Bio-Linux has been released !

Bio-Linux is an ideal system for scientists handling and analysing biological data.

Bio-Linux 6.0 is a fully featured, powerful, configurable and easy to maintain bioinformatics workstation. Bio-Linux provides more than 500 bioinformatics programs on an Ubuntu Linux 10.04 base. There is a graphical menu for bioinformatics programs, as well as easy access to the Bio-Linux bioinformatics documentation system and sample data useful for testing programs. You can also install Bio-Linux packages to handle new generation sequence data types.

You can install Bio-Linux on your machine, either as the only operating system, or as part of a dual-boot setup which allows you to use your current system and Bio-Linux on the same hardware.

Bio-Linux also runs Live from the DVD or a USB stick. This runs in the memory of your machine and does not involve installing anything. This is a great, no-hassle way to try out Bio-Linux, demonstrate or teach with it, or to work with when you are on the move.

Bio-Linux is built on open source systems and software, and so is free to to install and use. See What's new on Bio-Linux 6.0. Also, check out the  2006 paper on Bio-Linux and open source systems for biologists.

Getting Bio-Linux is simple. Just download the image, burn it to a DVD or USB stick and boot the machine from that media.

Running Bio-Linux as a live system

You can run Bio-Linux by booting your computer from the memory stick. To do this, you need to set the machine to boot from a USB port.

On common computers, you can press the F12 key as the machine is starting up. This loads up a menu allowing you to choose a boot device for that session. When you want to run a Bio-Linux Live Session or install Bio-Linux from the memory stick, simply choose the option: boot from a USB device.

If you wish to set this as a permanent option, then you can press F2 instead of F12 as the machine is starting up. This will allow you to configure the BIOS of your computer to establish an order of devices to boot from. You can make the USB memory stick the first device on the list. After this, your machine will always look first into USB ports for USB devices and will boot from them if they are bootable.

Download Bio-Linux at Here.

SystemRescueCd 2.4.0 has been released !

SystemRescueCd 2.4.0 has been released, its an updated version of the specialist live CD containing a large collection of open-source utilities for disk partitioning and data rescue tasks. The new release comes with the brand-new GParted 0.10.0, the latest X.Org Server and Mozilla Firefox, while DHCP has been upgraded to the 4.x series.



SystemRescueCd is a Gentoo-based Linux system on a bootable CD-ROM or USB drive, designed for repairing a system and data after a crash. It also aims to provide an easy way to carry out administration tasks on a computer, such as creating and editing hard disk partitions. It contains many useful system utilities (GNU Parted, PartImage, FSTools) and some basic ones (editors, Midnight Commander, network tools). It aims to be very easy to use. 

The kernel of the system supports all of today's most important file systems, including ext2, ext3, ext4, ReiserFS, Reiser4FS, btrfs, XFS, JFS, VFAT, NTFS, ISO9660, as well as network file systems, such as Samba and NFS.

Whats changed from old version:
Updated standard kernels to Linux 3.0.8 (rescuecd + rescue64); updated alternative kernels to Linux 3.1.0 (altker32 + altker64); dropped Reiser4 patch from all kernels (no patch for Linux 3.x); updated X.Org Server to 1.10.4 (graphical server and drivers); updated Mozilla Firefox to 7.0.1; updated GParted to 0.10.0; patched Parted 2.4 with fixes from Fedora.

Download this new release at Here.

SliTaz 1.0, The Smallest Desktop Distro On Earth

SliTaz GNU/Linux is a free operating system working completely in memory from removeable media such as a cdrom or USB key. It is light, speedy and fully installable on a hard drive.

SliTaz GNU/Linux is a mini distribution and live CD designed to run speedily on hardware with 128 MB of RAM. SliTaz uses BusyBox, a recent Linux kernel and GNU software. It boots with Syslinux and provides more than 200 Linux commands, the lighttpd web server, SQLite database, rescue tools, IRC client, SSH client and server powered by Dropbear, X window system, JWM (Joe's Window Manager), gFTP, Geany IDE, Mozilla Firefox, AlsaPlayer, GParted, a sound file editor and more. The SliTaz ISO image fits on a less than 30 MB media and takes just 80 MB of hard disk space.

SliTaz is distributed in the form of a LiveCD that you can easily burn to a cdrom and boot from. When the system is running you can eject the LiveCD and use your CD drive for other tasks.

