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FAQ's
Why was Virtual-Linux created?
Who created Virtual-Linux?
How does Virtual-Linux relate to other version of Linux?
How is the next version (Virtual-Linux 1.1) going to be different from 1.0 ?
Is there anything I can do to help with this project?
Are there any know issues/bugs with Virtual-Linux?
1.Why was Virtual-Linux created?
Well, I was pretty tired with the silly bootdisks you can download, plus I wanted to learn more about the Linux core. I then decided to build a ramdisk based system of my own, and after a while I ended up with a cdbased rescue system with a builtin firewall.
Then, after having tested a few of the existing big cdbootable systems that were very slow and had very poor performance, a new project started to take shape in my mind.
After some late nights investigating some existing soloutions, my own concept was born :
- Use a commercial distribution as base.
- Implement as much as possible of the original functions without many hardware/memory requirements.
- Put as much software as possible on one cd.
- Make it easy to configure / Autodetect as much as possible.
- Implement live filesystem compression.
- *-* Ramdisk Compression.
This approach seems to work far better than expected. Here are some statistics on the downloads that Virtual-Linux has had!
- 0.7.1 was downloaded 17,000 times
- 1.0 was downloaded 46,000
- 1.1 was downloaded ? ~~will let you know :)
PLUS------
1.0 shipped with 2 popular US computermagazines in about a million copies !
2. Who created Virtual-Linux?
Marten Sundling also known as "Crixz". Crixz lives in Bollnas, Sweden. His "day" job is as a remote Administrator/Dispatcher for several companies.
3. How does Virtual-Linux relate to other version of Linux?
Virtual-Linux is base upon Mandrake Linux and uses the same GPL as Mandrake. This distrobution uses a 20 megabyte ramdisk that serves as the system root, and the rest of the operating system is linked from a cloop compressed system image. The cloop compression is the biggest difference from other similar distrobutions. It allows for great speed and also enables 1.66 gb of data to fit onto one cd-rom.
4. How is the next version (Virtual-Linux 1.1) going to be different from 1.0 ?
It will be based on Mandrake 8.1 vs 8.0. Some key changes/features/improvements are:
- Not runnable in x mode with less than 64 mb ram, the new kde version seems to be a memory hog. You can get it to start, but everything slows down to a crawl...so it's not advisable to run with less than the 64 mb of ram.
- Revised scripting, previous problems whith load/save of settings solved .
- Bootproblems on bad cdroms seems to be fixed. :)
- Dhcp client fixed.
- Network configuration now works better, still SLOW though.
- Should now boot even on a scsi cdrom if a suitable module exists.
- Removed the auto-extending ramdisk and created a fixed 30 mb with E2compr compression.
5. Is there anything I can do to help with this project?
There is a need for programmers. If you are interested in helping please send me an email. The need right now is for programmers, however in the future we may need some beta testers so keep checking back. :)
The project is coordinated through SourceForge.net You can read more about Virtual-Linux there also.
6. Are there any know issues/bugs with Virtual-Linux?
I have added configuration for xservers for every card supported by mandrake so even yours should work, but the card autodetection sometimes seems to hang. It actually does NOT. However it can take up to 1 minute in some cases, depending on your equipment and processor speed.
Be patient !
Exactly the same goes for Nic autodetect, the screen goes blank for about 30 seconds during module load....please do not mess up everything by hitting keys randomly or whatever ... just wait instead ... :)
Be patient !
Problems or questions........email me. Enjoy....Crixz
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