Trying Out LiveCDs

I'm still looking for a Linux or FreeBSD LiveCD for my high school computer class. I've had some success, but there's more to do. The idea is to have an OS disk that we'd run off of during class with the tools we need all there, ready to go.

No Room, No Room!

The computers in our lab at school have very limited disk space. Windows XP is installed on them, along with programs needed for other classes. That doesn't leave much room for graphics programs and development systems that I'd like to use for my classes, both the middle school and high school classes. So I thought I could use LiveCDs to solve the problem. Only the student's data files would need to be stored on the hard disk.

Belenix

I downloaded the Belenix 0.7 LiveCD the other day, because the list of packages appeared to suggest that it includes the JDK, though actually it doesn't--it was my mistake. I got impatient with scrolling through the unalphabetized list and used my browser's "find in page" function. What I missed is that there was a break in the list, between items that are on the LiveCD and packages that aren't there, but are available. So, after downloading the .iso file, burning it onto a disk, and spelunking around I find it isn't there.

OpenSolaris

I also took another look at my OpenSolaris 2008.05 disk to make sure it wasn't there. I'd seen a comment on somebody's website somewhere during my search for a LiveCD with the JDK on it (I've lost the link, I'm afraid--it was someone who used to have their own LiveCD distro with JDK that gave it up with a comment along the lines of "I'm just going with OpenSolaris, it has the JDK.")

iloog

In spite of my slip-up on Belenix, I managed to locate a LiveCD that does have the JDK on it. In fact, it's got a heap of development tools on it. It's the iloog 8.02 LiveCD. It's based on Gentoo and while it doesn't want to start up X on my newer iMac, it runs well on my older MacBook. It does very well on the MacBook, so far as I've tested it (only briefly, so far. I spent too much time on OpenSolaris and Belenix today.) It supports the MacBook's built-in mousepad (unlike OpenSolaris and Belenix) and it actually boots quickly compared to the two OpenSolaris distros. I haven't tried any networking yet, but everything else seems to function.

System Dependencies and Finally, Sabayon

Given that the Macs in the school lab are about the same age as my MacBook (Core Duos) I'm hoping that it runs as well on them. If I'm lucky I'll have a chance to try it out this week, if not, then next week. The PCs in the school lab are pretty plain-vanilla hardware-wise, so I'm less concerned about them. (If the PCs in the lab had DVD readers in them, I'd probably have just gone with Sabayon's LiveDVD and called it a day a couple of months ago.)

Tailor Made?

There's still the open possibility of making up a custom LiveCD for the class. My time is such that I don't have much opportunity for a lot of tweaking, though. Installing some apps is within reason, dinking with hardware detection and drivers is getting deeper into things than I can afford. I'll probably look at Morphix in this regard.

However, at this point iloog is looking promising. Beside Java, it has Common Lisp on board, as well as ruby and python. I think I also saw Haskell when I was poking around. There's no way I could properly cover all these in class, but if time permits I could potentially spend a class (90 minutes) on each of 2 or 3 of the non-Java languages before we start Java.

Not Groovy, Dude.

Groovy, unfortunately, was not among the represented languages on the iloog disk. As I've mentioned before, the chances of me being able to prepare a full semester of classes on Groovy for this year is pretty slim.

Edited in 2010 to add:
Epilogue

I ended up making very good use of a variety of LiveCDs by having my class try out the different OSes on the school systems. And Java worked out well in spite of its complexities and niggling demands for exactitude. Though a well rounded scripting language would be better. If Sun had ever really sorted out JavaFX, rather than going halfway and stopping, that might have served. But when they write half a language then tell you to fill in the rest with the hooks to Java, that's no solution for a classroom.