rdeschene
11-09-2001, 08:17 PM
This is probably common knowledge to many, but it wasn't to me until I tried this.
Do you know someone, or do you personally, want to just try out Linux before installing it on your hard drive (and getting into re-partitioning and some of the risk involved in that, if you're not familiar with it). The answer to this are "live file system" CD's that have been put out.
With this arrangement, Linux and a FEW (there are quite literally thousands) of applications are run off the CD-ROM. I believe the "demolinux project" (www.demoinux.org) doesn't load anything on the HD at all - it's all done via RAMdrives, smoke and mirrors. ;-)
After several partial downloads of the demolinux "live filesystem CD" I tried to download SuSE's version 7.2 evaluation iso from their mirror site at UBC (University of British Columbia). I then renamed the file from *.iso to *.img (I'm not sure that's necessary) and burned this to CD-ROM using the following command in a shell/console once logged in as root:
cdrecord -v speed=2 dev=5,0 filename.img
type info cdrecord in a shell/console to get details on what these various options (e.g. -v) do.
I was able to boot up an IBM Laptop (Type 2645 if I recall correctly) using this CD-ROM. The SuSE 7.2 evaluation CD-ROM iso image DOES create 3 files on your hard drive, but it's quite automatic and doesn't involve re-partioning as far as I can see. It creates one file to store your user preferences, one as a swap file, and one to basically act as a home directory. This required about 150MB or H.D. space in my case.
Altogether, a pretty impressive evaluation CD-ROM, and I'm spreading it around where I work as there are people who've been curious about Linux for awhile but haven't tried it yet.
Do you know someone, or do you personally, want to just try out Linux before installing it on your hard drive (and getting into re-partitioning and some of the risk involved in that, if you're not familiar with it). The answer to this are "live file system" CD's that have been put out.
With this arrangement, Linux and a FEW (there are quite literally thousands) of applications are run off the CD-ROM. I believe the "demolinux project" (www.demoinux.org) doesn't load anything on the HD at all - it's all done via RAMdrives, smoke and mirrors. ;-)
After several partial downloads of the demolinux "live filesystem CD" I tried to download SuSE's version 7.2 evaluation iso from their mirror site at UBC (University of British Columbia). I then renamed the file from *.iso to *.img (I'm not sure that's necessary) and burned this to CD-ROM using the following command in a shell/console once logged in as root:
cdrecord -v speed=2 dev=5,0 filename.img
type info cdrecord in a shell/console to get details on what these various options (e.g. -v) do.
I was able to boot up an IBM Laptop (Type 2645 if I recall correctly) using this CD-ROM. The SuSE 7.2 evaluation CD-ROM iso image DOES create 3 files on your hard drive, but it's quite automatic and doesn't involve re-partioning as far as I can see. It creates one file to store your user preferences, one as a swap file, and one to basically act as a home directory. This required about 150MB or H.D. space in my case.
Altogether, a pretty impressive evaluation CD-ROM, and I'm spreading it around where I work as there are people who've been curious about Linux for awhile but haven't tried it yet.