Free bootable software for linux

BCCD - Bootable Cluster CD was created to facilitate instruction of parallel computing aspects and paradigms. Part of the difficulty instructors face is lack of dedicated resources to explore distributed computing aspects lack of time to preconfigure and test the supporting environment.

The BCCD image addresses this problem by providing a non-destructive overlay way to run a full-fledged parallel computing environment on just about any workstation-class system...Were happy to say that this now includes the MAC too!

The BCCD does share similarities with a few diskless solutions for clustering, such as the Warewulf project, the thin-OSCAR approach, Cluster Knoppix (only an openMosix system, no MPI/LAM/PVM build tools, ...), and so on. This is definitely the trend in HPC. But the main differences are that the BCCD will always fit in your pocket, be highly customizable for specific institutions needs, and will always be geared toward education and not dedicated clusters.

The "gar" build system also sets the BCCD apart from other projects. "gar" is a mix between BSDs "ports" system, Linux from scratch, and gentoo Linux. With gar, you can build an entire BCCD image from net-fetched sources in about two hours (assuming you have a primed ccache!).

The BCCD is also distinctly different from NPACI-Rocks, OSCAR, Cluster in a box or other type of mass-imaging clustering project for two reasons:

1. Its a non-destructive overlay on top of the current hardware. Once a system is rebooted, it reverts back to its original state. It is intended to be booted "over top" of a currently-configured Windows/Linux/BSD/etc. system.
2. Its focus in on educational aspects of High-Performance Computing (HPC) instead of the HPC core. Students will have a much better appreciation and understanding of how to tweak an MTU setting or wire the topology across a cluster if they understand how a distributed computation is laid out! Emphasis is placed upon building, configuring, and running distributed applications.

makebootfat is a command line utility able to create bootable USB disks for Linux and Windows using the FAT filesystem and syslinux.

makebootfat is the most advanced tool available able to make bootable USB disks. Its able to autodetect/partition/format/populate the USB disk in a single step without any user interaction.

Its also able to create disk images which are compatibles with all the three standards USB-FDD, USB-HDD and USB-ZIP at the same time.

To use makebootfat you probably need also syslinux or FreeDOS

The Real-Time Application Interface is a hard real-time extension to the Linux kernel, contributed in accordance with the Free Software guidelines.
It provides the features of an industrial-grade RTOS, seamlessly accessible from the powerful and sophisticated GNU/Linux environment.
The bootable CD-ROM provided on this website allows you to determine whether your systems hardware is capable of being used as a hard real-time system.
Furthermore, this website provides information about the real-time performance of various systems, which might help you when buying hardware for building hard real-time systems.
The LiveCD is based on RTAI (Realtime Application Interface) and provides easy-to-use menus that guide users through running the test suite and submitting the results and system configuration information to an Internet database.
Enhancements:
- Fixed issue where the per-loop max and min latency were stored in the database instead of the overall max and min latency... Added support for Gigabit Ethernet (requested by Phil Nitschke)
- Reduced ISO size to 8MB

Borg Live is a bootable CD-Rom containing a GNU/Linux operative system, that permits you to boot directly from the CD, without the need of an hard disk installation .
The system is based on Slax , the Slackware Linux Live CD.
Main features:
- Kernel 2.4.24 with Openmosix clustering support
- X Graphical system
- XFCE Window Manager
To use the Live CD , you need:
A Computer PC-Compatible ( not a MAC one )
A Bios that permit to boot from the CD drive
A Pentium III ( or AMD equivalent ) or better CPU
64 Mb RAM
A CD-Rom or DVD unit
A Mouse ( better if PS2 or USB )
# Instructions for the first boot
1) enable BIOS to boot from Cd-rom
2) Insert the Cd
3) Take a look at the boot options , just when the image appears , pressing F1
4) ( Write down your desired options if any , then ) Press Enter
5) Login as root , no password

loonix-live is a bootable CD containing the Linux operating system. loonix-live runs Linux directly from the CD (or USB) without installing.


The Live CD described here is based on the gentoo Linux distribution and uses the Unification File System (also known as unionfs), allowing a read-only filesystem to behave as a writable one, saving all changes to memory.

loonix-live was created with the help of Tomas Matejiceks Linux live scripts. Tomas is also the developer of slax a slackware based live cd.

