Wish List


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Revision as of 07:16, 25 February 2008 by 65.8.77.79 (Talk)

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A GUI based remastering application/script, that embodies all the necessary steps to produce a new LIVECD or installation CD, just clicking on what packages I want and don´t. -)

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I have a business need to open up the company intranet to employees' home PCs -- basically for telecommuting purposes of non-geeks. However, we safely presume that those PCs are already part of somebody's botnet and we don't want them to pollute our otherwise relatively clean network. Unfortunately it's just too expensive to send company-owned PCs home with employees and to maintain them properly. Therefore I would like to see someone put together the following Linux distro or explain to me how I would roll it myself. (Is there some kind of GUI tool that would let me pick and choose the individual modules and packages (and their dependencies) to be rolled into a custom Linux? Maybe there is one somewhere, I just don't know what it's called.)

The distro I'm looking for (or to build) would:

a) MALAYSIAN VERSION KNOPPIX LIVECD b) Boot the widest possible number of home PCs, assuming that the end user can be trusted to boot from CD or USB and his children can help him set the BIOS for auto-boot from USB, c) Upon boot, auto-launch a VPN session to the company intranet as a prerequisite for doing anything, d) Run a GUI desktop that will NOT grant the user the ability to see or to configure "system" or OS-specific parameters, e) Restrict the sites to which the user's browser may visit to a predefined list of "company" and "business partner" sites, f) Run a firewall that makes the PC appear to be a "black hole" to the barbarians on the Internet g) Run Open Office, a browser, imap mail client and some custom company-only apps. h) No IM, no chat, no network-aware daemons other than those already mentioned, no developer tools -- a "no frills" workstation. i) Boot and execute from a 2GB USB drive or smaller, j) Boot from a live CD if necessary, but run from the USB drive for obvious performance reasons. k) Does NOT touch the underlying PC's hard drive(s) in any way. l) Would not be useful for anything except talking to the company intranet and its systems.

Thus the employee would boot this distro for work purposes and when finished, would reboot into Windows (or whatever) as he normally would for his personal use. In return for letting the company borrow his PC for an hour or two per day, he could telecommute and have a life.

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  • a Real windowz replacement Desktop Linux:
    • should run on any machine starting from 386/486 cpu with 32mb ram...
    • Xinerama
    • tinyX or other small X
    • with wine (or cedega?) preinstalled and configured, ready to run many windowz progz
    • with rdesktop, vnc, ica client, and other clients ready to connect to any terminal server and can also act as one.
    • preinstalled all small apps for everyday use: browser, mail, office suite, etc...
    • clustering will be great here. so that less used pc can give their cpu power to other pc that is heavily used.
      • i'd try lots of so-called small distro, like damnsmall, puppy, feather, etc... none of them runs on my pentium I 150mhz, 32mb ram, 1gig hdd
  • Would be great if Knoppix could be modified to save user data back to the CD-RW or DVD that it boots from, ala Puppy Linux (http://www.goosee.com/puppy/) (I know there's not much room on the CD but it would be cool if bookmarks, passwords, form information, etc. could be saved (to a USB key would be even better.)
  • NTFS Support!!!
    • i think it's already a lot distro support ntfs.
  • How about adding Tor (http://tor.eff.org/) functionality to the CD?
    • Actually, I successfully did a remastering whith working tor + privoxy + squid, and it was easy to do it... (public version will be ready to download in october at streambox.org).
  • I think a knoppix live CD configured as a webcam monitor would be a very useful tool. Use motion detection to trigger snapshots and either archive output to HD, use ftp to transfer to another server or email off site. If anyone already knows a distro that will do this then please comment here or let me know via /c/o/n/s/u/l/t/./j/s/@gmail.com (remove /'s) Thanks.
    • if you dont mind you can use a hardware, like asus wl500g, which also powered by linux inside.
  • A basic knoppix with hlds (half-life dedicated server) pre-installed, and all configs pointed to the floppy drive (they'll only need to be read once anyway, you can swap configs easily without recompiling.
  • I would like to see a "safe internet client" customization, that allows to turn any PC with an internet connection into a public internet terminal, where different users can surf the internet, check email, chat IRC etc. without compromising the PCs harddisk. All personal data (emails, notes, downloads)should be storable on a USB Stick or Floppy (if Floppyspace is enough). A nice option would be the use of the usb stick/floppy as personal boot device with automatic logon for that particular user. It would be important to have the option to lock the cd-drive with a supervisor password, so nobody can boot the original OS from harddisk. (Wilhelm Koehler)
    • Wilhelm - have you tried Kannotix - I would say that that would meet your spec pretty closely.
    • Think you are asking too much re locking CD - you would be better off disabling the other OS or removing it
  • I'd like a Knoppix CD with NTFS support (ro is fine), NWFS support (if anyone can do it!), and Mondo/Mindi. This would make a seriously handy DR-generator. I'm in the process of generating this myself, but it's my first go at remastering Knoppix, I'm doing it on a *very* slow machine, and I suspect someone else will be able to do a much better job ;-). Vic.
  • I'd like a Knoppix CD with gmailfs support. Ideally there would be a costumization tool that asks you for one or more accounts and passwords and adds them to the CD image before you burn it so that each CD would access and mount its owners' accounts automatically, read the configuration from there, store it back there, and store the /home directory for each user in his own gmail account. Also perhaps, to protect the account, the CD should ask for a password (perhaps the same as for the account) before allowing any logins. Of course, one would have to configure the network connection before one can mount any gmail account, but I'm sure someone who -unlike me- knows enough of this matters will be able to find a way.
  • Would be nice to have a complete Windows Repair (NTFS support of course) Disk. Being one that works on alot of computers, I hate Windows PE (it's a windows live-cd). Those who have used it know it sucks. The only reason I use it is because I have to if I want to change user passwords, edit the registry, run Spybot, virus scan, you know...deal with all the problems that plauge Windows. Like if there was a way to mount the Windows drive and run progs on it like Wine does...tbat would be the perfect Windows Repair CD. And what's funnier that being able to say "yea, the only way to fix Windows is with Linux."
  • A dedicated electronics design and development distribution, from circuit design, schematic capture, PC board layout, to embedded software development, with cross-compilers including bootloaders, etc.
  • A Knoppix LiveCD including a good representation of the accounting and financial programs available for Linux, and useful tutorials, documentation and links to web financial/accounting resources. Accountix, perhaps?!