“Knoppix comes bundled with a bucket of tools, and although 1.7GB of uncompressed space goes a long way, you might hit the problem of having to use software that Knoppix doesn’t include by default. Additionally, you may make changes in configurations that you want to keep when you reboot, or store data between Knoppix sessions. Thankfully, there are a few different ways to solve this problem, some being easier to use and more successful than others. This article shows you how to use and modify Knoppix to save your data and install new software.”
This feature is advertised plentifully while using Knoppix, and if I recall correctly, there’s even a big shiny button for saving your changes.
Why not have a network knoppix that can be customizable like the article describes to install your favorite apps,de, etc,but that also has the ability to store certain things or maybe your entire home directory on a network location like your gmail account for example??
Then your bookmarks, contacts, email settings, background, files, etc can just follow you around everywhere you go!
Even better, you could have an image that is bootable but also can be accessed from a either a windows exe or a linux bin that can be run off the CD as a virtual machine image?
Then you don’t even need to reboot your friends computer to get your de in fullscreen mode, or you can boot to it if you wanted to.
Hmm? Then also, if you had an installable version it would continue to use the network “home” for settings and some files so that you could have a common home in all network connected situations.
Where it was actually installed, you could even keep a local cache of settings/files so if the network flaked out on you you could keep working.
And in the liveCD version or image version, if it could not connect to your network it could just use some defaults or just copy to memory or temporary local storage in the time when it first connects so things won’t freak out when the connection goes away as long as you stay booted.
You could even install apps to this network thing depending on the connection speed and the amount of local memory/temp-storage.
This is a good idea. I would use this every day and never install an os again. I have fast fast internet pretty much everywhere in my life now and so do most people I know. Opening up firefox on one workstation and not seeing the cool page I bookmarked on my computer at work or openening up my contacts and not finding that hot girls phone number I pulled (it could happen) just because I’m on the wrong computer makes no sense in the highly networked environment that many people live in now.
Please someone tell me I’m an idiot and this already exists!!
“Please someone tell me I’m an idiot and this already exists!!”
Yes, such a thing does already exist. 🙂
Check out the “UML-KNOPPIX on SFS” project (http://unit.aist.go.jp/itri/knoppix/uml/sfs/index-en.html).
It allows you to mount and/or export your home directory via SFS, and to load network-accessible User-Mode-Linux instances.