Best Live Linux For Christmas Giving?

trustedserf writes "This year I am including a bootable Live Linux CD in many of my Christmas cards. As I'll be making the copies myself I may even change the default desktop background to something personal, or Christmasy before running it off on cheap CD-Rs. The objective is to show people the easiest possible route to using a linux desktop so that they will be: A) Aware and B) Pleasantly surprised. About Christmas they may also have more time to try it out too. Naturally, I'm thinking of Gnoppix, but there are other options.. I use KDE, so I have to decide between it and Gnome. Bearing in mind my objectives, what distro would you choose. Also, importantly, is it possible any of them will damage their hardware (monitors with incorrect refresh etc.) I would be *very* unhappy if that happened. How many of them would fail to boot, leaving a bad impression? Which way would you go about it for maximum "WOW"."

Mandrake

[truz24]

Mandrake has a live cd, and seems to be the best solution for a beginner. I have converted several people to Mandrake and they all seem to be happy with their solution

simplyMEPIS

[asmdsr]

http://www.mepis.org

Mepis

[Kyouryuu]

Mepis Linux is another good choice. It's also very easy to install to the hard drive if they are impressed with the LiveCD version. It's also just one CD. http://www.mepis.org

what's linux?

[Coneasfast]

I am including a bootable Live Linux CD in many of my Christmas cards

interesting choice, as i'm guessing at least half the people you send to don't even know what linux is. i'd like to know how this turns out :)

also, my suggestion is you is to include some sort of leaflet into getting them started, do they even know how to boot a bootable CD? just thought i should point this out.

Re:Stuff it with games

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be Knoppix MAME [sourceforge.net] then.

Re:Stuff it with games

[daves]

That means http://sourceforge.net/projects/knoppixmame [sourceforge.net]

It is a DVD, but the new Suse 9.2 Live Eval...

[bagboy]

has a lot of punch... Firefox, Multimedia and easy set up....

Mepis

[gvc]

I tried a bunch of live CDs on my Toshiba 5200 and none worked properly until I found Mepis [mepis.org] and downloaded it. It worked perfectly - even the wireless. And installing to the hard drive was easy, too.

Mepis is Debian based; much lower barrier to admission than other Debian distros.

Re:Wow

[Xshare]

He never said it was his gift, just that he was including it in his cards.

SuSE live cd distro

[TwistedTR]

SuSE Live CD. I've found it has better general hardware support (don't want it to coredump on someone) and the default program pack does a pretty good job.

Re:Linux or coal?

[ScrewMaster]

Well, what I'm thinking is that since a lot of people have numerous guests around during the holidays, if you have nice furniture these discs could make cool extra coasters to keep your relatives from sloshing their Scotch all over your new coffee table.

Re:*noppix or ubuntu

[rolfpal]

Ubuntu is the coolest for sure, although it has more hardware problems around ACPI than any other linux I've tried.

Getting People To Switch

[nukem996]

I would go with knoppix, KDE is much more windowizy and many windows users cannt even tell the difference. It is very user friendly and has alot of extra apps that are really usefull. If they finally decide to make the switch I would strong suggest Fedoria. Its very easy to install and update/maintain. The only thing I would suggest is for them to just burn all there files on a CD before installing. Anyway goodluck on your mission!

I love your idea!

[psych-major]

I have messed around with several live Linux CD's and have settled on SLAX Popcorn, which is based on Slackware. http://slax.linux-live.org/download.php It comes standard with Firefox, Thunderbird and MPlayer already installed, and being Slack-based, it is extremely smooth and stable. I can't see that it would harm any PC hardware as it probes quite thoroughly while booting. I have booted several PC's and laptops with it and all major items funtioned correctly without any tweaking needed. It can boot totally into RAM and therefore runs quite fast and saving the configs to a USB drive, hard drive or floppy is a breeze. AND best of all, it's 137megs so it will fit on a miniature CD, for better envelope stuffing!! Hope this helps, and good luck with your project!

SLAX

[Penguinoflight]

I'd choose SLAX, because of it's base in Slackware linux. I worked with building custom installers for slackware in the past, and it was basically painless. Back with slack 7.1 I was able to rewrite some scripts and install over ppp for my non-cd notebook.

Patrick Volkerdi has effective script writing style, and top of the line documentation. If any of his style was carried on to SLAX, they would be your best option for custimizability.

