http://www.osnews.com/story/16707/Review_Mandriva_Flash_Delivers_Linux_to_Go Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Wed, 25 Nov 2009 10:08:04 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://osnews.com/thread?191489 http://osnews.com/thread?191489 I wonder if it wouldn't be possible to do something similiar using cooperative linux (http://www.colinux.org/).

It reminds me of the X-Server "Live CD" Wed, 13 Dec 2006 00:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Ford Prefect) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?191493 http://osnews.com/thread?191493 Have been running Gentoo on a USB stick ever since I sold my laptop. Just rsync the distro from the laptop to the USB drive and compile a kernel with USB2/masstorage support in the kernel. Fixed grub to boot the device and that's it. Wed, 13 Dec 2006 00:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Bringbackanonposting) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?191515 http://osnews.com/thread?191515 Have been running Gentoo on a USB stick ever since I sold my laptop. Just rsync the distro from the laptop to the USB drive and compile a kernel with USB2/masstorage support in the kernel. Fixed grub to boot the device and that's it.

Wow, is that it?

Trivial! Wed, 13 Dec 2006 01:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (tristan) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?191518 http://osnews.com/thread?191518 Not so trivial for some of us, I'm afraid. Could you perhaps post the instructions for how you did this on a blog or something? I think it might be quite popular... Wed, 13 Dec 2006 01:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (oma2la) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?191525 http://osnews.com/thread?191525 Agreed that with gentoo we can create a USB stic containing many applications, what more we can do this with almost every Linux. However, the difference here is that Mandriva, as a company, is providing such a disk, end user like me does not have to do it.

I packs too many application in 1 GB leaving 1 GB for personal use. It is commendable to have Xorg, KDE( Oraganizer, Alarm, Kmail, Fax, Palm Pilot etc..), Gimp, OpenOffice, Firefox, Real Player and Networking support in just 1 GB.

Again I would say that, some of us can do this with any Linux, but does that deter us from appritiating a nice effort by Mandriva? Wed, 13 Dec 2006 01:50:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (abhaysahai) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?191599 http://osnews.com/thread?191599 I imagine it would be quite possible. You just need atleast two partitions on the USB stick: one FAT32 (or similar) and one for Linux. On the FAT32 partition you'd just put colinux et al alongside an autorun.inf..And then under Linux in some init script check whether you're running in colinux or not and do the right thing.

I guess I gotta try it myself sometime soon. Wed, 13 Dec 2006 06:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (WereCatf) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?191600 http://osnews.com/thread?191600 Here is a link on how to get Gentoo on a USB device:
http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Small_Footprint_Gentoo_on_USB Wed, 13 Dec 2006 06:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (WereCatf) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?191648 http://osnews.com/thread?191648 That's got to do wonders for the life expectancy of the drive, considering all the write operations that a distro performs during it's normal operation.

AFAIR, Mandriva went the other way, doing what is essentially a livecd image on one partition of the USB stick with another partition providing a user writable area.Edited 2006-12-13 10:11 Wed, 13 Dec 2006 10:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (orestes) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?191652 http://osnews.com/thread?191652 Making your own distro is trivial. Just follow the LFS book and that's it.
It may be trivial but people are still using distros like gentoo and mandriva because it is less work to use what others have already done for them and you.
Packaging a lot of softwares in a usb key is trivial but it takes time. Wed, 13 Dec 2006 10:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (agrouf) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?191691 http://osnews.com/thread?191691 You should also include Xming
http://sourceforge.net/projects/xming


Problem is, although the machine doesn't need to be rebootet, Colinux needs root (Administrator) privileges to run. There is also no sound AFAIK.


But just putting a stick into the USB port and see Linux "overtake" Windows to get a usable workstation would be just way cool :-) Wed, 13 Dec 2006 13:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Ford Prefect) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?191696 http://osnews.com/thread?191696 There is also no sound AFAIK.

Actually, you could include Windows port of esound daemon and just set Linux to use network audio. This way you'd get almost full Linux experience even when running under Windows. Neat, eh?

For details see: http://www.liquid-reality.de/main/projects/esound

EDIT:
Apparently NAS is available too:
http://radscan.com/nas.htmlEdited 2006-12-13 13:36 Wed, 13 Dec 2006 13:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (WereCatf) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?191710 http://osnews.com/thread?191710 I think there are other distros that do this in 50mb - 100mb. To me, that makes more sense. I wouldn't use a stick as my main desktop. Wed, 13 Dec 2006 14:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (walterbyrd) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?192562 http://osnews.com/thread?192562 that is neat! Fri, 15 Dec 2006 10:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (deanlinkous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?194906 http://osnews.com/thread?194906 Ha what is it with you people? Modding up sarcastic comments in reply to my "trivial" comment eh. All I see are hopeless people looking for an easy way out. Once again I will state what I has said for many years - if you find Linux and any other "free" concept too hard or you feel it owes you something then go get stuffed and use something else. Line someone elses pockets with money and they will Love you for it. If loading a distro onto a USB drive is too hard for you then don't do it (feel stupid about it) and don't use Linux. Especially Gentoo. We don't need you and we don't want your whining as you don't help anyone. Go back to Windows/OSX and whence you came. Thu, 21 Dec 2006 11:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Bringbackanonposting) Comments