News from the LiveCD World
/home/liquidat shares some information about OpenSuse’s re-spin creator. Support is included for creating LiveCDs, LiveDVDs, and LiveUSB flash drives with OpenSUSE.
Everyone can easily create his own version of Fedora with the re-spin tool Revisor. OpenSuse also develops a tool with a similar purpose, KIWI.
DistroWatch Weekly interviews Adam Williamson, Mandriva’s Community Manager, and finds a new release of Mandriva Flash is coming.
Mandriva Flash 2007.0 looked like a very successful product. Yet, two months after the release of Mandriva Linux 2007.1, there is still no Mandriva Flash 2007.1. Why?
Phoronix has screenshots of the latest release candidate of SLAX 6.0.0.
LXer has a link to this digital photo frame kit running Damn Small Linux. It includes WIFI, so you can probably SSH into you photo frame.
GOSHEN, Ind. – RedPost inc., an Indiana-based tech startup, today announced the launch of RedPost/Kit, a do-it-yourself digital photo frame kit that comes with everything you need to get up and running.
Free Software Magazine takes us through the simple process of creating a custom LiveCD with the recently released Fedora 7.
A few weeks ago, I promised to explain how to create your own custom live CD with Fedora’s new tools. Well, last week Fedora 7 was launched and all the tools you need are available in the repositories. This even includes a brand new graphical tool, put together by the people at Fedora Unity, called Revisor, which will allow you to spin your own live CD or installation material in an unbelievably user friendly manner.
DistroWatch.com has news on the release of Scientific Linux 5.0 LiveCDs for i386 and x86-64 architectures. New features of these enterprise-based Linux distro LiveCDs are the ability to run off a USB drive and a hard drive installer.
DesktopLinux.com tells of how Puppy Linux is being used on low cost PCs with PXE booting and settings saved to USB flash drives.
Following the addition of PXE network booting to the ultra-lightweight Puppy Linux distribution, a group of enthusiasts offering Puppy customization and support services has revealed plans for “Minipup,” a project aimed at ultra-low-cost diskless hardware such as sub-$100 PCs.
Phoronix has screenshots of the OpenSolaris BeleniX v0.6 LiveCD.
The Fedora Project released Fedora 7, which is a milestone for Fedora because it now includes official LiveCDs with GUI installers, similar Ubuntu and PCLinuxOS. There are four Live images total, two i686 LiveCDs, and two x86-64 LiveDVDs, available in either Gnome or KDE flavors. The x86-64 version is only available in DVD format because it includes additional multilib packages which push it over the 700 MB CD size of the i686 version. A script to install the Live ISOs to a USB drive is also included.
Previously there was only one official LiveCD available for Fedora Core 6 i386 computers, released long after the install media came out. Other Live media for FC6 was available from the Fedora Unity project, but none of these were easily installed to a hard drive.
The Fedora release includes several live ISO images in addition to the traditional installation images. These ISO images are bootable, and you can burn them to media and use them to try out Fedora. They also include a feature that allows you to install the live image content to your hard drive for persistence and higher performance.
Linux.com has a review of Gentoo 2007.0. Looks like there are some significant issues with the live discs, especially if you have an ATI video card.
Gentoo 2007.0 is available in several formats for various platforms. As per its torrent download statistics, most popular are the live DVD, the live CD, and the minimal CD for x86 and AMD64 platforms. The live CD contains Linux kernel 2.6.19, Xorg 7.2, GNOME 2.16.0, OpenOffice.org 2.1.0, Firefox 2.0.0.3, Thunderbird 1.5.0.10, Evolution 2.8.2.1, and X-Chat and Gaim (now Pidgin) for IRC and instant messaging. The DVD version has everything the CD has, along with KDE 3.5.5, XFCE 4.4.0, GIMP 2.2.14, Abiword 2.4.6, KOffice 1.6.1, and several other applications, tools, and libraries.
A new release of the popular PCLinuxOS disto is now available. They were one of the early distro to put their installer on a LiveCD.
Texstar and the Ripper Gang are pleased to announce the final release of PCLinuxOS 2007. Featuring kernel 2.6.18.8, KDE 3.5.6, Open Office 2.2.0, Firefox 2.0.0.3, Thunderbird 2.0, Frostwire, Ktorrent, Amarok, Flash, Java JRE, Beryl 3D and much much more. Almost 2 gigs of software compressed on a single self bootable livecd that can be installed to your hard drive provided it is compatible with your system and you like the distribution. Over 5000 additional packages available after hard drive install through our Synaptic Software Manager.
Journal Of An Open Sourcee reviews the GCompris Live CD.
Shortly after receiving a comment on my other blog (Brazilian Portuguese only) from Armando Silva about an educational Live CD, my curiosity got the best of me and I just had to check it out.
OpenVZ is now available on a modified Knoppix 5.1.1 LiveCD. Test it out without messing up your installed OS.
OpenVZ is operating system server virtualization software technology, built on Linux, which creates multiple isolated, secure virtual environments on a single physical server – enabling greater server utilization and superior availability with fewer performance penalties. The virtual servers ensure that applications do not conflict and can be re-booted independently.
Techgage reviews the new 2007.0 release of Gentoo, and compares it and the new installer to the previous 2006.1 release.
If you are familiar with the installers from either 2006.x version, you cannot consider yourself an expert with the installer from 2007.0, as many things have been changed around and it functions differently overall. I will get into these changes are we go along.
DistroWatch Weekly has news of NimbleX’s new web LiveCD configuration tool. Choose the packages you want, then download your custom NimbleX ISO.
Scientific Linux has a new LiveDVD.
Scientific Linux, a project based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 source packages enhanced with a variety of additional applications, released its v5.0 i386 live DVD on May 7. The SL5 live DVD features a 2.6.18 kernel, includes all client/workstation RPMs, and uses GNOME as its default desktop.
Linux.com reviews Digipup.
Puppy Linux is a lightweight live Linux distribution that you can boot and run from a CD, USB stick, or DVD. One of its features is the ability to create specialized “pups” — new versions of Puppy Linux geared toward a specific purpose. Digipup is one such example, with a focus on amateur radio. I spun it up, and found Digipup to be a great way to check out amateur radio utilities for Linux.
DistroWatch Weekly has some good LiveCD news in the Miscellaneous News section, including links to a 64-bit build of Knoppix 5.1.1.
Something to watch for, Google’s Summer of Code is sponsoring a graphical utility to create custom LiveCDs!
My proposal is to construct a graphical user interface that can be used in conjunction with live-helper to build Debian Live systems, allowing editing of existing configurations and including a ‘wizard’-style walkthrough for the first-time user.
Providing less experienced users with the opportunity to easily create live distributions will generate more exposure for live-helper, providing more valuable feedback for its developers and ultimately helping Debian’s image as an extremely flexible and free operating system.