Pen Drives and Linux!

ID:186167
 
Aug 12 2005, 3:06 pm
I bought a pen drive today for $30 with 256 MB so I can bring my 3D game programming stuff and Dream Maker to school (to show off my l33t skillz, :P).

I've recently checked out Linux.com and saw that you can put Linux on a pen drive and run it off of there for under 60 MB. applications.linux.com/applications... I would like to see what Linux is all about but I don't want to use it as a main OS or partition my harddrive. If I did put it on my pen drive, could I run Linux off it whenever I wanted but still keep Windows as the OS when not running Linux? Has anyone done anything like this before?

EDIT: Is Linux text-based? I've never seen it before but from it being text-based in Byond made me think that was because it was text-based only. But the pictures on http://www.goosee.com/puppy/ seem to tell me otherwise.
Aug 12 2005, 3:11 pm
Yep, just make sure your computer can boot from a USB device, if it can just plug the pen-drive into the system before you boot it and it should boot to Linux.
Aug 12 2005, 3:12 pm
In response to Nadrew
And it'll work normally without the pen drive afterwards? I don't want to screw anything up.

EDIT: I think I might go with Puppy Linux.
Aug 12 2005, 3:18 pm
In response to EGUY
Just as long as you don't mess with your Windows filesystem while using the Linux stuff.
Aug 12 2005, 3:32 pm
In response to Nadrew
I'm using puppylinux at home, and it's great.
I've tried it on a pen drive before, worked great.
(except the pen-drive was only a 64MB so..)
It just wrote some files on there, it didn't change the way the pendrive worked at all, all I had to do was erase the files, and bamb, good as new.

The only flaw with puppy-linux is it is sometimes hard to install things (but there are .pup's, basicly there window's .exe installers) more and more of them are being created daily by the users.
(You can still install, say BYOND, but you have to manually drag it into a folder, and then copy the libaries to /lib or /usr/lib)

Puppy linux is EXTREMELY fast than other opperating systems or linux(es) booting off ot the CD (beause it stores it all in RAM) and normally (Off of a USB or Hard Drive)
I've timed the bootup before, and it took approx. 30 seconds to boot up.

Another nice feature I like is, they have made so many dotpup's it's hard to not find anything you're looking for (and you can also go on their forums and ask if someone could make a dotpup for you)
Since puppylinux comes with so many things preinstalled (but they take up so little space)

I really only had to download two things to make me happy:
* Icewm
* Firefox
(The default puppylinux's browser, for some reason, didn't save my bookmarks, it was an something I did)


(Note: The HD is basicly a pup001 file)
In short, if you are going to choose a linux os to put on either
*A bootable flash card
*A floppy disk (you can save your HD on here, but you would still need the CD)
*Run live off of the CD (The great thing about this is, it allows you to actually save your progress on the CD by creating a pup001 file, but for NTFS (windows users) you have to download it beforehand, or you won't be able to save that session)

The first linux I tried was MEPIS, and it was pretty confusing... (Along with somehow crashing my HD)

Then I switched to puppylinux, havn't had a problem yet (one I couldn't easily fix via forum support)

The forum support is exelent for the community.
You can request ANYTHING or ask any question and will get a reply usually within 4 to 24 hours.

(Note: The shell has alot of things left out, like make, etc., but I believe you can "teach" puppy most of the shell commands they left out, due to space)


In short, puppylinux is what you want if you want something fast, but don't want to give up installing things
Aug 12 2005, 4:13 pm (Edited on Aug 12 2005, 4:18 pm)
I just copied over what I think is the essentials for running Byond on the pen drive:

bin/help/cfg folders
.DLL's
.isu's
.ISR's

Thats all the stuff that looked important. Anything else? I don't want DreamDaemon so I'll delete the .exe but is there anything else that only works for DD that I can remove also?
Aug 12 2005, 4:40 pm
In response to EGUY
Um,
If you're in a linux, an .exe isn't going to do you much good.
=)
Aug 12 2005, 4:41 pm
In response to Flame Sage
Well I'm running Windows for Byond since I don't want text-only, :P
Aug 12 2005, 7:25 pm
In response to EGUY
Windows Dream Seeker on Linux? You do know that has Buckley's chance of working, right? =P

("Buckley's chance" is Australian slang for "no chance". There's an interesting story behind it if you care to look it up. =))
Aug 12 2005, 7:31 pm
In response to Nadrew
If my pc (hypothetically; I don't own a USB pendrive!) can't boot from a USB pendrive (which it can't) can I make a boot floppy or boot CD to MAKE it boot from the USB pendrive? =D

~Kujila
Aug 12 2005, 7:37 pm
In response to Kujila
Depends on if you have a way of accessing the USB device outside of Windows.
Aug 12 2005, 8:14 pm
In response to EGUY
So, your having two different partitiioning systems on it? o_O
Aug 12 2005, 10:44 pm
In response to Crispy
I have done it! (*cough*)VMWare

Anywho, Ya, the Windows DS will not work on Linux, but I think he just wants a portable DS(For other windows systems).
Aug 13 2005, 12:45 am
In response to Scoobert
VMWare doesn't count. Neither does WINE. =P

I say that simply because as a new Linux user, he would probably have trouble setting them up. Especially on a USB drive.
Sep 7 2005, 10:29 pm
In response to Flame Sage
compact linux is ok but its knothing like a nativ install of lets say fedora core 4. as for windows byond it whont work in wine right away. thers a way to get it to run with some modding to wine.

as for byond linux it only as one real use and thats for servers. i dont knoe why they havent compiled in the xlibx etc to get the gui in linux. it cant be that hard relly. as a linux user i would love to see byond fully supporting it and not the crap text mode.
Sep 8 2005, 12:46 am
In response to Luther349
Luther349 wrote:
> thers a way to get it to run with some modding to wine.

not as easy as you think. i was invited by codeweavers to help test BYOND with WINE nightly builds ([link]). i have sent one progress report back (semi-automated)- no luck so far in terms of getting DreamSeeker to run 'out of the box'. hopefully my reports will help. i'll be trying to test new nightly builds every 3-5 days starting next week.


> as for byond linux it only as one real use and thats for servers.

not true at all. while hosting is it's strength - BYOND can make cool text-based games with the Linux DS. heck, even Chatters runs very nicely. MUDs , net-hack-based RPGs, and word-games also do well in text-mode.

i dont knoe why they havent compiled in the xlibx etc to get the gui in linux. it cant be that hard relly.

again, this is not as easy as you think, and if it were we would not be having this discussion in the first place. just jumping on the bandwagon of xlibx, GTK+, and the like will not insure that BYOND works the same way as the Windows version. both OSs approach GUI interfaces in *very* different ways. building a GUI-version of BYOND for Linux requires time and effort to look into what *nix development standards are viable and long-term-- not to mention looking at ways to 'write once, port to many' so that we don't have badly branching development trees for the BYOND suite of programs.

be patient, i'm sure a Linux-based GUI BYOND is in the works for the future.