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Ubuntu Portable

BronzdragonBronzdragon
edited April 2009 in Technology
Lifehacker had an article on Portable Ubuntu. Basically, it's like a virtual machine, only run better.

here's a youtube video to show you what it's about.
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I'll be downloading it now and I'll tell you what I think later.

Comments

  • Victor FrostVictor Frost
    Looks like cygwin without all the trouble. *the world cheers*
  • AprecheApreche
    edited April 2009
    Looks like cygwin without all the trouble. *the world cheers*
    It is essentially just Cygwin with a rootless X server. I used to do this all the time back in the day.

    Nowadays I use four different things, depending on the task at hand.

    1) An actual computer running Linux, like my laptop or the web server.
    2) SSH to an actual Linux box either with PuTTY or OpenSSH.
    3) SSH to an actual Linux box with SSH, and use XMing to forward X11.
    4) Virtualbox/VMWare

    This portable Ubuntu doesn't really serve any need that these other solutions don't already fulfill. I mean, we already have things like wubi. How many options do we need?
    Post edited by Apreche on
  • BronzdragonBronzdragon
    Looks like cygwin without all the trouble. *the world cheers*
    It is essentially just Cygwin with a rootless X server. I used to do this all the time back in the day.

    Nowadays I use four different things, depending on the task at hand.

    1) An actual computer running Linux, like my laptop or the web server.
    2) SSH to an actual Linux box either with PuTTY or OpenSSH.
    3) SSH to an actual Linux box with SSH, and use XMing to forward X11.
    4) Virtualbox/VMWare

    This portable Ubuntu doesn't really serve any need that these other solutions don't already fulfill. I mean, we already have things like wubi. How many options do we need?
    It serves the role of a virtual machine, but it does it better. Performance aside, it integrates with your windows and it's a lot better and easier.
  • AprecheApreche
    It serves the role of a virtual machine, but it does it better. Performance aside, it integrates with your windows and it's a lot better and easier.
    Yes, but that integration with windows often causes a lot of problems. Because it is Cygwin-like, you will have a lot of trouble compiling just about anything. Also, don't expect nearly anything to work the same way it does in actual *nix. The only real use for Cygwin I ever had was to use *nix shell to run scripts on Windows which are easier to write and more powerful than what the Windows command line offers. This functionality is now provided by Python, so I pretty much gave up on Cygwin, and anything like it, for all the trouble it causes.
  • Luke BurrageLuke Burrage
    I watched the vid, and it says you have to have access at an admin level to run it. How is that portable? You can only run it on your own windows boxes? Or is this some play on the word "portable" that I haven't caught?
  • BronzdragonBronzdragon
    I watched the vid, and it says you have to have access at an admin level to run it. How is that portable? You can only run it on your own windows boxes? Or is this some play on the word "portable" that I haven't caught?
    You can run the same copy on any windows machine that you have admin level access to. I don't personally run into many machines that I don't have that kind of access too.
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