looking for a live cd

Hi all,

I told my college I would make them a live cd for some programing cources. I would like to remaster some existing live-cd as a start point.

Here is what I see as a final product:
* PIII usable
* work with 128 MB of ram
* boot time less then a minute (eben if no fuky hw will not be automaggically found), at leats dhcp+mouse+drives+video needs to be found.
* save home dir in usb disk
* graphical boot splash (no text at all if possible, see pclinuxos for example)
* 2.6 based is better, since most of my box is not supported on 24 (usb + sound :)
* 650MB iso
* installer
* single theme with gtk/qt/mozilla/xmms/mplayer/whatever apps
* nvidia+ati drivers
* flash, acroread (propiraty, "free"/non_gpl software is cool by me)
* c++ ide (kdevelop) + kde includes
* if i have place, java + ide

Binaries distros are preferable, I hate compiling myself. Specially for this project :)

It looks like slax is what I am looking for (after I add some stuff to it it's too damm naked) but pclinux os looks very good (damm slow boot time and memory needs tough). OTOH it's a knopix forum no? :)

I will not comprimize aobut memory needs. Many people have 128 MB still, and it's acceptable. other things may come and go.

I would like to hear what you think.

"I would like to hear what you think."

I think you have got a lot of work to do ;)

I do have I know.
This is why I am asking for help :)

OK, seriously then :)

* PIII usable
* work with 128 MB of ram
- these specs should pose no problem; I think the original knoppix will run fine with that, choose a light window manager and it should run fine....

* boot time less then a minute (eben if no fuky hw will not be automaggically found), at leats dhcp+mouse+drives+video needs to be found.
- Even if you cut down on hw detection et al, I don't think this is a goal you are going to achieve, CD loading is slow... maybe a (partial) network install; ie. pull all the big programs from a central server? or boot from a different medium (HD?)... even then I think 1 minute is unlikely on the specs you stated, even my P4 with SCSI takes several minutes to boot

* save home dir in usb disk
- I haven't tried it but I think knoppix supports this by default

* graphical boot splash (no text at all if possible, see pclinuxos for example)
- should be no problem, the image patching howto's are all over the forum, and in the remastering-howto's

* 2.6 based is better, since most of my box is not supported on 24 (usb + sound
- so sound + usb of the default knoppix does not work properly on your hardware? that I haven't seen a lot, but there are plenty of 2.6 guides on this forum

* 650MB iso
easy, once you start remastering your knoppix simply remove all non-essential apps and you should have loads of space

* installer
- ??? install what to what?

* single theme with gtk/qt/mozilla/xmms/mplayer/whatever apps
- sure, I want that as well. It's easy; set up the knoppix user just the way you like it and then copy those config files to the /etc/skel

* nvidia+ati drivers
- Sorry, weren't you building for a programming box? While this is possible (but you probably will need to do some compiling, sorry!) I do not see the need for 3D on a workstation, as the 2D drivers work fine

* flash, acroread (propiraty, "free"/non_gpl software is cool by me)
- available from the debian repositories

* c++ ide (kdevelop) + kde includes
- I think most of this is installed by default, kdevelop certainly is

* if i have place, java + ide
- big, bulgy, but if you do some radical package cutting and remove all cruft it could fit...

I think you need to refine your goals a bit, and just start playing.
Personally I would recommend following one of the remastering HOWTO's to build a chrooted knoppix master building environment, clone that drive (so you have a backup baseline config to fall back on when (not if) you screw up your master, this will save you time) and once chrooted; apt-get update to get the latest packages and then install synaptic to have a look around... there is so much software in the apt sources I think you will meet 90% of your goals without compiling a thing.

Thanks for the tips.

I will start working on that next week or so.
My real question is about speed. Since I heard that morphix is faster ad slax even faster, I was wondering what they did different. specially since morphix is also debian based.

I was hoping to use pclinuxos but it must have 256 MB of ram, and it's damm slow.

The drivers, it's just because it looks nice and "more profecional". While I know that this is not the truth all the time, the CD is for windows users. They need the "boom effect", this is what they expect. I need to have their attention. I need not only IDE's but also all the things they are looking for.

How much space will I need? will 5GBbe enough for the remaster?

It should be enough..

why is morphix faster.. probably because you can optimize things more since you are building almost from scratch and you only add stuff that you want/need

I am working on a similar project, with somewhat less ambitious goals.

I have only tried to remaster Knoppix once so far, and ended up removing more programs that I should have. It can be difficult to know what can safely be removed.

I also tried starting from DamnSmall Linux and adding things, but found that to be more trouble than it is worth. DSL is just missing too much.

Now that school is out, I plan to give it another shot.