Linux that stays on a CD?

[mwl+blu at alumni.unh.edu (mike ledoux)]

On Sat, 8 Sep 2001, Duane Morin wrote:

>Sometimes I hear this spoken of as one of the holy grails of Linux development 
>-- a Linux distribution that just boots from CD and stays there.  The idea, of 
>course, being that you can tell somebody "Look, you can temporarily check out 
>Linux without having to do all that icky repartitioning stuff."  But, games or 
>no, does such a beast exist?  I'd love to have a couple lying around to show 
>off (frinstance next time I'm at my dads house just pop it in and say "Hey, 
>try it for a little while). Kinda makes me sound like a drug dealer, but, you 
>know, in the *good* way. :)

I don't know if it is necessarily a holy grail, Slackware was doing
this at least 5 years ago.  I haven't touched slackware in a while,
but I'd be surprised if they've removed that functionality.  It was
slow, but good for just trying out linux for the first time.
 
>What would the issues be with such a thing?  Would you have to autodetect the 
>networking and graphics hardware? Would that be the big hurdle?

The major issue is where to keep configuration files that need to be
written to.  If it isn't a long-term thing, just for testing, a
ramdisk is probably good enough.  Hardware detection is no different
here than for any other form of installation--detect the hardware,
allow the user to override the autodetection if it isn't correct.

>BTW, I know a good Linux answer might be "Go ahead and make one yourself", but 
>I'm more of a user/advocate/zealot than a distribution hacker :).  I suppose I 
>could try it, but I'd ruin a whole helluvalot of cd's.

:)

-- 
mwl+blu at alumni.unh.edu                 
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