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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?"
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.
Of course, you need to make sure that everyone has a thumb drive of sufficient size.
You can't even buy drives too small for this anymore.
The post is pretty much standard trolling, but have the moderators gone on crack too? That's like say "Let's learn to drive a car. Let's start by assembling the engine..." and this is less of a problem in the workforce than on a collection of random computers. Every serious IT department runs recommended configurations of hardware and software, you don't just throw parts together, slap an OS on it and hope it works. Some hardware works flawlessly under Linux, others is a paperweight with every variation in between. If you want to run Linux you get hardware that runs Linux and it's not that hard to find, it's more that some brands support open source and others don't. Running it on random hardware is only done by people who want Linux to fail so they can mock it or those that really want the pain of dark magic command-fu or a nasty assignment in C. I really would like to see it as one of the assigned tasks though - run Linux natively from a LiveCD and run through basic checks on what works and what doesn't. That could be rather helpful information to someone trying to find a Linux friendly computer and Linux friendly accessories.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Given current trends toward cloud computing I bet it will soon be possible for students who are just starting out with Linux to never once have to run it outside of a virtual environment. Unless of course troubleshooting hardware is part of their job description. For most, it probably won't be.
The problem with the original post is that he is asking for a distro recommendation when he should have asked for VM software. Common sense would dictate that you just use whatever distro is being taught in the class and pick a virtualization platform that handles it well.
Let's be serious about this here: download Portable Virtualbox, install it on a thumb drive, install whatever distro makes sense for the class (given A+, probably CentOS, Fedora, Debian, or Ubuntu) on the drive's VBox, and dd is your friend. Finished. Anyone who hoses the VM can get a fresh load.
Put identity in the browser.
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!
And then you come back to what sconeu was replying to. The point that if the home computers can't run linux off a USB stick, they're probably going to struggle to run a virtualized system.
The solution is simple. Give the students USB sticks with a bootable linux distribution installed. Those that can run it from home can do so. Those that can't can go out and pay $300 for a computer that can or use the school's computers.
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;-) ]]
But there has to be a line between getting stuff done and experimenting. if I have a deadline - I need to get stuff done, so yea I'll pick the pretty buttons.