“Mandriva Flash is meant for all those who want to have a complete OS and their personal data handy at all times without the hassle of carrying a laptop around. It is a full workstation, packed with all the latest technologies. It includes the brand new Mandriva Linux 3D desktop technology, as well as the best open source software available.”
very cool
hell yeah .. can´t wait to get mine =D
Too bad my stone-age mobo does not support usb-booting and the dozens of usable machines at university have password-protected BIOSes.
Other than that, cool, indeed!
I’ve actually been looking at building one of these for a while now.
I’m wondering how Mandriva’s approach differs from, say, installing Slax onto a usb stick though?
Is it essentially a liveCD in usb form, or something closer to a traditional install?
Edited 2006-12-06 20:54
There’s not really a whole lot of difference given the modern ways of building live CDs. But look at it as a traditional install on a USB stick.
The approach isn’t very different from manually installing a regular distro on a Flash stick. We just took care of all the gnarly bits so you don’t have to.
So could one make persistent changes to the installed packageset if they were inclined to do so? Say updating to a newer version or removing unused apps?
theoretically: yes …
“Yes you can install new apps using rpmdrake, you can also update your 2007 system.”
http://club.mandriva.com/xwiki/bin/view/Main/mandrivaflash1205
(on the third comment)
I wonder what filesystem it uses though :s
Edited 2006-12-06 22:22
Thanks, and good question.
One would hope they’d use something optimized for solid state memory like jffs2.
Atleast it had 5 years warranty.
It uses FAT in order to be readable from other OSes. Details, and some other interesting stuff too:
http://mdv.vmlinuz.ca/Releases/Mandriva/Flash/FAQ
Thanks Adam =D
Thanks for the clarification.
I see you can buy the actual flashdrive preloaded with mandriva, but is there anywhere you can just download and install the OS to your own thumbdrive?
Edited 2006-12-06 22:44
dsl sells a stick preloaded with their debian based version, and pclinuxos can also be installed onto your own memory stick.
but this one ? I just dont like the thoughts of somethings called “mandriva” being shoved into my port !
hahaha j/k !
The most error-susceptible file system in the world of computing is to be relied on for something like this? That’s reason number one to not buy one of these. i’m appalled at how FAT continues to thrive on removable media products (other than CD/DVD, obviously).
where are all of our standards organizations where file system choices are involved? there are so many options that are free and open. start using them!
this is like reminding people that the USA uses the QWERTY layout because designers were trying to slow down typists so that the hammers wouldn’t get jammed.
“What? What do you mean? Hammers? What’s a type writer?”
Ooh, look, it’s another myth:
http://www.utdallas.edu/~liebowit/keys1.html
Or since that’s quite long and you might be in a hurry, here’s Cecil of The Straight Dope’s summary:
“Baloney, say the authors of the article you enclose, S.J. Liebowitz and Stephen Margolis. They point out that (1) the research demonstrating the superiority of the Dvorak keyboard is sparse and methodologically suspect; (2) a sizable body of work suggests that in fact the Dvorak offers little practical advantage over the QWERTY; (3) at least one study indicates that placing commonly used keys far apart, as with the QWERTY, actually speeds typing, since you frequently alternate hands; and (4) the QWERTY keyboard did not become a standard overnight but beat out several competing keyboards over a period of years. Thus it may be fairly said to represent the considered choice of the marketplace.”
FAT was chosen for sensible technical reasons. It represents a compromise, but so would choosing a Linux native filesystem. Neither is the ideal solution – there is no ideal solution.