A Most Interesting Innovation!

[qldit]

Good Evening All, I have just been playing with the newly released Puppy Linux (Beta) 2.16 and apart from a lot of snappy features there is one that is most interesting.

That is the "Dougal Enhanced Remastering Program" in Start > Setup.

As everyone is aware Puppy Linux is pretty snappy because it runs entirely in RAM, but if the live CD is used as the boot source it needs repeately setting the keyboard type and screensize as it boots, and again more operation to set the online stuff once it boots.

One way round that is to place a file with stored config settings on the hard drive which is accessed during boot with the live CD, however, if the Live CD is used to boot the system and then all your preferences and bookmarks are loaded including all the settings you use in your specific machine there is a snappy little program called the Dougal Enhanced Remaster which collects all this info and allows it to be saved (to a flashdrive or whatever) then allows a new CD to be burned with all this contained info.

So this CD then becomes specific to your particular machine and when used as a live boot source magically returns all your settings and preferences without using any other source and giving no boot prompts needing any input.

So this means you can operate a machine online or whatever without any need for a hard drive and no need for other media, unless specific saving were required.
If you wish to save other files or whatever you can use a flashdrive or burn another CD later on, because the complete system with all it's programs is retained in RAM, so the burner and all hardware is free to operate as if it were a system operating on a hard drive and once the machine is booted the CD can be removed, it has carried out it's function to simply be a bootable source.

This may sound a little bland until you realise this system is virtually completely impervious to malware or other bad stuff, and when the operating session is completed and the machine switched off, all trace of any operation is completely gone.

Your CD is ready for the next time you wish to use it.

This has enormous future implications.

A tailored CD with all your preferences and stuff, no worries!!

Cheers, qldit.

[Seth]

Now that's cool.

I imagine you could also store the os on a USB flash drive, or for even faster access an internal solid state drive.

[qldit]

Good Evening Seth, you can store it on a flash card, drive or whatever, it has always been able to be loaded to a hard drive if wanted.

It has wizards for loading to whatever medium, the only shortfall is the computers boot abilities from different media, but a lot of late model boards will boot from any of these.

The only requirement for the machine is that it needs minimum 128 megs of RAM.

The system is only 90 odd megs.

That includes a complete set of programs to do virtually anything.

On previous systems the CD could be used to write back and save to, this is still the case if you have a burner, but the idea of a closed CD prohibits any possible access by nasties.
As soon as the machine is booted the CD can be removed which increases versitility.

The idea has incredible potential from my point of view.

Cheers, qldit.