, @ a community college no less) were learning these machines also...
1-2 of these guys blow me AWAY, because he knows as much as I do (maybe more), & told me he started at the age of 6 yrs. old & hasn't stopped (& it shows - even the masters degreed prof.'s @ my college are impressed with this young man (regional winner of U.S. Robotics competitions in high school as an example why). Another one is MUCH the same, started @ 8 yrs. old & kept going @ it... & it shows in them both. 2 more are massively skilled & quite impressive (give them time to get out there and learn a bit more? They'll be GREAT imo!)
Just like our prof.'s, well... yes, I am impressed @ the skills this "select group" has in these young programmers.
In fact, THAT is a BIG part of why I am finishing off the CSC (to the B.S. mark hopefully - past the A.A.S. part only), in the next year++ or so, & combining it with the B.S. Business Admin/MIS concetration-minor I have - because the kids coming up?
Man - They're GOOD (those that are PERSISTENT & INTERESTED that is)...
I figure it THIS way: Mainly because of experiences I've had while actually "doing the job in the trenches" for more than 16++ yrs. now professionally as a coder, & network tech/admin., that it's time I started leveraging professional experience I've also had in mgt., albeit this time? Mgt. of COMPUTER PROFESSIONALS (because I've been one myself)... the money's better, not by a GIANT lot (over senior software engineers or project leads for example), but far better than just being a 2nd-tier coder.
Why do it this way (get the A.A.S., get out & work this field for a GOOD stretch, & then go on for yet more schooling in CSC?), well, that easy:
See - I could never handle OR TRUST bosses of IT/IS/MIS dept.'s very well, or truly RESPECT them either, if they hadn't "done the job themselves", & with good reasons!
Man - I've seen guys of that ilk (the MIS/IS/IT mgt. figure of the 1970's - 1990's largely, fading away SOME nowadays @ least, thank goodness) make HUGE mistakes that cost millions, in bad decisions & more (especially poor deadlines projections, but that is hard for anyone imo, but moreso especially for those w/out hands-on experience programming)...
Now, they never "get the axe" though - you ALL KNOW who does first (programmers, the guys that actually "make things happen" in this art & science). Makes sense, as the "business mantra" typically is that "payroll is the easiest cost to control" quite typically.
So that probably "begs the question" of me, & what I'm doing there @ a community college to do all this?
Well,
I have found that Slax is the best for this type of course. I also happen to have written a Creative Commons-licensed course that should cover everything needed, including labs and assessments. How can I get this to Prof. Nix?
1974-1978 at Cornell. The computer lived in a building out by the airport, and most of our work was done using card readers and printers driven by Data General Nova machines. The punch cards weren't on VM/CMS; they were running on some other system (I think HASP, but maybe JES3.) VM/CMS had actual printer terminals, which I remember as Decwriters but that's probably wrong, and the Tek4014s. When I got to Bell Labs a bit later, we had some punch cards, and TSO for terminals, and also Unix on a bunch of PDP-11s.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks