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Bootable Business Card Distro Needs Testing 228

Posted by CmdrTaco from the so-if-you're-gonna-be-sober-tonight dept.
dbarry writes "Many here have read recently about the FSF membership program. The much-coveted membership card is to be a version of the Bootable Business Card distribution. We are curently looking for testing of our pre-2.0 releases and automated builds. The 2.0 release of the LNX-BBC (and, thus, the FSF membership card) will use the powerful GAR build system to compile nearly all software on it from source code. As such it has changed greatly since the 1.618 release from 2001." Is it ok to covet the card but not the membership? :)
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Bootable Business Card Distro Needs Testing More

Bootable Business Card Distro Needs Testing

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  • Business Card (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 31, 2002 @01:56PM (#4989305)
    A couple years ago I was buying RAM at a store. The manager wanted $150 for 4mb. I told him that some day I would be able to buy 256mb of Kingston RAM for $40. He laughed and said, "LOL, Bootable Business Card".

    • Re:Business Card (Score:3, Redundant)

      by gosand ( 234100 )
      He laughed and said, "LOL, Bootable Business Card".

      He laughed, and then said "LOL"?

      Strange.

  • It gets the ladies... (Score:4, Funny)

    by KaiKaitheKai ( 531398 ) on Tuesday December 31, 2002 @01:58PM (#4989322) Homepage
    Well, having a linux distrib in your wallet is much more attracting to the ladies than, say, a condom.

  • Bootable business card needs testing (Score:3, Informative)

    by dbarry ( 458863 ) on Tuesday December 31, 2002 @01:59PM (#4989324)
    You can find the full details of the testing announcement here [linuxjournal.com] and here [advogato.org]

  • Not a bad gimmick. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by notque ( 636838 )
    But, I always carry around several cds anyway.

    And with the rate I lose those, I don't want to have to carry anything smaller.

  • Not the same thing, but... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mcgroarty ( 633843 ) <brian DOT mcgroarty AT gmail DOT com> on Tuesday December 31, 2002 @02:00PM (#4989336) Homepage
    It's not quite the same thing, but the debian install ISO [olemiss.edu] and the FreeBSD lite install ISOs fit neatly on the business card and mini CDRs you can buy at most computer stores.

    It's also trivial to create a spare partition (or remount a RAM disk as root), install a Debian system exactly as you like it, mount etc and var on a RAM filesystem and copy contents in with the init, and then burn the entire filesystem as an ISO, putting the kernel in place with the installer build tools.

    I have a similar setup which is capable of mounting ntfs and fat32 filesystems. This has saved me a number of times in repairing screwed up 2000 and XP machines. The NT/2K/XP console mode is a joke. Using this disc, I can get in to repair the install without having to physically yank the drive and install it in another box!

    • Actually, somebody else has already prepared a script [216.239.53.100] to do the hard work for you if you want a BBC installer.

      The above (in non-Google cache form -- I'm trying to be nice to the Debian servers!) contains a link to a script for those interested in rolling their own.

    • RH 7.3 had a nice disk in the retail version. It was one of those business card type discs labelled "System Administrator Survival Disk". Bootable RH 7.3, 2.4 kernel, and enough tools to get most jobs done.

      It's been a real timesaver too. Anything it doesn't have that I needed, I just threw on to a 3 1/2" CDR.

  • How many people will use this as a portable OS. When they need to use a computer and only Windows is around, they will slip in the card and boot for a useful OS.

    • Re:I want to know..... (Score:4, Informative)

      by mark_lybarger ( 199098 ) on Tuesday December 31, 2002 @02:09PM (#4989402)
      this doesn't seem to be a bootable working distro, just a bootable disk with source code to build and install your distro. it might let you repair your system a little if you can't boot your linux system, but it's not going to let you run kde and such without some serious efforts. this is more like the gentoo stage 1 install cd's. gentoo has a bootable cdrom (with some beta game on it too) which sounds more like what you're talking about.

      • Re:I want to know..... (Score:3, Informative)

        by nickm ( 1468 )
        You are mistaken.

        The LNX-BBC boots into a fully running system. GAR is the compile tree, and we use it to track the changes we make to the LNX-BBC.

        Yes, it's true that you won't fit KDE onto th 50MB media, but we ultimately hope to use the same build tree to compile for targets like 8cm and full-sized CD-ROMs.
      • "this doesn't seem to be a bootable working distro . . . "

        Not true - you can start up X-Windows and do quite a bit with this BBC. Ideal for running remote X Sessions, for example.

    • Fits on a floppy... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by gillbates ( 106458 )

      I've been looking for a truly "portable" OS for quite some time - one that I could fit on a single bootable floppy and have a GUI interface. Upon failing to find anything suitable, I have since started writing my own. As I have a penchant for assembly language programming, I'm about halfway done with it.

      Hopefully, someday the OS will be completely irrelevant. It would be really nice if I could carry around all of my key data on a self booting floppy, rather than having to worry about synchronizing multiple data sets between different machines (work, home, laptop, etc...) That way, it wouldn't matter what OS was used on a particular machine.

      • The OS wouldn't be irrelevant, though - it would be the LOCAL OS that would be irrelevant, since you just override it with your own OS.

        That's a fair bit different from being able to sit down at a Mac or a Wintel or a Linux box, and get at all the same data no matter what.
      • I've been looking for a truly "portable" OS for quite some time - one that I could fit on a single bootable floppy and have a GUI interface. Upon failing to find anything suitable, I have since started writing my own. As I have a penchant for assembly language programming, I'm about halfway done with it.

        Damn it! There used to be a fully-functioning QNX OS demo [216.239.33.100] that fit on a floppy and had a nice GUI. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be on their site any more [qnx.com]. That's a shame; it was really cool.

      • I'm about halfway done with it.

        Don't mean to point out the obvious, but a floppy is pretty much crap media these days, and your efforts will only be useful as long as companies ship computers with them, which will probably stop right at about the time you're finishing up.

        It would be really nice if I could carry around all of my key data on a self booting floppy . . .

        If you can honestly keep your key data on the same floppy you've squeezed an OS+GUI on, why not spring for the single piece of paper that can hold that same information? There is simply nothing a floppy can do for me any more. Even USB keychain drives beat them, and that's only one of many options that make a floppy look silly.

        • If you can honestly keep your key data on the same floppy you've squeezed an OS+GUI on, why not spring for the single piece of paper that can hold that same information? There is simply nothing a floppy can do for me any more.

          1- Floppies are, at this moment and for at least a couple of years into the future, a standard component.

          2- 1.44 MB is a lot of text. My address file, accumulating over about 10 years, is about 50k. When I used to edit books for a living, I could back up 2 or 3 versions of an 800 page book (text and layout, no illustrations of course) onto a floppy as zip files.

          I had DOS boot disks with Norton Commander, Wordstar, and odds and ends that I could do basic work from. I had a box of 5 floppies that I could install my entire DTP system onto a 286 PC (later a 486).

          I remember when I bought warez at $3/floppy, back before the web and CD compilations. You appreciated space more then -- and apps designed with floppies in mind didn't suffer from bloat. Fuck knows how big MS Office will be when DVD becomes the standard distribution medium.

          • 1- Floppies are, at this moment and for at least a couple of years into the future, a standard component.

            Not a single computer I have purchased in the last 5 years has come with a floppy, and the last time I built a computer I felt a need to put a floppy in was early 1999 (and it's seen use maybe half a dozen times, mostly in the first year to move old data from floppies to a reliable media). A floppy drive is standard only in the same way that Windows is: some manufacturers include it as a bullet point to extract an additional profit from the clueless.

            2- 1.44 MB is a lot of text.

            Why is it like I'm the only one who saw that the OP wanted an OS+GUI on that same floppy? Why is it I'm the only one who read key data to possibly, just possibly, mean something other than plain text?

            I had DOS boot disks with Norton Commander, Wordstar, and odds and ends that I could do basic work from.

            So the guy is busting his hump to get what was common circa 1990? Oh, that must be encoraging . . .

            Fuck knows how big MS Office will be when DVD becomes the standard distribution medium.

            My Office installation size hasn't changed in a decade. It started out at 0K and it's holding steady. But your statement does sort of beg the question of why you're bothering with the bloat if your boot floppy did everything you needed.

            • Not a single computer I have purchased in the last 5 years has come with a floppy, and the last time I built a computer

              Self-built PCs obviously aren't "standard" which is what I stated I was talking about.

              Why is it like I'm the only one who saw that the OP wanted an OS+GUI on that same floppy? Why is it I'm the only one who read key data to possibly, just possibly, mean something other than plain text?

              Why can't you see that I said "a lot of text", as the post I was replying to talked about "printing out the key data on a single page" which seems, to my puny intellect, to mean text, not porn or MP3's or whatever it is that you consider "key data". Also, as for OS+GUI, on the original Macintosh you had that on a floppy.

