Free debian vs ubuntu software for linux

Booting Ubuntu To RAM is an article aims to document the process of creating a customized Ubuntu that loads an image from the hard disk to RAM, then boots an entire Ubuntu session out of RAM. It is intended for intermediate to advanced Ubuntu users who are familiar with the shell, and may have limited experience customizing the livecd (LiveCDCustomization) and shell scripting. We will customize a LiveCD and copy it to the hard drive, and make a few modifications to bootup scripts so that it copies to RAM via our good friend tmpfs.
WARNING: The author asserts that this procedure works for him, but cannot guarantee that this procedure works for anyone else. Although this procedure is meant to be 100% safe, it is feasible that there may be mistakes, or a chance of misunderstanding the instructions in a manner that causes loss of data. Please make a backup and do not attempt on mission critical systems. Read through this article thoroughly, and do not attempt if you do not comprehend or feel comfortable about any of the instructions!
CAUTION: I hope this is intuitively obvious, but Ill humor you and state it bluntly: Changes you make under the live session are NOT saved and WILL BE LOST when you reboot or shut down. Dont save anything important to the "home directory" and expect it to still be around! If you want to save data permanently, mount a permanent medium (such as your hard drive), plug in a thumbdrive, or use some network functionality built into Ubuntu to save your data to a non-volatile destination.
There are many cases where one would like to boot Ubuntu to RAM:
- Performance: The desktop performance is dramatically improved. A 400MB squashed filesystem in RAM, that holds 1200MB of data, is read back on a 1.6GHz Core Duo in about 3 seconds, including decompression time.
- Power, Noise, Durability: Although modern hard disks dont use much power compared to other system components, this may still be important for some. In laptops, hard disks are often the noisiest components, so this setup can reduce system noise. With the hard disk spun down, a laptop can potentially withstand greater shocks without damage.
- Abrupt poweroff: Since the hard disk is only momentarily used in read-only mode during boot, then never touched again, there are few or no negative consequences of an abrupt poweroff. If a system is used where power is inconsistent, or the system is regularly used in a context where fast shutoffs are required, this is very handy.
- Privacy: Anything you do in this session are lost when you reboot or power off. This is great for kiosks or other systems where permanent modification are not desired. (Note that by default the livecd user has full sudo access, so potentially a malicious user can still make permanent changes by mounting the hard drive and following this HOWTO)

Debian Live is a Debian SID Live CD.

The Debian Project is an association of individuals who have made common cause to create a free operating system. This operating system is called Debian GNU/Linux, or simply Debian for short. Debian systems currently use the Linux kernel. Linux is a completely free piece of software started by Linus Torvalds and supported by thousands of programmers worldwide.

Of course, the thing that people want is application software: programs to help them get what they want to do done, from editing documents to running a business to playing games to writing more software. Debian comes with over 8000 packages (precompiled software that is bundled up in a nice format for easy installation on your machine) - all of it free. Its a bit like a tower.

At the base is the kernel. On top of that are all the basic tools. Next is all the software that you run on the computer. At the top of the tower is Debian -- carefully organizing and fitting everything so it all works together.

debian-updates is a simple script that sends an email or displays console messages if any relevant Debian security updates become available. debian-updates is ideal for running from cron.

debian-builder is a simple Perl script which is designed to rebuild a Debian package from its source. Some distributions such as Gentoo are focussed upon building packages from source code to give speed benefits, but that is not the aim of this program.
Ive been experimenting with a version of GCC which is patched to include stack smashing (buffer overflow) protection. One common approach to this problem is to use a modified compiler which will perform some kind of safety checking in potentially vulnerable source code - this usually involves applying a patch to the GCC compiler.
Usage:
Usage is fairly straight-forward and obvious simply run "debian-builder foo" to rebuild package foo.
If all goes well you will see some progress reports (more with --verbose) and a .deb file should eventually appear in /var/cache/debian-builder/deb.
The script will take care of installing all the packages which are required to build the named package, and then removing anything it installed afterwards.
Installation:
Simply download the tarball and run make install, alternatively you may download it from my apt-getable repository.
Enhancements:
- The handling of build dependencies is now much improved, allowing a greater number of Debian packages, including complex ones such as GNU Emacs and Mozilla Firefox.

Debian Live Etch is a Live Linux distribution based on Debian 4.0. Although Debian Live is about creating your own customized Live system, we offer some prebuilt images.

Currently, builds for the three desktop environments GNOME, KDE and Xfce as well as the standard system are available. Builds based on testing are created every week and the ones based on unstable are build daily.

UbuntuTrinux seeks to integrate elements (and code, where appropriate) of Trinux with the Debian/Ubuntu mkinitramfs infrastructure to allow easy development and packaging Ubuntu binary (and ultimately package and repository) compatible ramdisk distributions using recent 2.6.x kernels. As before, the most common use is network security monitoring and analysis.

Trinux: A Linux Security Toolkit was a ramdisk-based Linux distribution that was under active development from 1998-2003.

Debian From Scratch is really two systems:

1) a bootable CD for repairing Linux systems or installing Debian;
2) the program that generates the CDs that are used for #1.

You can expect the following from your DFS CD:

* Bootable CD featuring the GNU Grub bootloader. Can be used to boot hard disk partitions even if no hard disk bootloader is present.

* Kernel and userland support for all major filesystems, including ext2, ext3, JFS, XFS, ReiserFS, FAT, VFAT, NTFS, ISO9660, CramFS, tmpfs, and more. Userland support for Reiser4.

* Kernel and userland support for different disk layout schemes including standard partitioning, Logical Volume Manager 2 (LVM2), software RAID, etc.

* Full recovery tools runnable directly from CD, including:

- Filesystem utilities for all mazjor filesystems, including undeletion tools for ext2

- Partition editors (fdisk, cfdisk, parted)

- Text editors (nano, joe, vim, emacs)

- C, Perl, Python, and OCaml development environments. Enough to configure and compile a new kernel and build basic .debs. Kernel 2.6.6 sources included on CD.

- Full networking support, including PPP and various Ethernet cards and DHCP

- Network tools including FTP clients, Web client, ssh, telnet, NFS, smbclient, tcpdump, netcat, etc.

- Backup restoration tools such as rdiff-backup, dump/restore, tar, cpio, amanda client, afbackup client, etc.

- CD and DVD burning tools

- Basic printing tools (cat for local printers, rlpr for remote ones, and netcat for Jetdirect, plus unix2dos for text files and Ghostscript for emergency conversions)

- Mail reader (mutt)

* Base systems for multiple versions of Debian installable directly from CD, including: woody (i386), sarge (i386), sid (i386), and sid (amd64). Alpha CD can install woody, sarge, or sid for Alpha.

* amd64 support: Enough to install or fix an AMD64 system. Includes 64-bit kernel with 32-bit emulation (to run the 32-bit userland on the CD). Also includes 64-bit package for bootstrapping a new AMD64 support. In short, you can boot a 64-bit kernel and be treated as a first-class citizen in almost all respects.

* i386 or x86_64 (amd64) kernels bootable directly from initial boot menu.

* DFS generation scripts support custom kernels, packages, mirrors, compressed ISO images, and a high degree of flexibility.