Back from a successful distro tour...

[zxr250cc]

Hi all,

I have not been in here in quite some time and am running this Live at the moment. I am thinking to install this on an X1 Carbon as an alternate laptop distro. Some of you might remember me from some time back. I have been using Linux Mint for several years and decided to see this Plasma desktop with a Mageia flavor. I have several ThinkPads these days and like to see what is up to date with formerly used software.

I looked around and noticed several names I remember and it still feels nice to be in here.

I am planning to run a set up with either 16GB or 32GB of RAM and no hard drive with either a Live DVD or a Live USB drive to have good system speed but not have residual data on a system. Anyone tried this?

Cheers

[benmc]

Hi and welcome back.

I am planning to run a set up with either 16GB or 32GB of RAM and no hard drive with either a Live DVD or a Live USB drive to have good system speed but not have residual data on a system. Anyone tried this?

no, but something similar. put the Live.iso on a small HDD partition and grub boot to it. all the speed and reliability of a HDD, with the protection of a RO FS.
Persistence can be added with a 2nd partition if you so desire for additional applications.

[zxr250cc]

Hi all,

That is an interesting idea and not what I had thought of in actual use. In the new paranoid USA I was thinking of it not retaining any data of any sort when power is removed. Your read only idea would address that mostly. I would also have no back up battery for the system or any way to retain any data on the system so it is indeed like a flash drive that only flashes into oblivion when power is removed. In testing various Live distributions I have used a normal laptop with 16GB and found that it is using less than 20-30% of the available RAM when running, even after full update patches are applied. All of that is 'up in the air' so to speak as it is in RAM. I will study your ideas...

I guess I should find the Matrix screen saver I used when using openSUSE in the past to complete the paranoid look aspects of such a system.

Cheers

[bluepanther69]

Hi and welcome back.

I am planning to run a set up with either 16GB or 32GB of RAM and no hard drive with either a Live DVD or a Live USB drive to have good system speed but not have residual data on a system. Anyone tried this?

no, but something similar. put the Live.iso on a small HDD partition and grub boot to it. all the speed and reliability of a HDD, with the protection of a RO FS.
Persistence can be added with a 2nd partition if you so desire for additional applications.

This sounds awesome, I have thought of this idea but never tried it. Will be useful for specific tasks on the web where you want to keep your system as clean as possible.

[morgano]

I put together some tricks for Live systems
https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Persistent_live_systems

[benmc]

This sounds awesome, I have thought of this idea but never tried it. Will be useful for specific tasks on the web where you want to keep your system as clean as possible.

requirements: a btrfs partition of sufficient size labelled the same as the Live.iso containing the extracted the contents of the Live.iso. (i.e, the partition replicates a Live USB)

zxr250cc : sorry for the thread hijack!

[zxr250cc]

Hi all,

Your page offers a great deal of information. Good stuff and you clearly worked on that quite a bit.

I note the btrfs file system use. I have used that in the past when development was active. However, wasn't that dropped in use somewhat by many as a result of the murder charges and conviction of the creator? With the author in jail no support was possible? Am I remembering the wrong file system? I am not trying to be a jerk, just thinking of something that seems to be in my memory. (Now that I posted this I remember is was reiser file system. Ooopss)

I may make one of those with encryption and check it out on a USB 3.0 drive. Having it boot with ease is a good thing. Thanks for the reply, you have not hijacked the thread...

Cheers

[morgano]

Yeah that was alot of work...

Also not that Live with persistence can also be booted without persistence active, for backup/experiment/repair/paranoia...
https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Persistent_l ... ersistence

Note that also USB3 drives can be slow. You can test https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Testing_storage_speed

[zxr250cc]

Hi all,

With my original thought on this, part of it was the speed of reaction as it will be the speed of the RAM and not dependent on USB/SSD/HD access times and then action. The secondary thought was complete loss of any and all data when power is shut down or removed. I had been considering doing that with a laptop but might choose a desktop with some fast AMD CPU for maximum speed and it would be easier to get 32GB or more of RAM for that depending on the MB I choose. I have been one of those guys who builds his own desktops and have used AMD chips for a couple of decades. I even made an internet cafe once with all AMD chips for CPU and then Windows XP as no one wanted Linux in the computers in Mindanao.

Silly Rabbit, Linux is not for kids! Just kidding. (Old American breakfast cereal commercial tie in there.)

Food for thought, all in all.

Cheers