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Let Your Finger Do the Booting

Issue 143

From Issue #143
March 2006

Jan 26, 2006  By James Turner
 in
FingerGear offers Linux on a stick.
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LinStick

Nebojsa Djogo's picture
Submitted by Nebojsa Djogo (not verified) on Sun, 02/19/2006 - 19:10.

Hello,

I just enjoyed your article about FingerGear. 4-5 months ago - I got a memory USB stick for my birthday and wanted to put a decent Linux on it with applications I wanted. I also wanted it to be bootable, but most of all I wanted it to run under Windows as well.

Well - I couldn't find something that would work for me so I built my own. I call it LINSTICK

It is based on Gentoo Linux - it is bootable and you can run it directly from windows as well. It is transparently using CoLinux to do that. It has Firefox, AbiWord, Gaim, Gimp, Ethereal, XMMS and a few other goodies like Mahjongg, but basically - I can put anything I want on it.
It is about 200Mb and fits nicely on a FAT USB stick - no reformatting is required and if you don't plan to boot from it - you can just copy the files and run it under windows.

I built little wrapper for windows so you just double click on a launcher and linstick boots in background. After booting it brings up VNC client showing you your desktop.
The performance of the Linux running under CoLinux is almost realtime - meaning almost no penalty for running under windows.
The only issue I have currently is a little slower than normal serial network driver which I use to connect the display automatically, but I guess you would have to try it to know what I mean.

Just a week or so ago I put a site to share it with a few friends www.linstick.com
I had to limit the public download purely for bandwidth purposes.
I would invite James to try it out and let me know what he thinks about it. Let me know and I will send the username/password needed to download the files.

I just think that my LinStick is far superior to FingerGear and I really do not have any plans on comercializing it. All you would need is any cheap USB stick you can find. I would give this for free - I just need to find a host to host this 200Mb file for download.

Please let me know what you think. I would be more than happy to send you the LinStick, answer any questions and help you try it out.

Thanks.

Nebojsa Djogo
Feel free to contact me about this directly at djogon.linux at softwareriver.com

Let your finger do the booting.

peteg990's picture
Submitted by peteg990 on Sun, 02/19/2006 - 16:51.

I'm sure this is a very good product but.....
Last night I found a 1GB stick with KNOPPIX 4.... on it for $79.00 and ordered it.
I have had several bootable CD's from KNOPPIX and the LINUX SLEUTH. Both are very good products.
I assume the stick will be also.
A nice feature with the KNOPPIX ISO, there are downloadable utilities to modify it before writing it to a CD.
Looks like the "FingerGear" 1GB stick is about $100.00 over priced.

Regards,
Pete Gandy
Pearland, TX

Knoppix bootable stick

Pete Gandy's picture
Submitted by Pete Gandy (not verified) on Fri, 04/13/2007 - 15:54.

I forgot to get back after getting this stick for $79.00.
I have purchased some 1Gb sticks on sale and ran dd to copy the Knoppix stick to an image file on my hard drive. Then ran DD once again to put the Knoppix image on the new stick.
Works perfectly.
I don't have time to go into the many good things about it.
Simply put I've read other ads for sticks that cost more than twice as much. Their own advertising does not tell me that they are better in any way than the one I have.
I have many uses for this stick and carry one copy in my flight bag when I'm fling as a contract pilot. I also have one in my suit case just in case I loose or forget the one in the flight bag.
I have one in my fire proof safe, "the original."
I have the image on several hard disks on several systems.
I'm hooked.
The Knoppix stick is as good as it gets.
The only thing I would like is to see the "Linux Sleuth" version on a stick.
Don't pass this one up as an option to test the concept before you go spend hundreds more. You just might decide you found the right one.

Pete Gandy
Pearland, TX

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