Take a look at Puppy Linux, a very small, lean and mean version that
can save your setup back to the CD so next time you boot it's as you
left it, you can also install on a HD, Zip, or USB stick. I use it
for emergency recovery of data from non-booting systems, or systems
hosed by viruses. It runs out of RAM so it's incredibly responsive.
< http://www.puppylinux.org/user/viewpage.php?page_id=1 >
At 08:34 AM 2/15/2006, Larry Loen wrote:
I think maybe I should at least make a suggestion that solves my own
problem.
If we're serious about getting people involved with Linux, then for
those with my problems, we need one of those "boot Linux from CD" or
some similar basis of a solution.
My main box, the one with my D44 and Santa Cruz card in it, the one
that's connected to the SDR and I don't want to disturb, has a single
NTFS partition on its single hard drive.
I shouldn't have done that, perhaps, but remember, I'm nicely
internetworked, so I didn't envision booting Linux on this particular
box. Be that as it may, many others are likely in exactly the same boat
anyway. So, if this is about more than just me (and I suspect it is),
there needs to be a solution that's reasonable for a lot of folks
similarly placed.
What I think we need is:
1. Some suitable distro or distros (Knoppix, a Linux distribution made
for this scenario, is probably a great start).
2. A list of supplemental packages to download while running Windows
still to supplement Knoppix after we boot Linux from CD.
3. A willingness of those in my boat to buy and use a suitable USB
"thumb" drive. These are upwards of 1 GB now and for cheap, you can get
sizes like 128MB or 256MB. That sounds small by today's standards, but
in fact, you could still do a lot of code development on one of these.
Source code just isn't that much space. It's really a question of "how
many supplemental packages" and "how large." The point of the thumb
drive would be to have a place to read and write the necessary data to
develop code. It could be a second hard file, I suppose, that you don't
let Windows use, but many people would find a thumb drive easy to deploy.
4. A little time taken, when rebooting to Knoppix, to install the
things you need from the thumb drive.
If the pieces could be pulled together, this is a pretty much totally
fail-safe, anyone can do it, who cares about NTFS, no risk to anyone's
Windows box kind of approach.
It would enable the nervous (like me and, I think, others) to tinker
with Linux and the SDR without getting into the whole "moving the wires
about." I have options like NFS that others may not, so I'm not going
to assume technology like that for this solution. I want something that
we can assume anyone can use. Perhaps the read only NTFS support could
enable the packages to be safely read from the Windows disk as another out?
Anyone already try this? Know whether Knoppix or one of its many
variants has suitable drivers for at least the Delta 44?
Is there a list of minimum packages and levels of same needed to dvelop
and run the Linux stuff so we know that it would work once one bothers
to download it so one cold quickly get going?
Larry WO0Z
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Cecil Bayona
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I fail to see why doing the same thing over and over and getting the
same results every time is insanity: I've almost proved it isn't;
only a few more tests now and I'm sure results will differ this time ...
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Subject: Re: [Flexradio] Linux for Windows Boxes (was Howcum?)
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At 09:09 AM 2/15/2006, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
[snip me]
That's why "boot floppy" is in quotes <grin>.. But the idea is that
you're
booting off the network, but you need some media to prevent the BIOS from
booting windows instead. You don't need the whole image on the boot media,
just enough to get the process going.
I've seen that one tried. I've tried it, in fact. In my limited
experience, more trouble than it is worth. Not what I would recommend for
a Linux newbie, that's for sure.
Boot CD is actually probably the best scheme I've seen. Rather than boot
the whole system from the CD (a'la Knoppix) which can take quite a while
(because it has to uncompress the image, etc.), you have just the loader
on
the CD, and the actual boot goes across the net.
makes it easier to change what's in the startup image too, because it's on
a changeable medium (i.e. your network server) as opposed to needing to
burn a new CD.
[snip the rest]
I think if you're worried about the long boot from Knoppix putting folks
off, then most of us might actually want to look at a distribution like
Damn Small Linux as the first alternative, then.
I wasn't going to push that one, because I don't know what is missing from
a code development point of view, but by definition, it only has 50 MB of
total stuff to start with. I never timed it, but the boot is reasonable,
I know that for sure.
Also, (in what I snipped) you made a reference to USB boot. Never
contemplated doing that one, just making it a source of read/write storage
only. AFAIK, booting off USB is still in its infancy. I've never tried
it. If I go by some sources I read, some drives don't really support it
(why that is I'm not sure, but that's what I read). Anway, seems neither
prudent nor necessary. CD boot is universal back a long ways. Simple,
deployable over wide swaths of SDR users.
So, if that's the net compromis we're at, far better (for most) to boot
off of Damn Small and then deal with the USB drive as a simple data
source. That would work on a lot more machines. They can get into
networking (NFS, Samba) as they get into it.
But, given this is tinkering time, it may be that the Knoppix boot is
tolerable anyway.
Larry WO0Z
