Linux on disk?

[lazygamer]

Ok here's the thing. At school(it's a small adult education thing, not a 1000 person high school) our computers use W98 and Microsoft word.

I was thinking how Linux's stuff is probably superior to MS word. To use it though, i'd have to use Linux. The only way to do this would be to boot from a disk into Linux.

Would it be possible to tweak/re compile the kernel in such a way that it boots very quickly?(and is optimized for the particular machine I would use) A 2 minute boot time would be acceptable, a 5 minute woulden't.

This is out of my league for now, but im gonna be studying in these halls of learning for a few years, so it's always possible later on...

[KernelPanic]

and a resounding 'knoppix!' is heard from MES...

[lazygamer]

I was imagining an A drive disk, but CD could work.

[voidmain]

Heh heh, try fitting X and KDE on a floppy disk. I think you would have to use "lossy compression", make that "extremely lossy compression". But if you had Linux installed on the hard drive you could use a floppy to bootstrap it so you couldn't tell it was installed. But Knoppix is definitely the way to go.

[ November 21, 2002: Message edited by: void main ]

[lazygamer]

So there is no 6 year old version that can be shoehorned onto a disk? Well, I suppose it would suck then.  

[voidmain]

Can you fit Windows on a single floppy? The best you are probably going to get on a single floppy is Tom's root/boot disk:

http://www.toms.net/rb/

You are not going to get a graphical environment on a single floppy (unless all you care about are ASCII text lines like a DOS menu, or curses menus in Linux).

[DC]

quote:Originally posted by void main:
Can you fit Windows on a single floppy? The best you are probably going to get on a single floppy is Tom's root/boot disk:

http://www.toms.net/rb/

You are not going to get a graphical environment on a single floppy (unless all you care about are ASCII text lines like a DOS menu, or curses menus in Linux).

Hmm, there are 2 big problems with Tom's Root Boot:
1) Lack of programs
You can't do that much usefull stuff with Tomsrtbt, like go online and stuff (well, you could echo lines to the modem and read output, but something like lynx and pine is a minmum for me). Or compile stuff.
2) Slow bootup (not that much of a problem).
Reading and decompressing the entire FS from floppy takes way to long.

Besides, the disk is crammed full and then some.
This is not that much of a problem, since Tomsrtbt isn't made for a normal system, it's for emergencys and stuff, and has limitations that are forced on it by disk size limits and stuff. But this also makes it bad to start off.

It'll *work*, but for a real, usefull demonstration, use one of the bootable Linux CD-roms.

[Calum]

yep, looks like Knoppix or the SuSE live evaluation CD

if you really need to fit it on a floppy how about either BasicLinux (which requires a DOS bootdisk which you can download from the powerload site or else you could use Floppix which is based on Debian. both of these fit onto two floppies, and i can personally vouch for BasicLinux, although it does not run to XWindows when it is installed on floppies.

[voidmain]

quote:Originally posted by DC:
Hmm, there are 2 big problems with Tom's Root Boot:
1) Lack of programs
You can't do that much usefull stuff with Tomsrtbt, like go online and stuff (well, you could echo lines to the modem and read output, but something like lynx and pine is a minmum for me). Or compile stuff.
2) Slow bootup (not that much of a problem).
Reading and decompressing the entire FS from floppy takes way to long.

Besides, the disk is crammed full and then some.
This is not that much of a problem, since Tomsrtbt isn't made for a normal system, it's for emergencys and stuff, and has limitations that are forced on it by disk size limits and stuff. But this also makes it bad to start off.

It'll *work*, but for a real, usefull demonstration, use one of the bootable Linux CD-roms.

I realize all of this. That's why I said that it's about the best you are going to get on a floppy (which is what lazy was specifically asking for). It's also why I said to use Knoppix from CD.     But Tom's boot disk *is* an excellent disk for recovery (if you are not a n00b). Especially if you don't have a CD-ROM drive in the machine you are working with.

[ November 22, 2002: Message edited by: void main ]

[slave]

If the computers are unable to boot from the cd-rom drive (as the computers are at my school because the BIOS is password protected and I can't go in and change the boot order) then you can make a knoppix boot floppy that will then load the rest of the OS off the cd rom.  There are instructions on the knoppix cd on how to do this.

[voidmain]

LU, I can't imagine they would set the BIOS to not boot from CD-ROM and not set it to also not boot from floppy before password protecting it. Would they be that dumb?

[preacher]

quote:Originally posted by void main:
Heh heh, try fitting X and KDE on a floppy disk. I think you would have to use "lossy compression", make that "extremely lossy compression". But if you had Linux installed on the hard drive you could use a floppy to bootstrap it so you couldn't tell it was installed. But Knoppix is definitely the way to go.

[ November 21, 2002: Message edited by: void main ]

Well actually there is a small distro of linux called muLinux, that supposedly with two or three floppies can have xwindows, a web browser, and a few other packages. It uses the 2.0.36 kernel, and all the packages included with it are pretty old, but like I said, its small.

Forgot the link.
http://mulinux.sunsite.dk/

[ November 22, 2002: Message edited by: ThePreacher ]

[voidmain]

Well almost. It looks to me that the base distro is 3 disks (without X). Then there are 12 addon disks, one of which contains X, 2 more contain Netscape, another one contains VNC, etc. Still it's quite amazing. But if your goal is to show Linux off I would still suggest Knoppix as a number one. Unless you want to be able to show off the minimalistic capabilities, in which case I would still suggest Knoppix.  

[KernelPanic]

quote:Originally posted by Linux User #5225982375:
If the computers are unable to boot from the cd-rom drive (as the computers are at my school because the BIOS is password protected and I can't go in and change the boot order) then you can make a knoppix boot floppy that will then load the rest of the OS off the cd rom.  There are instructions on the knoppix cd on how to do this.

Why not reset the bios password?