The Live system provides a fully-featured, working graphical distro and lets you keep your data and personal settings on persistent media. The system can be extended with the Tazpkg package manager and security updates are provided for the cooking and stable versions.

Features:

• Root filesystem taking about 80 MB and ISO image less than 30 MB.
• Ready to use Web server powered by LightTPD with CGI and PHP support.
• Browse the Web with Mozilla Firefox or Retawq in text mode.
• Sound support provided by Alsa mixer, audio player and CD ripper/encoder.
• Chat, mail and FTP clients.
• SSH client and server powered by Dropbear.
• Database engine with SQLite.
• Generate a LiveUSB device.
• Tools to create, edit or burn CD or DVD images.
• Elegant desktop with JWM running on the top of Xvesa (X server).
• Home made graphical boxes to command line utilities.
• More than 440 packages easily installable from the mirror.
• Active and friendly community.

Btw, you can get SliTaz GNU/Linux by visiting here.

MilaX, the OpenSolaris Live CD

MilaX is a small-size live-CD distribution which runs completely off a CD or a USB storage device. It is based on OpenSolaris Nevada and includes its basic features. It originally started as an experiment to see how much OpenSolaris software could fit on a mini-CD, but it eventually became a full-fledged OpenSolaris distribution.


It is also possible to use MilaX as a rescue CD. It can be installed on storage media with a small capacity, including bootable business cards, USB flash drives, memory cards, and Zip drives. By the way, MilaX is free to use, modify and distribute.

The current version of Milax requires at least 256MB RAM and a Pentium or Celeron to boot into a IceWM desktop. 128MB RAM is sufficient for booting into Command-Line mode.

Download Milax for HDD, live CD, USB Flashdisk or Server by visiting here.

PUD Linux 0.4.8.5 Has Been Released

PUD GNU/Linux is a mini LiveCD based on Ubuntu Linux, which takes up small size, with (both Simplified/Traditional) Chinese enhancements.

This release is a development version of PUD but contains lots of experiments and new features so that we would like to make it a beta release, including installer, new package selection, enhanced livecd build kit, kernel patches, optimizations to speed up boot time, and better laptop/mobile device support.

PUD Linux has minimalist desktop that pre-configured and selected applications. With "Plate" User Interface, an elegant way to use your desktop. There is more than one way to boot on PUD Linux as it has feature LiveUSB, Boot to Ramdisk. With "Opt-Get" Plugin System, its easy to do one-click install system to add more applications

More features:

• Patched Kernel and Optimized: squashfs+lzma, aufs, and more..
• Various Backup Methods: backup/restore your data just like permanent installation
• "Build-LiveCD" ToolKit: customize your own live cd easily and automatically

More info can be reached at PUD Linux's site. Btw, you can download this new release of PUD Linux at Here for LiveCD and Here for LiveUSB and Here for Build Kit.

Slax 6.0 has been Released

Slax, a modern, small and fast Linux operating system with a modular approach and outstanding design, has been released its version 6.0.

What’s new on this release? First, Slax is officially released in two forms, ISO and TAR. As you surely know, the iso format (labeled as “Slax for CD”) is to be burnt to a CD (preferably a miniCD medium). But nowadays, CDs are pretty obsolete, so the TAR format (labeled as “Slax for USB”) is for all the other people who need to run Slax directly from USB media or from a disk. Simply unzip (extract) the tar archive directly to your device (to it’s root directory, it will create ‘boot’ and ’slax’ subdirectories). That’s almost all; you only need to make it bootable. For that purpose, navigate to the ‘boot’ directory and find bootinst.sh (if you are in Linux) or bootinst.bat (if you are in Windows). Run it. Linux users will need to use root account for that. The script will setup the device to be bootable.

If you are using “Slax for USB”, you will notice that all the changes you made are PERMANENT. Yes, even if you’re running Slax from a VFAT filesystem (thanks to posixovl). But a native Linux filesystem is always prefered, of course. In that case, you won’t be able to use bootinst.sh/bat, you’ll have to try liloinst.sh

Despite its small size, Slax provides a wide collection of pre-installed software for daily use, including a well organized graphical user interface and useful recovery tools for system administrators.

