On 1/25/07, Oren Beck <> wrote:

On 1/25/07, Jonathan Hutchins <> wrote:

...

I've seem someone - I'm pretty sure it's the same person - complain about another distro besides DSL because he had to look for Ethereal instead of it being installed by default. He makes it appear that he finds Ethereal to be an essential tool in his daily use of Linux.

I seriously doubt that this is the case, or he wouldn't be talking about using it from a Live CD. In real life, Ethereal tends to accumulate large data files that could easily overwhelm a system running entirely from RAM and CD.

Introducing it to a discussion of compact OSs for low-end hardware is completely spurious, and suggests that there isn't a real debate going on here, just someone taking aim at whatever he can knock, for whatever reason.

Skipping the Ethereal issue I will try closing my concept path this way. Craft the minimum overhead CD to provide a GUI net connect and browser, Then use anything left in system resources to either improve that usability or cautiously add functions? Examples to me would be this:

Requiring ethereal/wire shark is nuts, so yes, let's set that aside. As I said, DSL, KioskCD, Puppy or Thinstation meet this. There are others. Many others. Basically most LiveCDs out there unless they are targetted at rescue/repair or security in which case they mostly go directly to a cmd line. Zero level build- hardware detection, network configuration scripts, a

most skeletal GUI browser with configure as "pages". Everything else is done on either a local LAN server or "the net" For many daily uses this is IT.

I assume you want to configure the LiveCD with a browser? Or are you talking about controlling where the users/websurfer goes? Speak English in complete, non-complex sentences. Any LiveCD is going to require a bit of finesse to customize. It is not something that anybody can just sit down and do. Some stuff I learned in 5 minutes, other stuff I still can't do yet. Some is just too much a pain in the ass or I don't have enough room for an uncompressed build or I don't have enough time strung together in one place. To really fully customize anything above the DSL, ThinStation or KioskCD, you must work with an uncompressed filesystem and understand how to chroot into that environment. You may have to reenable apt and dpkg and manually restore some files, kernel headers, do some compiling, restore /etc/skel all kinds of things. How much time and dedication do you have? If you were in control of the gateway/router or proxy you could have infinite control of where someone goes, if that is what you are talking about. They go into this on the KioskCD site, and a bit on ThinStation. But you can proxy, cache, firewall, route, whatever how you want if there are multiple clients and it is worth it to you. A bit more functionality- this gets a bit harder to decide, Spell

check locally or a full word processor seems trivial in footprint but comment is appreciated here. After that choice are we beyond a thin client zone?

DSL, Puppy, KiosCD you must use online doc creation (I have this with Google and there are others I can recommend.) ThinStation if you go thru the first link on ThinStation-o-Matic (TSoM) you can add text editors and spell checkers. If it is not in the TSoM app list you must build it yourself and add it. Basically, most LiveCDs targetted at a desktop user, but you keep mentioning minimal system hardware, so my recommendations stand. Ok, last steps to examine- do we go for audio alone or is VOIP even

thinkable? As in if we have USB what does it take to run the Vonage dongle? An encrypted VOIP to keep script kiddie level hackers from overhearing where you hid that spare door key? Do consider that last one as a "full system resources hog" mode on lower end hardware.

DSL, Puppy, Thinstation all have audio support, KioskCD is supposed to. Thinstation you must add in for which cards you want to auto detect, same with NICs. I didn't test audio on KioskCD, it would only be for online videos and system noises though. I'll try to test and report back. One customization I plan for KiosKCD is update Flash to ver. 9 and add the mplayer browser plugin, but if you add the codecs, then you can't redistribute. DSL has a VOIP client and I bet Puppy has one too by now. I may have seen on on the TSoM, but I wasn't looking for it, nor do I use it. Good luck with that USB VOIP thingie. You will probably have to custom compile a driver for whichever distro you put it on. All of my scenarios are to pick brains for getting such projects

either assembled by others or getting directed myself to do these things.

I recommend you somehow get MagicISO on Windows. It is by far, the best ISO editor I've used. I can drag and drop and delete/add files to and from a CD ISO file. I can also replace or add scripts, batch files, .dsl, .unc, .uci files, etc. I can also change the boot .img file or extract the one that is used in the ISO. There is NO program for Linux that can do even half of this. Kiso attempts it, but it deleted several .iso files on me and never saved the newly created files when I used it. It is a good start, but not there yet. You can do some of the customizing with this tool, infact most of what you want to do, you can do in Windows XP or 2000, but if you want to compile anything, you need a working Linux environment and some space. Some of the DSL compiling can be done with a Knoppix LiveCD, but you must find out which specific version has the kernel you need. It used to be Knoppix 3.4 or 3.6, since those still had teh 2.4 kernel in use on DSL. Check the forum and wiki for details, the forums are a big help. There are detailed rebuild and customizing instructions on all the distro sites I've mentioned, some more than others. Not nearly enough on the KioskCD site. Anyway, good luck. Bring your customs into the LUG meeting for people to try. Brian

On Thursday 25 January 2007 22:56, Oren Beck wrote:

Ok, last steps to examine- do we go for audio alone or is VOIP even thinkable?

VoIP shouldn't need much CPU power or RAM-- especially if using uncompressed formats like alaw or ulaw.

As in if we have USB what does it take to run the Vonage dongle?

USB Vonage dongle? Is this something new? Last I checked, they only allowed their own ATA, which doesn't go through a PC at all.

An encrypted VOIP to keep script kiddie level hackers from overhearing where you hid that spare door key? Do consider that last one as a "full system resources hog" mode on lower end hardware.

I haven't heard of any regular-use VoIP encryption, nor of any providers that support it. Even if they could, it can still be tapped when it hits the POTS.