This is really sweet when you want to try out Linux if you’re on windows or Mac osX. You can even try another linux in your current linux distrubution by using this program which is called Qemu.
Currently I’m trying it under Window to try Suse and Ubuntu. It works great. Just install it, and it find automaticly the images. Then just type the number of it and viola it loads the OS while in your current OS 
Here a link: http://www.oszoo.org
You know how difficult it is to find a Linux in the U.S.? Let’s put it this way, I’ve used computers for 8 years and have never even seen a Linux.
Maybe you need to get out more. In the IT world Linux/BSD are common. Here where I work we have a quad PIII runing debian, a router running Red Hat, a DNS server running Red Hat, and a Firewall running OpenBSD.
I have looked for a Linux purpously because I hate windows and BG so I don’t think they sell them around my towns, the hardware and software is difficult to find here also. 
I wish I could find a Linux shop.
Err…what? That’s crazy talk!! You live in the most convenient, commercialized place in the Universe. Anyway, if you really want to try Linux, I believe that Ubuntu will mail you a distro for free.
Since everyone is on the topic of live CD’s, E-Live 0.4 from the Enlightenment project (the coolest window manager on Earth. Or will be when E17 is done anyway). It has:
Blender 2.4.1
Gimp 2.2.10 (slackers)
Cinerella 2.0
ZynSubAddFX with Jackd already set-up
Rosegarden (I think)
MPlayer with all the Win32 codecs already installed
Libdvdcss already installed
NVidia commercial drivers (don’t know about others)
Acidrip
and a bunch of other stuff.
This thing’s a walking lawsuit! They are definitely not in the US.
It’s under heavy development, so it is buggy. Windows users should feel perfectly at home with that aspect.
Hey, I’m sorry jackj, I guess I was being rude. Let me help you find a Linux distro. These instructions will work regardless where are you are in America:
You know the Starbucks down the street? The one right next to the McDonald’s? Kind of over by the Burger King next to the 7/11? Ya, right, by the Exxon kitty-corner from the AM/PM that’s in the parking lot of Walmart. The same Walmart that kind of blocks your view of Target. Exactly… right by the Jack in the Box near Pizza Hut over by Einsteins Bagels and Hollywood Video that’s trying to run the Blockbuster Video around the bend out of business. Next door to that is a Dominos Pizza, a KFC, and a Bank of America, in the parking lot that has CVS, Walgreen’s, and OSCO pharmacies. There, where the Safeway grocery store is, there should be a Circuit City, a Best Buy, a Comp USA, a Border’s Books and Music, a Barnes and Noble, and a Fry’s Electronics that all have Linux in one form or another on the shelf. When you’re done, go have a nice cold Pepsi product over at Denny’s and enjoy your view of Home Depot while you savior your new OS.
You’re welcome.
A commercialised? I don’t believe it is an open market. We have one store for everything, one restaraunt for a type of food and one for another. I have seen countless commercials for Windows and not a single for any other OS. America is not what it used to be.
If you’re just starting with linux I’d suggest suse or ubuntu. (just google 'em).
Thanks for all the replies. I dloaded Dream linux and menuetos.
dream linux works great and i’m going to work with mkdistro
menuetos didn’t work. Instead of booting it just displays a question mark("?")
I’m also dloading slax and I’ll experiment around.
again, thanks for all the replies and ideas.
I have looked for a Linux purpously because I hate windows and BG so I don’t think they sell them around my towns, the hardware and software is difficult to find here also. I wish I could find a Linux shop.
jackj, this is The Internet. The Internet, this is jackj.
Seriously though…why haven’t you just downloaded a copy of linux? You know it’s an open-source OS, right? (Please forgive me if I’m insulting your intellegence…I don’t know how much you know about it.)
I don’t believe it is an open market. We have one store for everything, one restaraunt for a type of food and one for another. I have seen countless commercials for Windows and not a single for any other OS. America is not what it used to be.
The good businesses get big because they’re good. That’s the way America has ALWAYS been. It’s a capitilist country and thats they way it works. Google, for example, was nothing not 5 years ago. Yahoo was where everyone went to search. Now Google is a giant! Soon, there will be a new google to replace them. The cycle will continue.
Up until now (now, having the need for a live linux to install on computers that arnt mine), I have been mainly a windows user, and have used suse on duel boot, and am now running a remote suse server.
In the past few days I have downloaded slax, Elive 0.4, dynebolic, a few variations of knoppix and am currently downloading dream linux SE. This is what I have found:
SLAX: Booted fine on an older machine, but wouldnt boot on either of the P4’s I tried it on. However, it has a great system for making customised live cds through a module system. The base system is only 184mb to dld, and then any extra programs you want installed, you just download .mo files supplied on the site, and if they arent there, use the instructions on how to create one, or request the program in the forum. To get these modules into the live cd, you simply extract the iso into a folder on your hdd, add the .mo files into the module folder, then remake the iso using the file supplied in either windows or linux (its a .bat in windows, havent tried in linux). This means someone like me with no programming knowlege can make my own live cd, and keep it down in size to make it run faster. The usability/speed was pretty good as well. It would be nice if the kernal had cluster support (like openmosix).