The modular approach gives you the ability to include any other software in Slax easily. If you're missing your favourite text editor, networking tool or game, simply download a module with the software and copy it to Slax, no need to install, no need to configure.

You can download this new release at Here or Here.

DSL 4.1 First Release Candidate

The first release candidate of Damn Small Linux v4.1 is now available.

Heres the change log for v4.1RC1:

• New boot option user=name
• New boot option settime (settime=its_server_name) must have boot time net access. Use with tz=XX/Yyyyy for accurate local time.
• New mini-icons in jwm mydsl menu when available.
• New iconView.lua - View & Edit xpm icons.
• Updated torsmo to v0.18 - now supports noswap
• Updated .dfminfo now a plain text file.
• Updated processing order of extensions with .tar.gz now last to better support myconf.tar.gz
• Root menu solely under user control - defaults to selected window manager menu.
• Added 'toram' to frugal installed grub checkfs menu item.
• Updated several murgaLua programs to reflect the dropped fl_ask GUI widget.
• Dropped SWM - Small Window Manager.
• Fixed System.map link error.
• Better support for alternate window managers. - see /opt/.mydsl_menu/ and ~/{wm}.inc
• Streamlined MyDSL download procedure - dropped use of sudo and download location prompt.
• Dropped unsued emelfm wrapper.

And many, many programs, files, and their locations have changed to support the new user=name option and the window manager processing support. Most noteably .filetool.lst and .xfiletool.lst are now under /opt.

Btw, you can download this release at here.

PUD Linux, the Mini Gutsy has been released

PUD GNU/Linux 0.4.8 has been released. PUD GNU/Linux is a mini LiveCD based on Ubuntu Linux Gutsy Gibbon 7.10, which takes up under 200MB, with (both Simplified/Traditional) Chinese enhancements with the light-weight Xfce window manager.

PUD comes with new logo and new boot menu with gfxboot and integrated with some Gnome tools, improved laptop support from keyboard detect, suspend/hibernate to wireless setting, make PUD v0.4.8 to become the most completed release so far, the author said on its release notes.

PUD's system is based on Ubuntu 7.10 with new kernel and packages, patched with Squashfs-LZMA compression and Aufs filesystem (get the patches and source). Other upgrades including 3D desktop effects (Compiz Fusion) and 10+ Opt-Get plugins; and a easy way to make bootable pendrive called mkliveusb.

Features of PUD:

Minimalist Desktop, Plate User Interface, Live USB, Boot to RAM Disk, Opt-Get Plugin System for one click install system to add more applications, Patched Kernel and Optimized, Various Backup Methods and Build-LiveCD Toolkit, so you can customize your own LiveCD more easier and auomatically.

Get PUD Linux at here.

FaunOS: The Portable Linux

FaunOS is a portable (easy-to-carry), fully integrated Linux operating system with over 500 preinstalled packages. It is specifically designed to run from a portable USB Memory Device (USB Flash Drive). It can also run from a DVD.

FaunOS does not change or install anything on your hard drive--unless you specifically ask it to. This means it is safe to take your USB to a friend's computer and boot from it (see minimum requirements below). When you finish, shutdown, and remove your USB key from your friend's computer, there is no trace of any of your activity on that computer.

Features include

• Ability to save files back to the USB flash drive.
• Tools that allow permanent installation to a hard drive. Supports the following install options on a hard drive:
• Permanent Arch Linux Installer using archin
• Frugal install (not to be confused with Frugalware Linux) installs the compressed FaunOS files to a hard drive permanently leading to an “unbreakable desktop” meaning the end user can totally ruin everything at runtime. To revert back to the starting point all the user has to do is reboot the machine and everything goes back to normal since all changes happen in RAM (unless the FaunOS session is saved on shutdown).
• Ability to install additional packages before permanently installing FaunOS to the hard drive.
• FaunOS Installer for creating additional FaunOS USB drives from within FaunOS.

Minimum Requirements:

Generally speaking, if you have a fairly new PC (say 1 or 2 years old), then FaunOS should run okay on your hardware. Here are the specifics:

Minimum USB capacity (if installing to a USB key): 1 GB
Target machine hardware requirements:

• Architecture: x86
• Minimum RAM: 512 MB; 1GB or more recommended. Minimum 1.5GB required for "In Memory" boot option.
• Minimum Processor Speed: 500 MHz

For USB key boot:

• The target machine must be bootable from a USB. Alternatively, you can make a special bootstrapping CD (see instructions below) to boot from.