The link for slax: http://slax.linux-live.org/

Re:Mandrake

[Mycroft_VIII]

I wish I could second this (I rather liked Mandrake during the late 8.x and 0.x series), but Mandrake's live cd has failed to work on both systems I've tried it on.
I went throught this before with, IIRC, mandrake 6.x series and 7.x.
This time I suspect it doesn't like my video card* (can't find screen when trying to start X), but with the earlier distro's I would always get a divide by 0 error, and that on four or five machines in a row.
It seems odd they have so much trouble with building a bootloader/installer that can't recover from such errors, in the first case div by zero is simply a very bad sign, and in the second shouldn't it switch to generic vga or even text mode?
My current video card is a Radeon AIW-9600 and was used on both systems as the second try occured after a significant upgrade (new mb,ram,case optical drives and floppy+media reader only hd's,video,audio and powersuply were kept), given the issues surrounding drivers on any recent video card (especialy radeons) it doesn't suprise me X had issues, it does suprise me mandrake didn't think of it.
Well I still have the old mb (nforce2) and case and can probably borrow my brother old nvidia card so I'll likely try again when I turn that into a backup system.
Though if anyone knows how to get it working on my curent system (A8V delux asus mb, 1G ram, Atholon64 3500+, SB Live platinum, and Radeon AIW-9600) I'd listen. but this is someone elses ask slashdot, and to be honest I didn't really dig or try much beyond booting the livecd and watching it crash.

Mycroft

Re:There is a good point to be made from this

[Max Romantschuk]

Check out Ubuntu [ubuntulinux.org]. From what I've heard (friend of mine tried it) install should be rather painless.

Here's the Ubuntu About page [ubuntulinux.org] for more info.

Re:Mepis

[madstork2000]

Mepid is an EXCELLENT CHOICE. What sets it apart is it includes a ton of hard to configure browser plugins. It is a pleasure to boot up and surf the web and see flash, java, etc and more out of the "box".

It lets Linux users take for granted a lot of the things on the web that Windows users do. Which is important for something like this.

MS2k

Re:There is a good point to be made from this

[Anonymous Coward]

You are seriously behind the times with regard to the state of nearly all Linux distributions. Fedora 2, for starters, is at least as easy to install as windows, and likely much easier if you have hardware that windows doesn't bundle drivers for (oddball soundcard or video card...) yet someone has been kind enough to make an open-source variety.

You Really ought to step out of the dark and at least try installing a linux distrubution. Start with Fedora, it works very well right after you install it. Seriously.

Re:Mepis

[artson]

Mepis has my vote too. A Debian based distro and perfectly set up to install on the hard drive. I have only one quibble - I'd have preferred Firefox and Thunderbird rather than Mozilla and Mozilla Mail. Other than that, it's great.

Recognized my sound card and modem
Setup nicely with KPPP as a dialer
Apt and Synaptic worked flawlessly
Very nice installation with none of those useless flash-past-your-eyes messages about errors or problems (Ubuntu take note)
As an aside, any distro that does this should present the user with a list of installation problems and e-mails to be sent to developers and put it on the desktop where they will see it immediately on initial login.
It's a snappy performer on my old box - AMD K6-2 at 300 mhz, with 256 megs of ram and an elderly Tekram motherboard.

Re:There is a good point to be made from this

[Tough Love]

The people that say that this smacks of conversion and fanaticalism are correct.

See, given your comments below, that's why you need the CD.

What about a seriously generic Linux distro where a newbie like myself could put it in his CD drive, it would boot into some sort of DOS like equivelant where it would ask some simple questions about partioning and formatting the drive, then 20 minutes later it would finish the install and boot me up to a GUI desktop with video drivers installed (well generic ones at least), sound drivers installed and firefox installed.

I've got news for you, the CD's we are talking about here go way beyond that. It's basically just put it in your CD drive and 1 minute later it's up and running a full GUI with your browser connected to the internet and solitaire ready to play. Not to mention having a _full_ office suit ready to use.

Still think it's not something you want to find in your XMas stocking?

Re:Mandrake

[npistentis]

Suse also ships with a live CD, which ran great on my machine- I'd recommend it, as the only thing it didnt pick up automagically was my wifi card

Re:Stuff it with games

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't say that's been my experience. I've found the average person takes to linux amazingly well. Much better in fact than gamers or 'power users'. Many of them will be grateful for quite some time when they see the many varieties of solitaire and similar games and are told they don't have to put up with virus scans or defragging anymore. And if they like discovering new things, they might even surprise you with how quickly they start geeking out on it.

