Devil Live twins of OpenBSD: the project is kicking

Some time ago I wrote a blog post about twin brothers in the world of Open Source. They are not Linux-related, but rather BSD-based operating systems: LiveCD OpenBSD and LiveUSB OpenBSD.

If you re-read those posts, you may notice that I was not happy with those operating systems at all. They were not working more often than they were working.

Since that time, I talked to the author of the project, Girish, several times. He let me know recently that the project has an updated release, published on the 10th of April 2012. I must admit that it was not the only release since my first review of LiveCD/LiveUSB OpenBSD. But the one(s) you probably missed were not worth reviewing, from my point of view.

Now, let's check what has changed recently.

As it was before, there are 3 versions of the operating system available for downloading: Full, MiniX and Minimal. I chose the Full version. It is about 1.7 Gb in archive file form. The file is hosted on Sourceforge network, so you are likely to get good downloading speed. Once the file is downloaded, you need to use an archiver to get the ISO image out of the archive. Not a big deal, to be sure.

Even though the project officially bears the title "LiveCD OpenBSD", this is not the LiveCD in normal terms, in the form we are used to seeing it. Yes, you still need a CD (or a DVD for the full version). Once the disk is burnt, you need to boot from it and then... you still need to create a LiveUSB with the actual system! Yes, you can't use the LiveCD for work. It is only a step to create a LiveUSB. I think that this is not useful for popularisation of the distribution, and this is one of the areas which the developer might well look into.
Update: the developer updated me that he's looking into improvement in this area.

The process of installation itself is simple and is fully described on the screen which is presented by the installer CD.

So, using this unusual way, the LiveUSB was created for me. Reboot. Let's go!

My review makes an impact

Some time ago I wrote a review of the OpenBSD-based Live system created by an enthusiast with the nickname jggimi.

I honestly did not expect that my review would have such an effect on the system development. In other words, Josh (the person behind the nickname Jggimi) decided to change the whole approach to his system based on my critique. It was one of the most constructive reactions to my reviews I’ve seen so far.

Let me take a little break now, and let Josh explain his future plans. I quote his e-mails, slightly edited.

Another Live spin of OpenBSD

The ability to run an operating system in Live mode is a great invention in the computer world. This way you can achieve multiple aims. I have written about some of them already.

Many Linux distributions these days have Live versions of their operating system, and many have Live as the only available option.

Unfortunately, Live systems are not so spread in the BSD world. There are not very many BSD-based operating systems which have ability to run in Live mode. That’s why each of them is of particular interest for me.

Today I will look at the system which was created by a single author, nicknamed Jggimi. This Live system is based on OpenBSD 5.0. The official page of the project is http://jggimi.homeip.net/, and this site does not have many pages, although there’s enough information for you to download the system and get answers to frequently asked questions. Honestly, these FAQs helped me to better understand the system’s approach, so I recommend you to read them too.

Jggimi’s version of OpenBSD Live (I’ll call it OpenBSD Live in this blog post, just for convenience) can be downloaded in several variants, from simple command line only to a full-blown GNOME edition. All the versions have ISO files packed into an archive to reduce the size for downloading. The latest version was released in September 2011.

I downloaded the GNOME version from the only server where you can get this distribution: msu.edu.

The unpacked image size of this version is about 2.9 Gb. First, I tried to create Live USB using the image. Neither the dd command nor Unetbootin were able to help me here. No surprise actually, because Live USB is not mentioned in the Project’s FAQ. Finally, I burnt the ISO image onto the DVD-RW.

So, the DVD-RW is in the optical drive of my Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo Pi 1505 laptop. Reboot. Choose to boot from DVD. Let’s go!

DragonFlyBSD: Desktop is not a target

This blog is called Linux notes from DarkDuck. As you may think from the name, it is dedicated to anything about Linux. And I write about using Linux-based operating systems on desktop from the point of view of regular user.

But from time to time I make exceptions. Today is one of these days. I will not tell you about Linux, but rather about an operating system quite close to GNU/Linux. It is BSD-based operating system DragonFlyBSD.
This operating system is a community supported distribution, initially forked from FreeBSD 4.8.
The current release of DragonFlyBSD is 2.10.1 and it was announced in April 2011.
There are 3 downloading options available for this stable release of DragonFlyBSD: CD, USB and GUI. I downloaded the last one, which offers to have a GUI on top of the operating system itself. The distribution comes as a 1.2 Gb bz2 archive which packs an .img file of 3.7 Gb. Basically, this saves you some time during the downloading. But, then you need to unpack the file on your local drive before using it. Generally speaking, this is not an issue since most modern archivers, both Windows- and Linux-based, support bz2 format.
Once I got the .img file on my hard disk, I used command dd to “burn” it to my 8 Gb USB stick.
So, the preparation steps are over. Let’s see what DragonFlyBSD has to offer. Reboot. Choose to boot my Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo Pi 1505 from USB. Let’s go!

LiveUSB and LiveCD: devil OpenBSD twins

There are not many times when I get my sight out of Linux and look into other free Operating System. Most often these are BSD-based operating systems.
Today is such a case. Even more, today I will tell you about two twin brothers from BSD family.

