Fun way to try out LINUX

[Andy]

I've got a spare 256MB SD card and was reading an article about making a bootable USB Flash device. Well, I can plug my SD card into a card reader on my laptop/PC and it appears as a drive. So I should be able to boot up into Linux if I turn it into a Linux boot disk 

It's a little tricky though since I'm running Windows XP so there is no FDISK, no DOS boot files and no Floppy disk to hand 

But so far I found a link to some software that will format my SD card to a bootable drive when I get hold of some DOS boot files.

Here's the utility: http://h18007.www1.hp.com/support/files/hpcpqdt/us/download/20306.html Apparently it works on non-hp memory cards too.

The Linux distro my mag is recommending is Feather Linux since it's very small and they chose it after reviewing several alternatives. You need a minimum size card of 128MB. If you have a Knoppix CD it probably helps alot so you can format the drive with Cfdisk

Anyway, I don't know what I'm talking about at the moment and forgot everything I ever knew about Linux, but hopefully I sparked off some ideas for people to investigate.   

[SensoVision]

looking forward to hear how do you like running Linux form the flash drive, actually I was going to install Linux on the USB stick some day but never have time to do it, but I know that my friend was running Linux from the built-in card reader in digital camera

[Andy]

I was dissapointed to find my BIOS doesn't let me choose to boot from a USB drive, only the HDD's, floppy, Network or CD 

I could maybe upgrade the bios but I can't be bothered. I did find a cross-platform formatting utility though: http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/boot/syslinux/ The latest .zip file is the one for Windows.

Also a very detailed tutorial about using flash drives: http://www.pocketpcmag.com/FORUM/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=17921

[SensoVision]

Andy, if USB devices is visible after system boot you can try install Linux on flash just like it would be hard drive and install bootloader on floppy disk, so once you need to use Linux you'll just need to insert this bootable floppy. (not 100% sure if it could be done with USB devices but I've did it when can't install GRUB bootloader on hard drive).
If you interested I can try to find time and look how it could be done.

[Andy]

I tried it with my laptop which does support boot from USB drive. But it didn't seem to work. But I ended up making a boot CD containing Feather Linux and it works fine on both computers except my mouse (MS PS2 compatible wheel mouse) wasn't recognised on the desktop machine. Seems like it only works with USB mice.

Both machines are connecting to the web by wireless network and this software failed to find any wireless adaptors so I couldn't connect to the web. In the laptop, the adaptor was powered off and is usually energised by a soft-key on the computer.

Actually, I'm not desperate to make it all work but thought it would be nice to have a play.

[SensoVision]

If kernel was compiled properly your mouse should work too, and the only thing you need to correct is your X11 configuration file.
If you interested, go to this directory: /etc/X11
and find x.org or xfree86.conf depending on what this distro is running(it could be named somewhat different but have .conf extension).
Once you find this file look for Section "InputDevice", there should be two or more entries like this one should be with Driver         "keyboard" and other with Driver         "mouse".
In order to use PS/2 mouse you need to have config looking something like this:

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier     "Configured Mouse"
    Driver         "mouse"
    Option         "CorePointer"
    Option         "SendCoreEvents" "true"
    Option         "Device" "/dev/psaux"
    Option         "Protocol" "ImPS/2"
    Option         "Emulate3Buttons" "true"
    Option         "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Just be sure to put correct Identifier name which was used in your config.
If you have diffculties feel free to post here your .conf file so I can tell what to change.