Weekend Homework

If you have not already done this, go download Puppy Linux and Damn Small Linux. The combined size will only be 110 MB, and you’ll have some amazing capabilites. After you’ve got them running, see how simple it is to install them onto a keydrive, or to have them load into memory so you can add programs, change settings, and then burn the results (using the now-free CD burner) to create your own custom LiveCD. One fun thing you could do is create a LiveCD which automatically boots up, loads any shared music directories on your network, and starts playing the songs in random order. Now you have a use for that Pentium 133 laptop that’s been sitting in your closet.

Run GNU/Linux from a USB pen drive

NewsForge has an article describing how to get SLAX installed and running from a USB pen/key/jump/thumb drive. Useful information that can probably be applied to other LiveCDs as well.

Slax is a powerful and complete bootable distro based on Slackware, equipped with kernel 2.6, ALSA sound drivers, Wi-Fi card support, X11-6.8.2 with support for many GFX cards and wheel mice, and KDE 3.4.

CD Boots up Linux-based Acquisition

Electrontictalk has a story on a company whose Linux-based product is now being shipped with a modified Knoppix. It apparently allows use of their Linux-based data acquisition product from any computer with a CDROM drive. Sounds like an extremely intelligent idea, they now have a product that can be used with minimal effort.

This card can be used to turn a laptop PC into a digital oscilloscope.

Incite Technology is committed to the open source ethos and has made all software, firmware and even circuit diagrams available to the open source community via COMMEDI.

Gentoo Linux IA64 LiveCD Finished

According to this weeks Gentoo Weekly News, Gentoo now has an Itanium LiveCD which will be released as part of Gentoo 2005.1.

The new LiveCD will allow users to quickly and painlessly deploy Gentoo on an IA64 platform, where previously another distribution was required to jumpstart the bootstrap process for a Gentoo installation.

NewsForge | Simple PVR with KnoppMyth

NewsForge reviews KnoppMyth. While most people are aware that KnoppMyth simplifies creating a MythTV box, one feature not widely known is that it can be used as a LiveCD with a MythTV frontend.

Frontend — This lets you use the KnoppMyth machine as a pure front end that connects to a MythTV server you have running. This is useful if you have a couple of TVs, or are already using MythTV. After setting the date and time, you have to enter database settings, after which Knoppmyth starts up as a pure front end to your MythTV server. This is the quickest way to get going, but it does require a previously configured server. You don’t need to do any partitioning, and you won’t lose any data on your hard drive. It’s basically just a live CD front end.

Building an OpenBSD Live CD

ONLamp.com has a new article on creating an OpenBSD LiveCD. Don’t forget to read the second page, where the author describes how to configure a firewall/router on this LiveCD. And you thought OpenBSD made a secure firewall before it was read-only.

This article describes the process I used to create a Live CD based on OpenBSD/i386 3.7-current. It should be no problem with 3.7-release either.

TheOpenCD 3.0 Released

What was once a CD full of open source Windows applications has now morphed into a hybrid LiveCD/Windows software CD. While it has not finished downloading for me yet, it looks like a lot of work went into this CD, and I’m excited to give it a try.

TheOpenCD traditionally provides a handy collection of quality FOSS applications for Windows, professionally presented in an elegant CD browser. This latest edition also lets you boot into a highly polished desktop based on Ubuntu for a taste of the world of free operating systems!

LiveCDs with Serious Eye Candy

Since there’s no LiveCD news today, I’m going to suggest everyone go download and try out Elive and GoblinX. Both LiveCDs focus on the Eye Candy factor of Linux desktops, and both do this well. Elive has Enlightenment E16 and E17, and GoblinX has 5 pre-tweaked desktop environments, including KDE, XFCE, Fluxbox, Windowmaker, and Enlightenment.

When you’re done, go vote for the LiveCD you think is the best for showing off Linux to your Windows and Mac friends.