Elive 0.4: Havent had a chance to test on multiple computers, but on booting the enlightment 17 desktop (beta version, but had no issues, and gives the choise of 16 or 17 on boot, easy for beginners as well), found that it had a really cool interface, and still ran at a pretty good speed. They call it the desktop of the future, and if they get it all running sweet, Id love to try get it on suse or something. If I remember rightly it was the only live os that had blender 2.41 as well. However, I have not found any utilities to be able to customise the programs installed. Once this OS gets better known, it may develop a few more tools that would be very useful.
dynebolic: This os was ok, and booted on all computers I tested it on, but wasnt one of my fav’s. Wasnt 100% keen on the desktop, and although there were tools for editing the live cd, they looked like they would be complicated, and were only for old versions. I liked the cluster support that they had though, and I think if there was a way of changing programs installed etc, then I would definently look further into this one. Another thing that was ok was that you could save the main files on a usb key or external hdd, but you need plenty of room, and this wouldnt help in my case if I want multiple computers in a renderfarm, as I need to be able to just duplicate a lot of live cds.
Knoppix: One thing I loved about knoppix is that it came with a howto on editing it. Although the process looks more in depth than the modules of slax, my guess is that you could do more things like update the kernal and desktop etc, although I havent had a chance to try modifications yet. When doing the modifications, there are instructions on how to use apt to get updates etc, so this would give you the oppertunity to rebuild an up to date version when ever you want. Since blender releases a new version reasonably often, I think this would be good. Now I gotta work out how to get dr queue working in it 
The other good thing is that there are already custumised versions which I have downloaded some of, but havent had the chance to try out. Maybe it would be sweet to start a graphic suite version of knoppix that gets re-released whenever knoppix, blender or another main conponent is updated. Would have to look again into the options of getting a version that can be installed onto the computer, but if I remember rightly, there is a way to install knoppix onto the computer, but as far as a live cd goes, it seems ok.
Dream: As I am writing this post, I am downloading dream. However, from looking at the website, there are a few good and a few bad things I can already see. It looks as though there is a tool included to make mods to dream, so this should be good, depending on the usability of the tool. It also has a studio edition for download, although I think there was a few more graphic programs they could have included in it as default, but hey, they dont really need to if we can edit it ourselves 
The other thing I loved is that there are dvd and case labels you can print, which is one thing that I really would love to see in other versions… at least I thought this was great until I saw that they weren’t in english!! In fact there are a few parts of the site that arent in english, even though I was ment to be on their english site. If you go into the forum, there is only one english room, and there is only one post in it, and no replies. I had a look at the screenshots, and they look ok. Looks like this OS is relativly new, but it does look to have potential for sure.
I havent bothered looking at live suse or any Linux versions that are designed for hdd installs, as they dont seem to have any handy tools for modifying it for the latest blender, other video programs etc.
Disclaimer: This post contains only my point of view after a brief look at the various systems. It is not a profecional point of view… But let me know if I am wrong with anything 
Thanks,
MicWit
PS. Sorry about the long post, but I hope it helps. Oh, and if anyone has done any editing in knoppix, would they be interested in trying to add/remove programs to compile a video studio version?
Those things like menuotOS and even damn small aren’t really that practical. You keep forgetting that the goal is to be able to run Blender. Though it might be possible to get it running on menuotOS and it will run on Damn Small, it won’t be 3d accelerated. That means that anything above a few 100 polys, will be slow (might be exaggerated). You can almost forget about subdivision modeling characters, let alone animating them. Remember, you need 3d accelerated drivers for the 3d cards and (I may be wrong) but you won’t be able to fit very many 3d card drivers on a 1.44mb floppy, and as of yet Damn Small still uses vesa or vesafb (which means no hardware 3d).
heres an idea use somthing like bartpe its a preinstalled windows on a cd you can put blender 3d and anyother programs you like (it might take a little bit of work to get it working) but it does seem like it would work http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/ theres a link u can check it out for your self ill give it a go when i get some time
I see where you´re coming from Evan, and I´m somewhat inclined to agree with you.
A few notes though:
I´ve tried Blender without hardware accelleration, it´s possible to work on 30-40 K poly´s fairly smooth with it, and you can use layers to avoid those 900 K scenes 
while working.
Most Blender users on the planet seem to use and favour Nvidia
simply because it seems to be the best 3d accelerator with
Blender. Maybe it wouldn´t pose the biggest challenge to write
an Nvidia driver for it? They have Voodoo-3 support and I think
other drivers are available.
I don´t know if you´ve noticed it - but there´s even people in here trying to port Blender to WindowsCE (and it has been done before…version 2.04 - Ipaq).