You can download the FaunOS USB flash drive image over HTTP or Torrents. Click here to download over HTTP, or torrent. (Download Size ~933 MB).

Use RawWrite on Windows or dd on *nix and Mac OSX to write the FaunOS USB flash drive image to your USB flash drive. Here’s a dd example on Linux assuming the USB flash drive is /dev/sdb:

dd if=faunos-fortytwo-0.3.2-usb.img of=/dev/sdb

Parted Magic Linux 1.9 LiveCD/USB/PXE has released today

Parted Magic is a Linux LiveCD/USB/PXE with its elemental purpose being to partition hard drives.

Optimized at approximately 30MB, the Parted Magic OS employs core programs of GParted and Parted to handle partitioning tasks with ease, while featuring other useful programs (e.g. Partition Image, TestDisk, fdisk, sfdisk, dd, ddrescue, etc.) and an excellent set of documentation to benefit the user. An extensive collection of fileystem tools are also included, as Parted Magic supports the following: ext2, ext3, ext4, fat16, fat32, hfs, hfs+, jfs, linux-swap, ntfs, reiserfs, reiser4, and xfs.

It added all i386 keymaps from kbd. There is a label changing GUI for reiserfs, ntfs, ext2, ext3, xfs, and jfs. Photorec was added. Some hacking on GParted were did and you can create hfs+ file systems directly from GParted now. Added support to name the location of the pmagic squashfs in the syslinux.cfg. Some other other bug fixes and script changes as well.

The latest version is updated with: Linux-2.6.23, parted-1.8.8, ntfsprogs-2.0, ntfs-3g-1.913, and GParted-0.3.4.

The current Xserver is xorg-server-1.3.0.0 with the following drivers: apm, ark, ati, chips, cirrus, cyrix, glint, i128, i740, i810, mga, neomagic, nv, r128, riva128, radeon, rendition, s3, s3virge, savage, siliconmotion, sis, tdfx, tga, trident, tseng, vesa, vmware, and voodoo. The mini Xserver, Xvesa, is also available.

You can get PartedMagic for free at here.

FrogLinux, the French Mini Linux

FrogLinux, the French mini linux distro is different proprietary operating systems because we offer, with FrogLinux, a real barrier to viruses and other malicious software.

FrogLinux distinguish itself as through access to a huge amount of free software and free through collaboration with Ubuntu.

Its real innovations are to get the benefits of Linux and Ubuntu by adding a Quebec personality by adding visual elements representing Quebec, higher quality and suitable software.

The software is configured in french.

FrogLinux is now available on USB Drive Fast, functional, surprise! There is no need to use an operating system slow or faulty or hard disk. Start your computer directly from the USB drive. Everything is already installed and functional:

• Internet
• Mail Manager
• The OpenOffice suite
• CD burner / DVD
• Reader film and music
• Advanced graphics software
• Manager photographs and images
• Automatic Network Detection, graphics cards and printers
• Redetection of your devices at each startup (exclusive FrogLinux)
• You have to discover the rest. (Including the famous Autobackup, another FrogLinux exclusivity).

You can download FrogLinux at here.

Damn Small Linux 4.0 Final has Released

After several months and 5 release candidates of upgrades and retooling DSL to additionally provide drag-n-drop document centric computing, today Robert Shingledecker presents Damn Small Linux v4.0 Final Release.

DSL was originally developed as an experiment to see how many usable desktop applications can fit inside a 50MB live CD. It was at first just a personal tool/toy. But over time Damn Small Linux grew into a community project with hundreds of development hours put into refinements including a fully automated remote and local application installation system and a very versatile backup and restore system which may be used with any writable media including a hard drive, a floppy drive, or a USB device.

