Re: [tlug] the power of the live CD

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Edmund Edgar writes:

 > Distributing a CD including Java, Flash, the various codecs and all that
 > stuff would be a bit naughty - theoretically you'd have to license them all
 > from their various copyright holders - which is why it's hard to find a
 > pre-existing CD with all this stuff included.

I think the problem is more the amount of space they take up and
inconvenience they impose.  (Space can be handled with a DVD, of
course.)  True, some plug-ins distributed binary-only require you to
go to the original distributor, but many others have public licenses
that allow verbatim redistribution.  However, public licenses with
restrictive terms often require that *each* user explicitly agree to
each such license before you give them the bits.  That means that you
have to run through a display, prompt, agree cycle for each one before
allowing the download.  Yuck.

 > I suspect this is one of the reasons why live-cd's, despite being
 > very cool and having a lot of potential, haven't really taken off
 > except among Linux otaku's like ourselves.

In my experience performance of GUIs is disastrous, though.  A live CD
is great as a install/repair medium, but not as a working demo.

 > Starting with something small also takes less disk space and makes the
 > development cycle a lot quicker, so I'd recommend it, at least until you get
 > used to the remastering process.

I wonder if for testing purposes it would be possible to make an ISO
image file and boot from that.  (Suggested by Curt's comment that in
NetBSD the dmesg buffer carries over across warm boots.)  Especially
if you could do it in a VM.