Wow! Just WOW!
Sunday, August 8, 2010 at 2:40 pm
Windows 98 Annoyances Discussion Forum
Posted by gewg_
(4444 messages posted)
Something you will never be able to do with closed-source[1] software:
This guy did a re-spin of his operating system,
adding in the apps he wanted to be included by default.
The whole thing is
on an optical disk which is BOOTABLE TO A 100% USABLE GRAPHICAL ENVIRONMENT.
Caveats:
1) Obviously, your box needs to have a DVD drive,
and you need to be able to boot to that device.[2]
2) That distro uses the GNOME Desktop Environment, which is a demanding beast,
so a box with less than 256MB of RAM is a non-starter
and less than 512MB will be pretty slow.
I note that, after compression, his 4.7GB capacity is less than half used,
so he actually pulled up short compared to what he *could* have done.
Other projects that are kinda similar, but are highly specialized:
cache
of http://themes.freshmeat.net/projects/gnumed-live
cache
of http://news.softpedia.com/news/Introducing-Ubuntu-Electronics-Remix-9-10-132890.shtml
[1] BTPFMJ's DVD (as well as the other FOSS disks mentioned)
can be carried from box to box and will still fully work (note caveats)
--unlike the bootable Windoze "equivalents"
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/15/0251249&mode=nested&threshold=5#8284795
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/15/0251249&mode=nested&threshold=5#8284661
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/15/0251249&mode=nested&threshold=5#8287357
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/15/0251249&mode=nested&threshold=5#8284565
which only give a crippled Safe Mode environment.
(The way Windoze manages device drivers and uses the Windoze Registry
are anti-piracy methods that only benefit M$--they are NOT user conveniences.)
I note that that page is from 2004, but nothing in BootableWindozeLand has improved,
while Free Software has improved by leaps and bounds
(e.g. NTFS write support, which was still quirky then, was solved ~2007.)
[2] ...and, even if your BIOS is an old piece of junk, you can get around that
(again, using Open Source Software):
http://google.com/search?q=SmartBootManager+PLoP.
(Either of those will work with an all-Windoze box as well;
that all happens below the level of the OS.)
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