Good, Portable "Virtual" Linux Distro? 261
Prof. Nix writes "I have been given the opportunity to redesign the Linux course for the community college I work for. This course will be taking students from the 'What's Lee-nux?' stage to (hopefully) Linux+ Certifiable in about three to four months. However, one issue I haven't solved is finding a semi-stable, highly portable, and readily accessible platform the students may pound on, and have root access, independently of their peers. The powers-that-be have already vetoed any sort of server environment accessible from off campus. We've already tried live USB drives, but we ran into many issues with non-supported hardware on students' home computers. So I'm left with the idea of virtual machines run from flash drives. My ultimate goal is to have some sort of portable system that students can use with equal ease on lab systems and personal laptops — regardless of hardware. Preferably this system would be installable on a 4GB flash drive and run an Ubuntu- or Fedora-derived OS. So I ask the people who have been in the trenches a lot longer than I — what distros should I look at?"
Re:In my Post Secondary (Score:3, Funny)
Unless I totally misunderstood your post, Fedora Core *is* a free distro.... If I totally misunderstood your post, it's *still* a free distro, but then that information is irrelevant.
Re:Make your own (Score:1, Funny)
I don't think a distro based on a Phil Collins song is such a good idea. Sususudio? Really?
Re:Depends on the Course (Score:5, Funny)
I teach at the community college myself, and find that installing the OS is a really important part of learning to use it
Wholeheartedly agree. And while the rest of your comments have merit, I'd offer the suggestion to build on the "important part of learning" principle.
Instead of going the VM route, just hand out Slackware CDs. Or if the kids are bright (like the kids were in my day), point them to the Linux From Scratch project and let them loose! For extra credit, you could have them figure out how to integrate their new OS in a Windows domain environment or, if that requires unavailable resources, have them install a complete Cygwin distribution on their Windows PCs to figure out creative ways to make Windows behave more sanely so that things like odd file names, line endings, a useless PATH, a nonsensical hierarchy, reliance on drive letters, security token issues, and reconciling Posix permissions don't present insurmountable challenges.
By the end of term, they'll have all the experience they need. More importantly, they'll be prepared for the real world.
The instructor benefits, too, as grading the students is simplified. Anyone that completes the class gets an automatic A, except for those caught cheating who get a B+. Kids that came in with a note from their parents excusing them from class gets an incomplete. Everyone else fails. And those that switched to one of the BSDs in midterm get put on the honour roll.
Re:Special Memo To Slashdot (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Good plan from my experience, except hardware p (Score:2, Funny)