WOMP! is a micro linux distribution focussed on multimedia. Basically, it takes only 13 to 30 MB depending on the selected options on a bootable CD, and allow playing a wide range of multimedia files (video/audio/image) without installing any software on the computers hard drive.
Additionnally, WOMP! can also be installed on the hard drive either to run in memory just like a bootable CD, or to run from a read-only loopback file which is interesting for machines with low memory. It can the be booted either by a floppy bootdisk or by a bootable CD (in that case it will only take 1.5MB on the CD leading all remaining space for multimedia files.
WOMP! uses the FrameBuffer for playing videos and X for interacting with the user. Hardware acceleration is provided by vidix. Cards that support vidix include nearly all ATI and Matrox cards, also NVidia in last release. Nevertheless even not accelerated, provided the processor is sufficiently recent there will be no problems playing divx files in fullscreen.
Main features:
Play DVD
- Select title
- Select angle
- Select language
- Select subtitle
Play Video CD
Play Audio CD
Play Video files
- A wide range of video formats and codecs are supported, non exhaustive list include Avi, Mov, Matroska, Ogm for containers, DivX5, XviD etc for codecs.
Subtitles :
- Text subtitles are rendered with some fixed fonts or with scalable truetype fonts.
- Subtitles from Matroska (mkv) and Ogm are availables
- External text subtitles
- Vobsub subtitles are also supported
- Play Audio files (mp3, ogg etc)
- View Pictures (jpeg, png, tiff, gif etc)
- Playlist management for video, audio and pictures.
- Scan CDs and local partitions for media files
- Internationalization : English, french, Czech, Spanish, Russian, Portuguese
- Network configuration by dhcp or manual
- Support for ppp internet connection
- Browse the web either with w3m (text based browser) or with MozillaFirebird
- Mount remote shares nfs or smb(windows shares)
Hardware :
- Support usb-storage devices (USB keys/pen cameras zip)
- Support most soundcard either by Alsa or OSS
- Mouse : usb,ps2,serial
- PCMCIA support for network and modem
- Support most PCI Network adapter
Many Installation possibility :
- Run in memory from bootable CD
- Run in memory from hardisk or other support
- Run within a read-only loopback file for low memory machines
- etc
Enhancements:
- Very minor update -> added russian and portuguese translation.
- To update womp-0.6-beta2, replace the wompmem.bz2 file by the one in this release.
- To update womp-0.6-beta2-devel, unpack ( tar xjf ) update0.6beta3.tar.bz2 in the rootbase.
- Will add the loopback file when I have time!

Bugnux is a complete Linux (mandriva) distribution that runs from a single bootable CD and runs entirely in RAM. Bugnux contains an extensive set of Open Source software testing tools that can be used for functional and performance testing.

Standalone Tools to test GUI applications and Mozilla Firefox extensions pre-installed to aid in web application testing have been packaged. This virtually can turn any PC into black-box testing device without having to install any software. Bugnux also contains a set of stress and load testing tools that can be used to assist in testing performance of web applications.

The technique to allow bugnux to boot and run from RAM is based on a project called PCLinuxOS. PCLinuxOS is a bootable CD with a collection of GNU/Linux software, automatic hardware detection, and support for many graphics cards, sound cards, SCSI and USB devices and other peripherals. PCLinuxOS can be used as a Linux demo, educational CD, rescue system, or adapted and used as a platform for commercial software product demos. It is not necessary to install anything on a hard disk. Mastering of this CD uses on-the-fly decompression which allows for up to 2 GB of stored data.

Starting with the 1.1 version of bugnux, we have started completely from scratch by installing a basic PCLinuxOS installation then adding the software testing functionality afterwards. This allowed us to have more control and understanding of what is on the CD.

IOSN Live CD is an bootable CD that boots into a usable and fully featured Linux Desktop. In addition to standard FOSS productivity and multimedia applications, it is bundled with a User Guide to Using the Linux Desktop in print and multimedia formats as well as several IOSN Free/Open Source Software Primers.

Note: This is a beta release.