              • Self-built PCs obviously aren't "standard" which is what I stated I was talking about.

                And if you had cared to read what I was talking about, I made a distinction between built and bought computers. I mean, if you're actually using floppies for some critical purpose I could understand you wanting to blindly come to their defense, but then I would expect you to at least mention why they are so great for you. Otherwise, why invest the effort in defending such a dated technology?

                . . . not porn or MP3's or whatever it is that you consider "key data".

                You know, an adult who wants to type "text" can type "text". Odds are if they type "key data" instead, they probably have something more in mind than text. Instead of maintaining your poor position by dancing around wording, why not simply admit that it might be difficult to fit all those things into 1.4MB and move on to better territory?

                Also, as for OS+GUI, on the original Macintosh you had that on a floppy.

                As I am not a computer history buff, I did not know that. Please enlighten me as to how much space it took up for the OS and list the apps that were also included with it such that a completely usable environment was available for the remainder of the space on the floppy (please list that free space size, too; thanks). I look forward to you defending your position with these facts. For bonus points, you might also want to include the size of the hardware ROM that contained the bulk of the Toolbox code that was used but, hey, no pressure!

                • why invest the effort in defending such a dated technology?

                  You keep trying to say I love and adore floppies. I was simply responding to the statement that they were useless with some anecdotes about how I used them to get work done, and could still in a pinch. These days I'd hardly use one more than a few times a year.

                  I'm done here, continue arguing with your straw man if you like.

  • Why not hurd? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by afabbro ( 33948 ) on Tuesday December 31, 2002 @02:01PM (#4989341) Homepage
    Just out of curiosity - why is the FSF card booting Linux instead of the Hurd?

    • Re:Why not hurd? (Score:5, Funny)

      by reaper20 ( 23396 ) on Tuesday December 31, 2002 @02:14PM (#4989438) Homepage
      Well duh, it's hard to make make cards out of vapor. :)
    • 'Cos LNX-BBC is Debian-based (lots of developers that way) and only about 60% of Debian works on The Hurd. If you need a tool for repairing stuffed machines, you want it all to work and reliably.

      I'm fairly sure that The Hurd will be a major force in the Linux world one day, and that the current Linux kernel will morph into something that is not dissimilar to The Hurd. It'll be interesting to see what emerges as technology moves away from the concept of a single central processor.

      Vik :v)
      • ...the current Linux kernel will morph into something that is not dissimilar to The Hurd.

        So you're saying that Linux is evolving towards being a half-finished toy?

  • Compiling from source code? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 31, 2002 @02:02PM (#4989346)
    to compile nearly all software on it from source code. Is there really any other way to compile?
    • Actually, yes. It could be compiled from an intermediate format. (eg. Java bytecode) Not that they'd do it that way, but yes, it is possible to compile from something other than source code. =)

    • to compile nearly all software on it from source code. Is there really any other way to compile?

      Not to be a stickler, but this is a geek news site: Is there another way to compile? Sure there is! Java bytecode -> JIT -> machine code. The microsoft .NET framework does the same thing, even recompiling all installed software from intermediate assemblies (assemblies are roughly the equivalent of finer-grain Java JAR files, not to be confused with assembly language) whenever the framework is updated. :)

  • I take it... (Score:2, Flamebait)

    by mcgroarty ( 633843 )
    I take it that all those with slot-loading laptops and iMacs need not apply.

    Oi, that could get messy. :)

  • picoBSD (Score:5, Interesting)

    by deep13 ( 157030 ) on Tuesday December 31, 2002 @02:03PM (#4989357)
    Why not picoBSD? http://people.freebsd.org/~picobsd/ We had tremendous success while setting up firewalls in india with this. It's much easier to get a floppy through customs than an actual Cisco box (and you don't have to bribe anyone ;-) )
    We just mailed them the floppy: pre-configured with ipfw and squid and some instructions on how to boot from it, where to plug what net cable and how to create the squid cache on the HD.
  • .....MP3 business cards for music distribution/promotion?

  • Tech TV (Score:5, Informative)

    by Goldberg's Pants ( 139800 ) on Tuesday December 31, 2002 @02:04PM (#4989368) Journal
    There was a story about the Bootable Business Card on Tech TV a few months ago. Some mom was shopping her kid around to the talent agencies. Nice gimmick and all, except this BBC fucked over one agents computer. Due to the unusual shape, it got stuck in the drive. They tried it on the show, and it got stuck in theirs too.

