An OS in my pocket
I was entertaining this idea for a while: to carry an OS of choice in my pocket, on a bootable Flash drive. Yesterday I decided to treat me to this geeky pleasure of unwrapping new hardware (8GB PNY Attache USB 2.0), downloading an ISO (Ubuntu 6.4 Live CD), and burning it onto a CD. The guide at http://www.pendrivelinux.com/, found it easy to follow and it "just worked" in the end. Open Office comes installed, so it was trivial to create a new document and save it on the same USB flash disk. Worked without a hitch for my Sub Java Workstation W1100Z. For kicks, I continued to update/upgrade the OS, and installed a few applications (Xine, MPlayer).
A few of things did not work at once, though. First being Java. Went to java.com, downloaded the binary executable. Would not install for lack of some libraries... sigh. Did not spend too much time with that, as I know from past experience that resolving missing dependencies is not what I call "fun".
Second thing that did not work was installing NVidia drivers. I decided to download binary from NVidia's site, as I would always do for Solaris, and it would complain about graphical mode first, ok, I do "init 1", then it would warn about being in init mode 1, but allows to proceed, and then a brickwall: as it was about to compile the kernel module, it needed LIBC headers... forget it! And yet, while browsing the list of available updates, I find it right there, NVidia glx driver. Nice.
Lastly, I tried using this drive for Vista's ReadyBoost, and that did not work either (Vista says this thing is too slow)... Hmm... this drive goes back on shelf at Fry's then, and next time I'm on a market for bootable OS-in-pocket media, I'm paying attention to speed. Lexar's lightspeed, Kingston's DataTraveler, and Corsair's Voyager GT are in the running, but I'm planning to do more research next time.
A few of things did not work at once, though. First being Java. Went to java.com, downloaded the binary executable. Would not install for lack of some libraries... sigh. Did not spend too much time with that, as I know from past experience that resolving missing dependencies is not what I call "fun".
Second thing that did not work was installing NVidia drivers. I decided to download binary from NVidia's site, as I would always do for Solaris, and it would complain about graphical mode first, ok, I do "init 1", then it would warn about being in init mode 1, but allows to proceed, and then a brickwall: as it was about to compile the kernel module, it needed LIBC headers... forget it! And yet, while browsing the list of available updates, I find it right there, NVidia glx driver. Nice.
Lastly, I tried using this drive for Vista's ReadyBoost, and that did not work either (Vista says this thing is too slow)... Hmm... this drive goes back on shelf at Fry's then, and next time I'm on a market for bootable OS-in-pocket media, I'm paying attention to speed. Lexar's lightspeed, Kingston's DataTraveler, and Corsair's Voyager GT are in the running, but I'm planning to do more research next time.
posted by denka at 8:50 PM
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