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Hi, this is the author of the article, and before I get started answering all the questions, I have a couple of things I'd like to say.

First: I did not post this article with the hope that people would send me money to develop it (I couldn't even if they sent me money). I posted it because is was a failed project. If it really had promise I would be off making millions of dollars. I wrote this a few months ago when I had some time on my hands for fun, but decided to post it on OSNews just to see peoples responses.

Second: Although Knoppix was one of my main influences (the whole bootable CD thing is entirely from there) the "persistant home directory" had not yet been implemented, and wasn't until about a month after I finished with this project. I came up with that idea on my own, although I'm by no means claiming I invented it, because looking back at knoppix from the past it seems that many people did this. I was very excited when the knoppix home directory came out, because I used it just like my idea, having a knoppix disc at home and work and shuttling my stuff back and forth. It was great.

Anyway, on to the critisism. First, I wonder if anonymous would post information on the roaming profile, because I've never heard it.

Greg: the source would be viewable, and downloadable, for whatever changes you would like to make. The changing of software to follow a common GUI and the code audit would be done by the company producing the discs, not the open source community (although, as I said, the source could be incoporpated into the common code by downloading it if it was an improvement. Also as I stated in the article, security updates would be downloaded at boot time, and incorporated into the running code (kind of like in Cisco's router OS, how you have the running config and saved config). I also view it more as symbiosis, not "piggy backing."

DCMonkey: You should get a RAID controller and mirror your main drive, or maybe make two mirrors just to be sure.

Zachary, Micheal, Leslie, Mystilleef: It was original at one point though . . . (sigh), and Leslie is right about trimming down current OSs.

wiggly-wiggly: what kind of name is that? Oh yeah, and you're right about the apples.

Jared: I think this idea would be excellent for students though, who have library computers, home computers, classroom computers, etc.

Ronald: Downloadable would be a program for windows or Mac that can read the filesystem and convert office types.

Charlie: That's true about so many people cooperating, but I tried to avoid depending on the internet for transfering of important and personal files because to me there is too much risk involved.

John: Could you link to the article about Sun?

Interfacer: You can get a six in one card reader that fits in a floppy bay and reads pretty much everything, I agree with the hosheads point, and knoppix uses several windowmanagers and they run fine (well, maybe fine it too strong, tolerable) together.

jck2000: I don't really trust the internet for private/sensitive stuff that well, although it's okay for some things. Your other points are very valid.

Vanderas: Although I think open formats would be better than this probably, I doubt Microsoft really wants to cooperate with Linux. Hardware it autodetected like in Knoppix, so you don't need the same hardware, whatever hardware you have will work.

uid_zer0: Sorry about that, apparently I came to the mistaken conclusion that fetchmail had to do with e-mail. What is it's purpose? I just threw it on there because it had mail in the title to give me more options.

Gianluigi: Yeah, compact flash is way to expensive for that.

chrisb: Wow, I have no idea what you just said. von Neumann? I fell dumb.

Jay: Thanks a lot.

Shawn, James: Thanks for the link James, that's actually really cool sounding.

Mike Hearn: Probably more acheivable, but less secure, I think. It's a trade off you'd have to choose for yourself.

Mr. Cancelled: I didn't say anything about stopping any OS. In fact, I don't even want people to build my OS because I see the obvious flaws in it. If, however, someone can take one idea from mine and turn it into something better, then it's worth posting it.

Joe: I was drunk.
No, just kidding, I didn't do a huge of an amount of proof reading.

mini-me: macs are supposed to be reliable. Last month at the (windows) pc shop I work at we had at least ten failures of hard drives (and most people didn't back up at all).

Berend: That's why you backup.

Anyway, as I said, it was just an idea, and one I already thought was failed. I do think burning knoppix on a mini dvd would be cool (I've got a friend with a DVD-Burner who I'm going to get to do this to try it out), and I think in installation of some of the OSs with many programs a choosing default type thing would be cool, with detailed descriptions of programs, not: a mail client. Thanks for the responses everyone, even the guys who thought I was a retard.