MandrakeMove Linux "live CD"

Life Technology
1

For those who want a more familiar Linux distribution than Knoppix, Mandrake has come out with MandrakeMove, a live-CD, no-hard-drive-required distribution that saves settings and user data onto a USB flash drive.

The retail version is set up to use the flash drive by default. The free-download version doesn’t, so you have to play twenty questions with it before it finishes booting. It will recognize flash drives, so you could write a script to reconfigure and save data once the system has booted, but you’ll still have to go through the whole startup sequence first.

MandrakeMove touts two advantages over Knoppix:

  1. you can eject the MandrakeMove CD once the system has booted, so you can play/rip a music CD, or access backed-up files or more software. I’m not sure if you would be able to burn a CD-R or not.
  2. data gets saved onto a USB drive, so you can retrieve your email at, say, an internet cafe, save files, and save settings.

Disadvantages over Knoppix include less hardware compatibility and a layout which is just not as appealing. However, MandrakeMove boots correctly on my NForce2 motherboard, for which Knoppix doesn’t have drivers (apparently Klaus Knopper doesn’t have an NForce2 machine).

Knoppix is noncommercial, so I doubt there will be an arms-race type competition. However, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Knoppix offer a new version with the flash-drive setup soon. The CD trick may be more difficult. Knoppix is freely available from many mirrors.

MandrakeSoft is apparently getting desperate for cash, and so has made it difficult to find a download page on their site – this is also why they released a restricted (no automatic flash-drive setup) version for their free download. It is available, though.

If you are tired of viruses and hacker attacks, these would be good tools to try.

knoppix.net/
knoppix.net/get.php (for downloads)

mandrakesoft.com/
mandrakelinux.com/en/ftp.php3 (for downloads)

2

Of the four or five distributions of Linux that I’ve tried, have to say Mandrake is the best. Got it running on my XPC at work…

3

:mrgreen: Yeah, I downloaded the three Mandrake installation CDs yesterday as well, and am going to put them on another drive in a couple of days.

I’m mildly annoyed at Knoppix at the moment; Klaus Knopper refuses to put the NVidia drivers into it because NVidia won’t GPL their drivers (even though they explicitly permit copying of the unmodified object code in their Linux license, the source isn’t available). ClusterKnoppix supposedly has them, but it crashes and reboots after a while if I run it on the SN41G2 XPC. I think the drivers are in MandrakeMove, but it just isn’t as nice of a distribution. Eventually I’ll have to remaster Knoppix to include them, and maybe also to do that USB-flash-drive trick. Wish I knew what to use to get the CD-ROM drive functionality of MM.

4

How’s the foreign language and UTF-8 support in Mandrake these days? Last I checked, this was it’s weak point.

5

It doesn’t have a Chinese Traditional Version.
and that is okay. But I don’t know how to get IMEs for Chinese and Japanese to work on it. Can anyone help?

Plus. I couldn’t get the ADSL to work for Mandrake Move. I don’t know what command there is.

White on Knoppix, it connects to ADSL easily and it’s Chinese Traditional. But the Japanese IME only works over Mozilla. And it didn’t recognize the built-in Audio on my motherboard :frowning:

I need all the help I can get.

ax

6

Yes you do. :mrgreen: :mrgreen:

7

Rascal…you’re not Rascuing me :frowning:

ax