PCFormat Forum Archive

Check this out :-

http://www.frozentech.com/content/livec ... &showonly=

It's a listing of 100 live bootable Linux CD ISO's, ranging from 5meg up to 700meg.

For instance, there's a live distribution called geexbox that is 5meg in size and it's sole purpose is for playing movie files !

Cool and geeky eh ?

Gotta love the flexibility of this OS.

Brillian.

Just to add to the brilliance we are running a SuSE 8.2 box with VMWare in our test center for debugging purposes and the sorts. I managed to load 3 other OS's before it even started to feel the effects of it all. Our Win2003 box barely handels 1 vertual instace by the second one it just crashes. Also the hardware in the boxes are exactly the same. Hell they even got the same CMOS configration.

Cool !

Suse is a great OS, I used 9.0 for a while, but I couldn't get the 2.6 kernel to compile properly for it, so I switched to slackware 9.1 (also very cool)

I'm going to try this Geexbox 5meg distribution to see how it handles media files.

™©®

No - I mean the power of Linux.

I didn't mention Mac at all.

™©®

bondi wrote:

No - I mean the power of Linux.

I didn't mention Mac at all.

You know how, when, whenever we're in a Intel-centred thread, and I come in and talk a bit of Apple/PowerPC into it, and then you come in and talk a bit of Linux/x86's into it?

Well, get used to it.

but why

Sorry bondi but I have to disagree with you, as far as I know the bootable Mac OS CD's aren't a fully working system. They are more for troubleshooting and so on. I could be wrong be really be putting my foot where it doesn't belong.
If I am wrong then sorry

I've tried MandrakeMove and it's brilliant. I did have a few problems running it on some systems but all in all I was very impressed.
An extract from the site
"MandrakeMove lets you bring your Mandrake Linux system wherever you go, all on a single disc, so that you can connect to the Internet, create & edit Office documents, listen to music, watch movies, and just about anything you can imagine from wherever you happen to be!"

I haven't tried Mandrake Move yet - I'll give it a try for the upcoming ver. 10 of Mandrake.

Live CD's can also very useful for rescuing data of a Hard Drive.

Mandrake Move could be a nice edition for a future PC Format SE, perhaps when ver. 10 is released with kernel 2.6 ?

That reminds me, I still need to try Geexbox to see how it works for playing movies !

Oh yeah, not really related to Linux, but there's a bootable winXP / win2003 rescue CD creator with a GUI environment :-

http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

Bart's Preinstalled Environment (BartPE) bootable live windows CD/DVD

I gave it a try and it could be useful, altho I found it was missing a file manager - you can add plugins for Adaware, CD Burning, Anti-Virus, text editor, image editor etc.

™©®

Sure - that's a problem with many live CD's - the speed leaves a lot to be desired.

However, if the "footprint" of the live CD OS can fit into available ram, it's a viable option for things like point of sale, presentations etc.

I was considering the Movix linux distribution for a client of mine for a motor show they were at - I created a video file from various sources and wanted to boot it natively - i.e. a no brainer if a non-techie had a problem. Insert CD, power on and the movie plays.

Unfortunately, it didn't function on the hardware I was running it on - but it's a viable concept.

I know matt and we intend to make use of it in the near future

Just tried geexbox - put a quick bit of info in the software section :-

http://www.entertainment3.co.za/modules ... pic&t=3309