GhostBSD: not "just another BSD"

This article continues series of reviews of non-Linux operating systems which you can find existing. Another big family of OSes is based on BSD core. PCBSD, BSDanywhere, FreeSBIE... you can read more about them. It's time to start our today's adventure.

GhostBSD is GNOME implementation in FreeBSD system. Latest version is 2.0. It was released at the end of March 2011. This version is based on FreeBSD 8.2.
ISO image size of this OS distribution weights 1.1 Gb. Quite a lot as I need to note.
I have complained earlier that I only had 1 Gb USB stick which restricted me from testing large-volume distributions on my Compaq C300 laptop. Things are changing. I now have 8Gb USB stick, so can test distributions with ISO size >1Gb on same hardware. And GhostBSD could be the first candidate for this exercise. If...

If GhostBSD could be run from USB. Unfortunately, neither dd command nor Unetbootin helped with LiveUSB creation from ISO image here...
Forum, Documentation and FAQ sections are pretty much empty on official site. I have not found any information about LiveUSB creation process for GhostBSD in the Internet either.
Finally, I decided to look at DVD-RW option. This means the test could only be carried out on Toshiba L500 laptop. Expectedly, it would be a hard task for BSD since not every Linux distribution worked fine on that laptop so far. This laptop has Realtek 8191 WiFi card which is not the most popular among free open source software developers. But let's talk about this later.
To give the GhostBSD more chances, I also tried same DVD-RW on the HP Compaq 6710b laptop which has Intel 3945ABG wireless card.
Anyway, DVD-RW is ready. Reboot. Choose to boot from DVD. Let's go!

BSDanywhere: time machine

I have already written about BSD-based systems several times. I reviewed FreeSBIE and PCBSD.
They were system based on XFCE and KDE. These are more or less modern looking operating systems. Could I imaging myself back into 1990s when I was downloading another BSD-based system?
This time I will tell you about BSDanywhere. This is Live CD based on OpenBSD. Authors write on their site that this OS is not intended to be installed at all, and that it only works from CD. That is fine, because I was interested in Live systems from the very beginning.

Latest version of BSDanywhere has number 4.6 and was released in November 2009. Unfortunately, it is the last version because its single developer stopped any further activities with BSDanywhere and switched to OpenBSD itself.
So, iso image of BSDanywhere is downloaded and burnt onto CD-RW. Disk is in the optical drive of my Compaq C300 laptop. Reboot. Choose to boot from CD-RW. Let's go!

PC-BSD: Devil With Human Face

This blog is mostly about Linux. You can guess it from the name: Linux Notes from DarkDuck.
Linux world is huge. But it is not the only world of Operating Systems on the Open Source Software universe.  I have already visited "neighbours" from another world, world of BSD: FreeSBIE. That time I was impressed with both stability, speed and size. That's why I decided to have more reviews of BSD-based systems.
Today I will make another visit to same world.

PC-BSD is another system based on Berkeley System Distribution. It is targeting personal computers, as you can guess from it's name.
Official page of PC-BSD lists several mirrors where you can get distribution. ISO file of PC-BSD 8.2 weights 3.4 Gb.  The problem with file size it that I could not download it from any official mirror. All attempts to download it either via FTP or HTTP ended in timeout message after 30, 50 or 80% of download. Finally, I dowloaded it from torrent site. When I was downloading, there were more than 100 seeders in the warm, but only 1-2 could actually feed me the file. Unfortunately, I do not have USB stick big enough to get the ISO image onto. That means I had to use DVD-RW.
Anyway, all the troubles with getting the image are in the past. Image is downloaded. DVD-RW disk is burnt and placed into the drive of my Toshiba L500-19X laptop. Reboot. Choose to boot from DVD. Let's go!

FreeSBIE: Is Devil Live or Dead?

This blog is about Linux. I try different Operating systems based on Linux and share my opinion, whether it is good or not.
But is the Linux the only operating system in the world? Surely not! Shall I tell you few words about other systems? Why not?
I see your mouse pointer now rolling towards "close" icon on your window. You most likely think that this my post is about Windows or Mac. Stop, wait a moment. Of course not!
This my post is about BSD. BSD stands for "Berkeley Software Distribution". This is open source operating system developed by University of California in Berkeley. It is UNIX-based, which makes it relative to Linux. By the way, BSD is also "parent" for Mac OS X.

Actually BSD is family name for several Operating systems. It's like Linux has Debian, Slackware, Arch and others. Same way, BSD has FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, DragonFly... and FreeSBIE.
I think first and seconds of them are most known by people, while others are not so famous.
You maybe know that I prefer to test Live versions of Operating systems. Unfortunately, neither FreeBSD nor OpenBSD have Live versions. Their distributives are for installation purposes only. Though, FreeBSD site has a link to its clone with Live CD: FreeSBIE. Unfortunately, latest available version of FreeSBIE (2.0.1) is dated January 2007, which is just few months younger than my laptop Compaq C300. Let's have a look how well they can live together.
Image file for FreeSBIE weights just under 700 Mb, which means I can burn it to CD-RW for test purposes. OK, CD is ready and placed into the drive. Reboot. Let's go!