    NOT exactly a good way to win friends, by giving them something that destroys their system...
    • I gotta admit, though, when I read about these I was tempted by the idea of creating a Bootable Business Card Trojan Horse and passing it out to the suits who piss me off at carreer fairs. If it could cause hardware failures, too, that would make it even better =D
    • Not all business-card CDs are BBCs.

      Our images will work on standard CD-Rs, so you can use it in machines with slot-loading drives if you like.

  • I will make fun of people that have this by saying (Score:5, Funny)

    by L. VeGas ( 580015 ) on Tuesday December 31, 2002 @02:05PM (#4989370) Homepage Journal
    Hey, is that a mini Linux-distribution, small enough to fit on a CD-ROM that has been cut, pressed, or molded to the size and shape of a business card in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?
  • are here [linuxjournal.com] and here [advogato.org].

    "Imagine a cluster of these?" you say?

    That's what I'm doing here [uni.edu].

  • Anyone remember shaped LP's ? (Score:3, Informative)

    by loomis ( 141922 ) on Tuesday December 31, 2002 @02:07PM (#4989385)
    First off, I can almost see this being successful in the sense that an administrator could carry it in his wallet and therefore use the cd to repair machines.

    However, cd's are thick and hard (get your mind out of the gutter) so I really wouldn't want to put one in my wallet; nor would I want to sit down if I had one in my wallet, for it would surely crack in half.

    Lastly, remember picture-disc shaped LP's? They never caught on. It's seems that abnormally shaped media is viewed by the public as a novelty and soon rejected.

    Loomis

  • These are a great idea (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Col. Panic ( 90528 ) on Tuesday December 31, 2002 @02:07PM (#4989390) Homepage Journal
    I have a client who is an artist and wanted to make a business card that automatically opens a picture of one of his paintings when inserted in the drive. I threw together a little .html file and an autorun.inf that uses a freeware util called shelexec [naughter.com] to launch the .html file with the default browser.

    Really neat idea, and he can include links to a website or mailto on the page with the picture.

  • Trust (Score:3, Insightful)

    by BlueFall ( 141123 ) on Tuesday December 31, 2002 @02:11PM (#4989416)
    I'm not terribly sure I'd trust an application given to me on a business card by someone I don't know, much less something that boots.


    • ...where, in the Metaverse, passing around globs of information was done by "visually" passing around things like business cards. The act of accepting one transferred the data, so you didn't just blindly accept one from someone you didn't know.

      Plus the scene where the hero, uh, I mean, the protagonist, uh, I mean, the main character takes a card that represents a lot of data, and as the card passes from another person's hand to his, the world becomes slightly blocky and pixelated. His computer is so busy chunking down that much info that the refresh rate of his virtual eyes gets lagged. :-)

  • Yes, it's true. I cary mine in my walet. Saved me a few times, and people always look at you funny when you pull out a cd from your wallet.

    I use it mostly for testing hardware, I wish they could include FAT32 and NTFS support with samba, or atlease ftp so you can copy files of a dead windows box... Anyone know of anything like that? I'm not a programer myself.

  • While we're on the subject, these guys [dynebolic.org] are putting together a decent bootable distro. I have their 0.5.2 and it boots and finds all devices on all four of my x86 boxes. No KDE or Gnome mind-you, though it uses blackbox with a choice of themes, so I'm happy (though I prefer enlightenment). It also has mozilla and found the NIC on all the boxes. And it has their MuSE software for streaming audio, which is what the whole thing is about, I think.

    I heard that they're getting close on a vers. 1.0. I'll definitely be checking that out. It'd be cool if eventually you could put it on a CD-RW and be able to save your settings and work on the same disk. That and I'd like to figure out some way of cracking hard-drive permissions so it would actually be useful for maintenance on a errant machine.

    • Hard drive permissions in what respect?
      Ext2 (and derived) filesystems rely completely on the OS to enforce the permissions. So essentially, the minute you get root access in the OS, you can do whatever you please with the data on the drive.

      FAT32 has no native permissions at all. Any permissions that are percieved on FAT32 under Linux is because of the parameters (or lack thereof) given to the 'mount' command.

      As for NTFS, that's a whole new ballgame. I'm not into NTFS so much. I try to stay away from it when I can. Still, we have an NTFS read-only driver for Linux. So you can at least extract what you want from the drive before you reinstall it. (Which, BTW, is what 90% of calls to MS support end up being. They try about 5 different things, and then tell you that the OS is hosed beyond repair, reinstall and restore from backups.)

