[RndTbl] VMware Appliance Distro

[tim at fractaldragon.net]

On Thu, Apr 10, 2008 at 10:09:50AM -0500, Montana Quiring wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I would like to know if there is a super thin Linux distro that's
> single purpose is to fire up a VMware image when the computer boots
> up.
> 
> I would like to try doing something similar to the Cirtix Xen Desktop
> stuff that they showed off at Epic, but I would like the users Virtual
> Image to be on a USB flash or hard drive and the PC to have a very
> simple linux install that just loads the VMWare image when the machine
> is started up.
> 
> Any suggestions?
> 
> I'm thinking of going the "Linux From Scratch" route if there isn't
> anything already out there.


Hi Montana,

What about some of the CD or USB-based distros, such as Damn Small Linux
or Puppy Linux? Either should be easily customizable. 

Puppy will load entirely into a ramdisk, dropping you directly into a
lightweight desktop. It also can be set to save changed or new files to
another session on a CD, or onto DVD; when rebooting, all the new bits
are loaded on startup. I've used this for a simple firewall setup where
I didn't want to write to the hard drive at all.

  Cheers,
  Tim