What New and Change of DSL 4.0:

• Upgraded kernel from 2.4.26 to 2.4.31.
• Created new support modules: cloop, unionfs, ndiswrapper, fuse, and madwifi in support of kernel change.
• Changed icon/file manager to dfm for drag-n-drop capability.
• Updated murgaLua to v0.5.5
• Updated nano-tiny to v2.0.6.
• Updated Xpdf to v3.0.2
• Updated flrun.lua to v1.1.2
• Updated "Getting Started" to reflect the many changes implemented in 4.0.
• New dfmext.lua GUI tool for dfm associations.
• New xtar.lua. A new GUI to view,extract or process as a MyDSL extension various tar files.
• New netcardconf.lua. A new GUI to configure netcards, relaces dialog version.
• New printing.lua, called from the printer icon, provides "intelligent icon" to handle all printing needs, from setup, start, stop, or print, double-click or drag-n-drop.
• New add2filetool.lua, add2Xfiletool.lua, add2bootlocal.lua provides smooth interface for these tasks, double-click or drag-n-drop
• New switcher.lua GUI to switch WM, jwm, fluxbox, or swm
• Added sudo to myprism2, myndis, myiwconfig so they can be run from home by double clicking associated icons.
• New automatic update of etc.ld.cache for better support of uci extensions.
• Updated frugal_grub install to prompt for MyDSL, boot options, and langauge options.
• Added 'checkfs' option to grub menu for frugal grub installations.
• Fixed non-critical bug in dsl-config concerning hard drive installations.
• Added dsl 3 runlevel for multiple user dsl consoles.
• Fixed bug in iwconfig-setup
• Updated fluxbox menus to use system default font (helvetica).
• Added vim link.
• Patched knoppix-autoconfig to correct language issues.
• Updated minirt24.gz waitusb function.
• Fixed cloop error on traditional hard drive installations.
• New pendrive usbhdd installation script now uses grub with DSL on 2nd small partition and prompt for boot options.
• Removed pendrive usbzip install script, syslinux and mtools.
• Added taskbar buttons & click to focus in .jwmrc
• Added emelfm - dropped mc
• Created new Standard Boot floppy & PCMCIA modules floppy.
• Updated getman/man url
• Updated .torsmo_ip to fetch ethernet device from /proc
• Updated functions5.lua
• Updated DSLpanel Backgrounds calls dfm background option
• Update mydslDownload.lua
• Factored out .jwmrc-tray for better user control of tray icon choices.
• Restored busybox link to provide rpm2cpio.
• Added gettime.lua to jwm and fluxbox menus.
• Added dfmext GUI, add2bootlocal, add2filetool, and add2Xfiletool to jwm and fluxbox menus.
• Added libm.so link

You can download DSL 4.0 at here or here for full list download including torrents site.

Linux Live Script: Tools for create Live Linux

Linux Live is a set of shell scripts which allows you to create own Live Linux from your installed Linux distribution.

The Live system you create will be bootable from CD-ROM or a disk device, for example USB Flash Drive, USB Pen Drive, Camera connected to USB port, and so on.

People use Linux Live scripts to boot Linux from iPod as well.

How to build a Live distro:

1. Install your favourite distro to disk partition, or into a folder on your existing system. Slackware is recommended but not required.
2. Build aufs kernel module and squashfs kernel module (optionally patched to support LZMA). The step above is not required if you use precompiled Linux Kernel from this website.
3. Install kernel modules to the newly installed distro to /lib/modules/`uname -r`/fs/. Make sure you are running the same kernel you used to compile modules
4. Remove all unnecessary files (for example man pages and all other files you don't need), to make your Live Linux system as small as possible (this step is optional).
5. Download Linux Live scripts from this website and unpack it in /tmp. Read ./DOC/requirements.txt to find out what linux-live scripts need.
6. Edit .config file if you need to modify some variables. Finally login as root and run ./build. Live distribution's 'directory tree' will be created in /tmp/live_data_1234 where 1234 is a random number.
7. To make ISO image, run make_iso.sh.
8. To make a bootable (usb) disk, run bootinst.sh

How To Boot Mandriva on a USB Disk

As you know, running a Live CD is great, booting and running from a USB Flash drive is more great! It's fast. It's handy. It's beautiful. It's secure. And it's silent, no noisy harddrive or optical drive activity.

This work is meant for USB Flash Memory devices, thus: USB Keys, Flash Drives, Pen/Thumb Drives, Sticks. You can also use an external USB hard drive (it needs a FAT32 formatted first partition!). For setting up: Don't boot with inserted USB Stick. Insert it after you booted successfully.