The thing is, menuetOS can fit on 1.44 mb, and it boots in seconds, heck…with the right mainboard…it´d probably fit in a flash-rom and boot straight away. Maybe I´m just too much of a Nerd , but it IS feasible. It´s fun to play with these things and thoughts.
That said…
How practical all these things in this thread is - is an entirely different story imho.
Because of Blenders portability and size, I take Blender with me everywhere I go anyway.
Right now I´m attending an “graphicians” upgrade training course here in Denmark and I downloaded Blender to our machines in seconds, and where up and running in…seconds.
When I´m at a railwaystation, at an internet-cafe…I had Blender
up and running in seconds…they wondered how on earth I managed to install 3D-design software on their “secure” netcomputers, but to their amazement…Blender is small enough to just live in it´s own directory, usb-key…and run with configs from it´s own dir…etc… no hassle at all, for anyone!
Not really an issue
I agree that blender is very portable, and that it probably could be put on a usb key etc with a basic os without any issues, but thats not really what I was aiming for (Im not sure about others). I think the 3 main features wanted in this post are:
a) to be able to use blender on a computer where we cant install/run anything from the hdd or over the network in windows (not because I cant, but because Im not allowed). The live cd is the solution I see to this, as then live linux can set up a network/renderfarm, without needing admin rights on the computers, as long as it is able to boot from cd. In the case of the render farm, something lighter may be nice to free up resources, maybe even as light as making a cluster with command line nodes.
b) to have all grapic programs possible in the one os. This would also be handy being a live linux, as I dont believe there would be a problem fitting a huge selection of opensource graphic programs on a cd with a decent os (with a decent desktop) once a lot of the games/office programs etc are stripped out.
c) If it is a live cd, it needs a large compatibility with hardware. I dont think it would be worth developing a live cd unless it has proper support for hardware (ie some of the smaller os’s dont). This is one reason that I believe knoppix or the like would be a great base. They can take care of the hardware compatibility problems etc
Im not sure what other people would want out of a “graphic suite os” (I think that would be a better description than “blender OS”), so everybody suggest what they may want out of it. If I get the time (plus the time to learn the howto’s of live linux compiling), Id like to try giving something a go, or maybe there is someone who already has the knowledge who may want to give it a go?
MicWit
Hi the big problem with a real linux “blender os” is the speed of the X-server. In my opinion it would be better to dump that old graphic concept and have a fast single user graphic api.
www.dreamlinux.com.br
DreamLinux STUDIO EDITION
That comes with Blender, Gimp, Inkscape, Inventor, Jahshaka, Kino, audacity, etc… and looks like MacOSX, using a light desktop - XFCE with ROX … pretty cool!!
They have english and portuguese version!!
Very interesting! I’m going to try that.
As for a Blender OS… That would just defeat the purpose of portability. However, if you have a dedicated 3d design and rendering computer then Linux is probably your best bet. Windows will require you to reinstall it about once every 6 months to a year… not a good place to work on your 16 month long project.
OK, can we stop calling this a “blender OS”? people are really getting the wrong idea, and arent reading the posts. Can we call it a “Creative OS”, or Linux Creative Edition What I want out of the os is to have all the graphic tools I need for video, audio, vector image and image manipulation in the one live os so that I can boot it on computers that I am not allowed to install on.
I also agree however that the X11 desktop is too resource intensive. I still havent had a chance to burn dream linux, but it does sound good. From what Ive heard it sounds resource efficient, and because of the editing tool, you can update the image, so that you can have the latest version of everything. I do want a few more programs in it I think (eg, clustering ability, render farm support), and am hoping to be able to easily add these features. Has anyone tried using the editing tool supplied? How easy is it to use?
The main thing that Im worried about with dream is the support for people that only speak english, Im hoping that their site gets some vast improvements for the english site, and the forum expands for the english section.
MicWit
This is a very good discussion, that we are having here
well, first thing is that why do we need a separate os for 3D ?
I think,
we need it for better HA rendering (realtime), for faster calculations (floating point), and that can handle the data structures that we need in graphics (trees / graphs / etc). For increasing the raytracing time, the most effective performance upgrade can be possible, if rendering engine is faster, we should use some thing like the Giga polygon crop (xsi).
things like croquet, OpenInventor, menuetos, dreamlinux, … are coool
if anyone is having a wacky idea of designing a 3d os then, you can count me in, as I had studied OS in my engg. (that might come in handy)
keep discussing …
I don’t know much about linux but awhile ago I was looking on linux.com and I stumbled across a version of linux called Grafpup Linux. It boots off a cd and includes Gimp, Scribus, Inkscape, and a few other graphics programs preinstalled.
Here’s the link: http://www.grafpup.com/
I downloaded it and tried it once. It seems pretty fast (whole thing runs in ram).
Only downside - NO Blender. I assume it could be installed separately though.