  • Is it ok to covet the card but not the membership? :)

    Who cares? It's the FSF, so just rip the card and burn your own. For added irony, you could make a point of not including "GNU/" in front of "Linux" and include free(beer)/nonfree(speech) software in your own distro.

  • These cards are great... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by stefanlasiewski ( 63134 ) <(moc.ocnafets) (ta) (todhsals)> on Tuesday December 31, 2002 @02:49PM (#4989691) Homepage Journal
    Back when Linuxcare [linuxcare.com] was still growing, they were producing these cards like mad. If you liked Linux, they would give you a dozen for free (To pass out at Lugs and geek-parties... "FOR THE REVOLUTION!" they said). I have given a bunch of them away to friends, and keep a copy at home and at work.

    I really like small tools that have multiple uses, and this Linux CD fits well. I keep one in my mini-toolkit, right next to a Leatherman Multitool and Pocket Ref [sequoiapublishing.com].

    And yes, I have actually used it when I upgraded my RH6.2 to 7.2 (The GRUB install failed miserably), and to recover data from a friends partition.

  • Heed my warning! (Score:3, Funny)

    by 13Echo ( 209846 ) on Tuesday December 31, 2002 @02:59PM (#4989771) Homepage Journal
    The TCO of the Linux Bootable Business Card distribution is much higher than standard business cards (1,000 for just $30!). Just look [cdrplanet.com] at the cost of business card CDRW disks!

    Don't believe me? Just ask Microsoft.

  • So, do you distribute a less than friendly version with your competitors logo on it at trade shows? That'd be just plain evil.

    Personally I don't think I'd stick any software in my machine that could boot the machine from an untrusted source. I mean, this guy you just met (otherwise you wouldn't need his business card) gives you a piece of software that basically has root privilidges on your machine or better. Atleast if someone gives you a business card with software on it that does not boot you can run the software in a sandbox.

    • Atleast if someone gives you a business card with software on it that does not boot you can run the software in a sandbox.

      VMware? Bochs?

      We *do* have sandboxes for operating systems.

  • I booted a business card but didn't get very far before it crashed. Those things aren't very aerodynamic.

  • WTF!?!?!? (Score:3, Funny)

    by ACNiel ( 604673 ) on Tuesday December 31, 2002 @03:18PM (#4989896)
    A /. Editor that doesn't toe the line regarding FSF and GNU being all powerful and all knowing, and the only orginization to even think about.

    How could you slight them. The membership should be a forgone conclusion, you should be trying to pay twice the dues, and signing up your friends.

    You should pass on the membership cards since they should be spending all that valuable time championing the GPL. We need the freedom to live under the rule of what RMS thinks is reasonable. Since he is the only reasonable person, it is pure unadulterated freedom to live like he wants me too.
  • They are about impossible to find unless you want to buy them in bulk...

    The small round ones you CAN get ( still in *way* overpriced packs of 50 ) dont fit in the wallet very well.

  • What blowhard decided dark blue links on a black background was a good idea? I'm not design guru, but I at least have a little common sense...
  • I must admit to using a full-sized CD for most of my rescue work. I'm very fond of Knoppix, and boot it in "blind" mode (text-only) with no swap. It has a lot more on it than the LNX-BBC, auto-detects everything and will mount all sorts of local and remote filesystems. Plus it has VNC, SSH, parted and so forth.

    I did put a LNX-BBC in my wallet and it snapped in half. Given that business card CDs seem to be an expensive novelty in NZ and generally only hold 35MB I have yet to repeat the exercise.

    Vik :v)
  • And I do not mean the T.V. channel. I have a BBC, and yes on a 52 meg business card. And I keep it with me where ever I go. Sure it's too geeky to admit to some one but it has helped me out numerous times, when some one fudges up their system at work, or even a laptop that craps out. Not many people have a restore disk or a Live CD available then. Plus with it you can get a basic Xserver with xterm, and Black Box as the WM. Can mount many file-systems, setup networking....This could also be a great hacking distro-but I'm sure some else already has done it.
  • I bought 7.3 redhat box for installations i did while back and the box included a rescue cd that was the size of "business card". Well, allmost. The cd was actually few millimeters too wide to fit into wallet's "card compartment" and nice idea was totally useless.

    Hopefully FSF gets their business card to the right size..
  • It should CLEARLY be the GNU/LNX-BBC!

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