[GTALUG] looking for a general purpose boot media to keep in case of distasters

[Giles Orr]

On Wed, 20 Sept 2023 at 15:16, BCLUG via talk <talk at gtalug.org> wrote:
>
> bitmap via talk wrote on 2023-09-20 10:02:
>
> > Does this OpenSUSE image come with a broad range of tools? The debian,
> > ubuntu, manjaro and others I have lying around are just the very basics.
> > Am often missing something needed.
>
> I seem to recall that Knoppix was a popular distro for repairing broken
> systems. This may be out-dated though.
>
>
> Also, ventoy is a tool that allows multiple bootable distros on a single
> USB stick, and I think allows some persistent storage.
>
> i.e. Use ventoy to install knoppix / whatever on a stick, boot the stick
> and install any missing tools, configure sshd, add scripts, etc., then
> next boot time everything ought to be available.
>
>
> I haven't yet tried this myself, just giving my 2¢ on how I'd approach
> things.

I started using Knoppix about 25 years ago.  Development has slowed,
but there are still occasional releases - the most recent being 9.1
from 2021-01.  It will boot on just about anything x86 or amd64 (at 4G
or less memory it switches to a simpler interface ... it may even
choke down to text mode eventually?), and come up to a fairly simple
GUI with pretty much all the tools you could hope for.  It remains my
go-to for recovery and repartitioning.  I'm still using v7.7.1 (2016 -
LXDE interface) because that's what's on my bootable USB stick: it has
thousands of tools, but ones I checked for today include 'inxi',
'gparted', and 'lshw'.  Keep in mind this is the DVD version which has
more tools than the CD version.  Most of the command line tools are
still on the CD, the bulk of the DVD space is for less interesting
stuff like Libre Office.

Ventoy sounds great, haven't tried it yet.  I suspect raw Knoppix will
boot on more machines than Ventoy, but that's idle speculation and a
quarter century of success with Knoppix talking.

http://knopper.net/knoppix-mirrors/index-en.html
http://knoppix.net/get.php

-- 
Giles
https://www.gilesorr.com/
gilesorr at gmail.com