I have this HP Laptop I use OpenSuse on happily, except for battery life. It’s not at all the OS’s fault, the battery is simply a small 6 cell. I will eventually pay for another battery, but I wanted to ask if this is possible.
Install JeOS on a partition, with access to Firefox, Abiword, Gnumeric, PDF, Ndiswrapper (a stretch, I know…)
Make that the default startup OS in my bootloader…
Have it all up and running in 20 seconds getting much more out of my laptop battery…
Dell just released this information today, they will be using SLED instant-on OS (SLED JeOS, I’d Assume). Eventually it will be on it’s own chip, but initially it will run from the HD…so it’s gotta be possible, maybe just not as refined…
I know JeOS is meant for virtualization, but CAN it boot a machine?
Yes, it can. I used the Novell JeOS. several months ago, interested in starting with a real barebones and building up from there. Perhaps you are working with a different JeOS, but all I could find was one that is a bit old, no indication of a newer one (at least from the Novell site, that I could find). With the last couple of openSUSE installations, there are 2 stripped down alternatives, 1 will just the X server and FVWM, the other without the X server at all. I haven’t compared it with JeOS. But with Kiwi, the YaST Product Creator, Add-on Creator, and Image Creator - I think this is the tool set to create what you are looking for, possibly starting with the installation options above.
I believe you are correct, I think I am going to experiment with Ubuntu, simply because it’s prebuilt and has a bit more to go with at least for the beginner…
I am really interested in Dell’s new production though…perhaps with a little work, this will be a great “instant-on,” hack people could use on the go…
AFAIK JeOS is simply a stripped down server kernel primarily intended for virtual servers but also anywhere else you need a minimal kernel to support a small number of services. It deliberately leaves out a graphical environment as those have high memory and disk footprint. Certainly JeOS can be booted. Even in a virtual environment, an OS has to boot from some “medium”.
I don’t know what this has to do with always-on. You need more than just a stripped down kernel for always-on; you need suspend, low-power consumption, etc. Those are different concerns from what JeOS is aimed at. And end-users would want their graphical interfaces. To add that to JeOS you’d have to install a whole bunch of libraries, negating some of the advantages of JeOS. Some of your requirements are graphical.
I don’t see where you have established a link between an always-on OS and JeOS, of either the Ubuntu or Novell variety, it was just an assumption in your post.
JeOS style Linuxes have been with us for a long time. Some distros base their work on Linux From Scratch. It’s just that Ubuntu has decided to make it one in their product line.
Thanks Ken, for the amplification. Question: If you were building a virtual machine appliance solely for web activity (browing, email, IM, download/torrent, etc. etc.) which you wanted to be as lean as possible while providing a rich internet experience, would you start out with the JeOS or with the openSUSE X-only as a base? When I added X and a window manager to JeOS, it looked pretty similar to the openSUSE X-only alternative+. But I didn’t really study it. Thx in advance.
You will find that the GUI environment will swamp much of the savings that you might get from a trimmed down kernel. To put things in perspective, I have run CLI only servers with services like postfix, bind, etc in as little as 96MB. Just one invocation of Firefox will happily eat up that amount of memory.
Given that if you want your GUI you have to pay for it, I would simply start from somewhere comfortable like OpenSUSE and make life easier. Otherwise you end up just installing package after package of X11 and supporting libraries to make JeOS just as capable as say Kubuntu.
I guess the assumption came from the Virtualization taking place in both JeOS and in these instant-on systems that Asus and Dell are starting to use…
I see what your saying, though, as soon as libraries and dependencies start forming, we’re back to where we started…
Dell is initially using HD space to booth their virtual mini machines, and it’s based on SLED. Eventually, they will move it to their own PCI based cards…
I figured if they can do it, why can’t I? But I still don’t understand how they make this splashtop type OS so lean.
They are claiming up to 2x the battery life of before, considering when I’m in class I’m mostly using Google Docs, or some web-based apps, this would be perfect.