eye R wickd neow!

By basd on Mar 30, 2010 | In kde4, opensuse

Idle minds are ... well, don't stay idle.

...

Some time ago I experimented with various flavors of USB flash drive linux. These were not particularly successful due to my having to build the packages I wanted & the fact that I did not have a computer that would boot from USB. Did build a couple of bootable CDs, but ran fairly slowly and I was not enamored of having to redo all of my customization every time I started the computer.

That was then. Somewhere I had a 4 gig. flash drive that I bought when it was a "good price." However, I misplaced it somewhere before I could think of anything useful to use it for, and I am loathe to re-buy stuff I've already got one of somewhere.

More recently, I decided that wishful thinking notwithstanding, I do not already got one somewhere, or at least anywhere that will be useful in the next decade or so. And, I scored a three-pack of 4 gig flash drives for less than the original one. So, I thereupon had two flash drives with no particular use on this planet (I had an actual reason for buying the first of the trio).

Well, I came across a post on Planet KDE or somewhere about KIWI, which is a project for loading iso images of kde linux useful places, such as the Eucalyptus open source cloud project. Linux world, we are on fire now!

But anyway, that led me to decide it was time to try a USB flash drive linux again. No matter how you cut it, much more portable than anything else we drag around, and if someone will let us reboot their computer, we are IN! Also, I became enamored with the value of a computer that erases itself when unplugged. You do not, for instance, need to worry about catching viruses if the virus will in the worst-case scenario, evaporate as soon as you power down. (Which creates a conundrum -- the install goes on to explain how to make the flash drive live install non-volatile. But wait! I have TWO unused flash drives ...

And besides, considering that the volatile install only uses 1 g, perhaps I should recycle one of my 1 g flash drives to the purpose.

I wonder if one can use the other sort of flash memory, such as we put in our cell phones? Will the computer boot from these? They are even smaller and more compact. Sort of like dragging around a computer on a microdot. Is technology amazing or what?

Well, I haven't tried that, yet.

But I did check out the OpenSuse 11.2 USB on a stick and it worked brilliantly! Instructions there. When I compare this 1/2 hour process to the three day downloads I did to install my first few linux setups, it's, it's ... well tearful, that's what!

Also, given this is the stable, non "factory" version, I am not having any of the KDE problems I have complained about here in the past. Then again, it's running 4.3.1 and not the destabilized 4.4.1 version that revs the cpu to infinity when the computer is sleeping. (I checked, everything is sleeping nicely.)

I will have to look into customizing the install. I like the idea of having the whole system "volatile", but I would rather have a more customized version of things like Firefox. And perhaps the desktop.

In the meantime, way cool. & the wikd part is that it automounts the existing windows ntfs hard drive in the computer read/write. Hehehehe.