Hardware Requirements:

A PC/Notebook with a recent motherboard and BIOS. Most computers not older than 4 years should have an option in the BIOS to set the boot sequence to USB-HDD. With a BIOS update we got it working even with a 2001 motherboard.
The minimum capacity of the USB Flash Drive/USB Stick: 256 MB for the Xfce version (Jordaan), 512 MB for the KDE version. 1 GB is fine too, even a 2 GB will work. If your motherboard does not support booting from USB, you can use a combination of burned CD and USB flash drive, using the bootcode: livecd fromusb.
You need to burn the downloaded iso-file to a CD-R or CD-RW. The installation to the USB stick is done from the running CD, with a graphical wizard.
Some flash drives come factory preformatted with an odd partition table. When you see booting from usb: 'no operating system found', you first need to fix the partition table. Plugin the drive, start the Mandriva Control Center (MCC) -> Mount points. Here you can find the name of the usb device, it is one of the tabs, sda or sdb or sdc ... Close the MCC.
Open a terminal window, type: su
Type the root password: root
Example, the usb stick is sdb. Make sure it is NOT an internal hard disk!
Type: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=1M count=2
This will erase the MBR and the partition table on the drive. Now you can use the MCC to create a new FAT32 partition and format it. And run the "Create Live USB' wizard

Download the ISO from here. Many versions of ISO there, I use the new release of MCNLive, code name "Toronto", the English only version. As the community said, a newer version usually means better support of new hardware. You can use the previos releases such as "Delft" which support Dutch, French, and Italian beside English.

Burn the ISO file to a CD-R(W)
After you have done, you have an all-in-one solution.

Live CD: You can use it as a Live CD, as it is.
Installation CD: From the running MCNLive you can use a graphiphal wizard to install it on a USB Flash Drive or external hard drive. For computers able to boot from USB, you would just plugin your newly configured USB stick, set the BIOS boot priority and boot it. You got a Live USB now.
Start up CD: For older computers without USB boot ability, you can use the same CD in combination with the USB drive to get all features of the Live USB of MCNLive. Insert the CD, plugin your USB Stick. Restart your PC. At the first screen hit 'F1', type: livecd fromusb
The boot process will continue, using the USB drive. Your CD/DVD drive is freed up, you can remove the CD medium from the drive.

Now, here the step by step for making your Mandriva Live USB Disk:

Get the BIOS info: Insert the stick, start your PC (without Live CD), enter the BIOS at the very beginning, mostly done by pressing 'DEL' or 'ESC' or a function key. Wait two seconds. Look for a section like 'Advanced BIOS Features', this might be named different in your BIOS. Find something like: First Boot Device, Second Boot Device, Third Boot Device. Here you find the available USB boot options, USB-HDD, USB-ZIP. USB-HDD is the preferred one. Set the USB device prior to the harddisk, CD-ROM as first boot device.

Some BIOS have a special feature. As soon as you insert a USB mass storage device before booting, the BIOS will detect it and make it available/visible under 'Hard disk drive priority'. Enter this menu, and you will see your USB Stick besides your internal harddisk. In this case you would set the boot priority here! This is similiar to the USB-HDD method. MCNLive was built and tested on such a computer, a Shuttle SB61G2, with AWARD Bios.

Notebooks tend to have a stripped down BIOS. Hard to find the USB boot settings. Here an example how to set the boot sequence on a Lenovo IBM 3000 C100 M740. Insert the USB stick. Boot and press F1 at the very beginning. Once in the BIOS navigate to the 'Boot' menu. Hit 'enter'. Navigate to 'HDD', hit 'enter'. You will see your usb stick below your harddisk. With the PgUp key you would set the boot priority.

Restart your PC with the burned LiveCD inserted, without USB stick, don't use the copy2ram bootcode, boot into the graphical environment. Insert the USB Flash Drive. Wait two seconds. In the menu 'MCNLive' you can find a program to setup the Live mode.

Your BIOS must support USB-HDD booting. The USB stick must have a FAT partition, with the boot flag set. The wizard does not repartition or re-format the drive. You can create partitions using the Mandriva Control center. (Be sure to hit: toggle to expert mode).
Some notebooks need the bootcode: livecd irqpoll noapic nolapic

Reboot without LiveCD, but with the USB Flash Drive inserted. Make sure the boot sequence in the BIOS is set.

We've done !