Hi Everyone

I have an idea for a project and I was hoping to get some feedback before I set out to make it reality.

Basic idea:
Create a simple live CD, possibly without file system compression for faster loading. After simple CD boots, load a Blu-Ray disk with a large number of packages and a package manager-like tool on BD to load a variety of end user chosen packages before launching X.

Rationale:
Where is Posix doing well...
1)OS X, were Apple has it preloaded and has drivers geared towards Apple hardware
2)Android pretty much same as OS X
3)Linux on web servers and mainframes, both administered by advanced users.

Where are we stagnant...
1)Home users with little desire to learn a new OS
2)Workplaces were everything is already set up under Windows and Windows is now the incumbent.

Live CDs have the potential to offer an IOS/Android no-install-needed experience but have limitations, namely, changes are not saved.

I know there are ways around this, some live CDs can write back to their own RW-CDs. Others are loaded on USB rather then CD and so on.

These are all okay but something I am excited about is Blu-ray. I have wanted a Blu-Ray burner for some time but I thought I couldn't afford the $400 price tag. I just picked done up for $70. A BD disk is 50 cents and holds 25GB, larger capacities are available.

If the simple live CD had full Blu-Ray support and a suitable program could be written to merge news files from the RAM disk with older untouched files from the Blu-ray disk and a new child Blu-Ray disk could be written, then we could also have persistence. I am guessing that an error to a RW disk makes it a coaster and that USB disk are not cheap enough to mass distribute to customers. This BD option might be a good fit for some people.


Benefits:
I know there are tools to remaster live CDs but if the process of creating a live CD could be split in two, the complexities of the live CD could be separated from the process of adding user chosen packages, This might make it easier to administer assuming a suitable on-disk-package-manger could be created on the Blu-ray disk. Instead of the large number of Live CDs, a base live CD coudl be reused amongst many parties.

I don't know how El Torito works with BD yet, this would help as get BD in the live CD picture.

RAM is cheap enough but recovering from a system that won't boot is not. I would rather tell a customer that they need 16GB of RAM but their computer OS will always work rather then trying to explain why the OS won't start due to an orphaned linked list.

Disadvantages:
The user would have to be prompted to load a second disk. I haven't used a live CD that did not have a compressed file system but ones with them boot pretty slow. If we have to de-package gnome and other packages at every boot, it will be very-very slow.

16GB is loads of RAM but to write a new BD might require a good deal of free space for temp writes, this might require a write to a temp folder on a hard drive.


I save my changes every few minutes if not seconds, having a big write to a new BD is fine but if this only happens once a day or every few days, the user is in danger of loosing their data. I think a temp directory on a permanent disk would be needed which reduces the coolness of a trouble-free just-works live OS. A possible work-around is to ask the user to put in a 3rd disk, a RW BD but that would be getting pretty weird and again how many writes per hour would really happen.

Conclusion:
So you can see this idea is only half formed. Please critique what is here and if you can, help me smooth out the idea so we can capitalize on the vastly reduced prices of Blu-Ray burners and can get Linux into new markets it's pretty much close to locked out of.

A few thoughts:

• I would say, in a corporate environment, that very few blu-ray readers are available
• I don't understand the logic behind using a CD, then a BD. Why not just put an entire existing distro on a BD?
• USB ports are a dime a dozen these days, why not just put an entire existing distro on a USB stick, or a USB hdd?
• Fast networks are even more prevalent, why not use PXE boot and remote swap/storage and run the distro from a central source? Aka: Thin Client.

Hi szboardstretcher

All good points, here are my thoughts....

It's true that there might not be too many blu-ray burners in corporate environments but I bet it would be possible to convince people of their benefits.

Everything on 1 BD would also be good but I am assuming that the El Torito extension is assuming an ISO 9660 format and with that comes size limitations, 4.7GB. Has anyone heard of a 25GB live distro ? perhaps this is a false assumption.

USB sticks are cheap but I think BDs would be cheaper for mailing out to prospective clients.

PXE might work too but it might also introduce security concerns aswell(real or imagined).


One other thing I was thinking about since I posted. What about going old-school and using a boot floppy and BD disk. This might work around the El Torito issue(if it even is a valid issue) and the package managers could store configuration data on it too as it's RW. This would make a reconfigurable system that could bring up large and customized live distros.

I have not owned (or used at work) a computer with a floppy drive in over 8 years...

so true and asking a prospective customer to install a Blu-ray burner and a floppy is a non starteer.

However asking a commited customer to do this (or doing for them) would not be a larage cost and could bring up a very robust system.

Perhaps... is it fair to say that the hard drive is the tipping point were advanced users "push on" and beginners give up. Imagine if people could still fit an OS and all their data on a few floppies and to back up everything was a few dollars at most.

Trying to organize GBs of data and programs and keep everything running is non-trival and trying to recover from a failure even more so.

I keep my data in a few places,. but one of them is a couple of cloned flash keys. They cost 4$US a piece.

also very true but this does not help non-technical users.

If there OS goes down and they have their data they still have to struggle though a re-install. Live USB keys could be cloned but it's also non-trivial as the boot sector is not copied during normal copying operations. Copying CDs is cheaper and easier but the data persistence issue is raised and so is the 4.7 GB size limit

So I have been looking into this a little more. Modern Linux kernals won't fit on a floppy and a boot floppy needs one.

I could turn a USB key into a boot key but that begs the question, "why not just use a live USB distro"

I don't want to take the thread off topic but I like the idea of a disk inside a drawer. Potentially the optical disk could be locked by a program.

My two areas of interest are controlling scientifc instruments and writing software for kids with autism. In either environment, there will be people who will pull USB keys out and walk away.

I need to think this through a little more, thanks to all that posted.