I'm going to be doing some traveling for work and I want to video chat back with the family. I'm assuming Skype is the answer for that. My employer won't let us install Skype on the laptop. They even disable the network adapter in virtual machines that I use. I could get around it and install anyway, but it's not worth risking my salary. My first thought was to find a live CD/DVD with Skype as a default package, but that has been harder to find than I thought. Any suggestions? I came up with the following theoretical solutions but I don't know if any are even possible or at least reasonable.

• Find live CD with skype installed
• Run Skype as a non-installed/portable app
• Create a custom live CD with Skype installed
• Install Ubuntu to a flash drive and boot from USB
• Live CD that saves customizations/installed apps to USB
• ???

I'd appreciate any suggestions or thoughts and if you know of any, please point out any walk throughs or guides on making it happen.

Thanks!

slax can have different modules added. As their website has problems momentarly, try later.

Hi, for a while i stuck skype on a usb stick after following this: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives...le_via_usb.php

Not sure if it's still current, but it's worth a shot.

This is where Puppy linux shines.

Set it up the way you like it and save all your changes back to the cd/dvd/usb.

I've had good success with Skype if I uncheck "allow skype to adjust mixer levels" in options. Turning up microphone volume and boost with alsamixer.


http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=puppy

You could also jus tuse liek ubuntu n a Live CD install and apt-get install skype each time you wanted to use it.

My suggestion: boot from Ubuntu 10.04 live CD
Plug in a 8GB USB stick.
System - Admin - Start up disk creator.
Point CD image to your live CD
Tell it to install it to your USB stick.
Tell it to reserve 1GB for "reserved extra space".
It does its thing.
Restart and set your BIOS to boot from USB.
Boot to ubuntu on the USB stick. Install skype (to the USB stick, this will happen automatically).
You now have a bootable version of Ubuntu 10.04, with skype, and anything else you want to install.

Going with Ubuntu 10.04 installed to a USB drive with http://www.pendrivelinux.com/ with a 1GB Casper file for persistence. Looks like it will work. Thanks!

ooh, looks very shiny. let us know how it works out, i miss my portable skype!