Slax works wonders for my needs

[zoobee]

I currently use a hacked/customized version of Slax see Slax [slax.org]. I carry it on a 1GB USB Drive that includes customized versions of Firefox, Thuderbird and Samba plus many more modules. So far this setup has been truly convenient for me. On occasions when I find myself without a laptop but near a PC that is able to boot USB drives (I have yet to come across a PC that did not), all I do is stick the drive in the USB port, boot up in trimmed down KDE environment, use FireFox to check Yahoo/Gmail/Hotmail accounts, and Thunderbird to poll my personal domain accounts. Once done, reboot, voila, no cookies etc. left behind. No need for someone to log-on to their pre-installed OS accounts, nor to suffer the embarrassment of accidental viewing of history list of pr0n sites that the person had surfed last .... :D

Re:Stuff it with games

[barc0001]

Did you even READ the sumitter's question? "This year I am including a bootable Live Linux CD in many of my Christmas cards.",
He's giving it out in his Xmas cards which generally are just a card and a signature, perhaps a "Seasons' Greetings" or something scrawled in there as well. This is added value over and above a simple card. At no point was the submitter suggesting that this was in lieu of "real" presents. This instead seems to be an added bonus for his acquaintances that would otherwise just be getting the $0.25 card mailed to them. Sounds fine to me.

Re:Stuff it with games

[Yaztromo]

It also fits on a mini CD-R, so it can be kept in a pocket. Might want to consider sending a card with one of those inside it.

One thing to note here is that if you use mini CD-Rs and are sending to non-technical people, do them a favour and add a note that they shouldn't use the disc in a slot-loading drive. Most slot-loading drives (mostly found on laptops) can't handle these discs, where they jam and can damage the drive.

There's nothing worse than getting a gift that forces you to send your laptop in for repair.

Yaz.

FAQ, etc.

[Propaganda13]

I've had great luck with Knoppix.

You might want to include a FAQ with questions like "Why is this running slower than Windows?" pertaining to the fact that it's running from a cd and not the hard drive.

Just remember they can run into problems.
Computer is not set up to boot from CD.
Drive won't read CD-R's.
Many other problems can arise. Some of these problems should have no reflection on installed Linux, but people will associate them forever with Linux.

Also use regular CD-R's, mini ones and business card size can cause all sorts of odd problems. Some people have slot drives, or put their computers on the side, etc.

My Expert and Unassailable Take on This

[teamhasnoi]

I think it's a good idea - there are a few people I know who are so fed up with constant spyware, virus and trojan removal, they don't even use their computer anymore.

One person I know hasn't been able to get online for months, and has spent hundreds on getting their computer fixed. I gave them a linux CD (install) after making sure they didn't mind that everything would be wiped, and they knew enough to configure their dial up. I haven't heard back yet, so maybe they're dead, or catching up on porn.

My suggestion for a window manager is definitely Gnome. I'm no dummy, but KDE seems to have a bigger learning curve. My coworkers are happily using Gnome, and don't really notice a difference from Windows 98. As they were already moved to Firefox and Thunderbird, I didn't have much trouble.

As far as the busted hardware, I am one of the few people (that will admit it on here) who blew up a monitor with a wanky custom Knoppix, NOT the one from Knoppix, and probably due mostly to a tard sandwich I enjoyed earlier that day. It can happen, but most likely not - if you shut off any way to get into the 'mess with your video' at start up, everyone should be fine. At worst, they're out a cool Linux CD, at best they'll call you up and ask how to get it working. (Then you're in trouble - at least it's not Windows - 'Uh, ok, go into the registry...' Ugh.)

I think its a fine idea, and encourage you to do it. There may be one person out there who really appreciates the ability to use their computer again, if only to surf the web and use email without fear.

So ends my Expert and Unassailable Take on This. (Which was really just to get you to read this comment - I know how /.ers can't resist a challenge :)

Re:I need a dist CC live CD

[surprise_audit]

Have you tried distccKNOPPIX [opendoorsoftware.com]?? I haven't needed one yet, but that's the one I'd try first.

OpenCD

[miyako]

While it may seem like a nice thing to give out live cd's for linux, you might go fruther giving out a copy of the The OpenCD [sunsite.dk] instead. It's a compliation of open source software for windows. You can also compile your own, I like to give out CDs with Firefox, Open Office, GIMP, Gaim, and a few free games. A bootable linux distro is just likely to confuse people, but software that they can use on their computers all the time without having to boot into a new OS is useful. As a side bonus, most people don't know about OSS or realize that the software is free, so it seems even more valueable ;)

Will you post a summary of your experiments?

[SteelLynx]

I really like this idea. And if I get a little bit of spare time in the next few weeks I might just do the same for (some of) the christmas cards I'll be sending this year.

Do you have any plans for typing up a small page somewhere with the results of the efforts you put into this?

Re:Mepis

[tcassell]

Been using Mepis since the October release and all the betas in between. I have yet to come across a problem with it. Overall, excellent!