Probably the coolest thing to do for a portable app is to make a portable emulator that would allow Linux to run in a window while Windows is open.
This would ensure that people using corporate or school PCs which may not be configured to boot from USB or CD/DVD drives would be able to run their favorite Linux (which for me is Ubuntu if that means anything) without messing with the BIOS settings on a computer which is not theirs.
I'm not sure if it's open source but I hear a lot about QEMU or something like that. I figure that could be a good place to start.
--Eric
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This is already in progress. Steve has done an open source build of QEMU (normal Windows QEMU is not fully open source). We'll be packaging a couple Linuxes with it. But it isn't the most useful thing in the world on many PCs. Between the QEMU virtualization and the slow flash speed, it's very very slow.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Aditionally Ubuntu is very large so this might slow it down even more.
@John, yeah Flash speed is slow but the number of external HDD's is also on the rise. Although not as portable as a thumb drive, the 2.5' external HDD's out there are quite compact, take power through USB and deliver quite some speed compared to your standard flash drives.
But then again, running a full OS on top of another is quite show. Because of that I suspect Xubuntu will outperform Ubuntu.
Are there other alternatives of virtual pc enviroments that offer support for more than Linux alone? Maybe there are other open source solutions that may or may not perform better.
A portable Linux with Qemu included for run in a Windows system is stay already since long time, its called Damn Small Linux ( just 50 MB ) take look here :
http://damnsmalllinux.org/
and download it from here :
http://ftp.belnet.be/packages/damnsmalllinux/current/
choice the version called :
dsl-4.2.5-embedded.zip ( is the one with Qemu included )
Just unziped on a empty folder and click on "dsl-base.bat" and will run from your windows system.
Right, but Qemu for Windows uses a closed source sound library so it can't be redistributed from this site. The developer of the Toucan app on this site, Steve Lamerton, recompiled Qemu using an open source sound library. We will be using his version when everything is ready to go.
The developer formerly known as ZGitRDun8705
Thankyou all
I thought if there's closed source libraries in an open source app you could put it under the LGPL license, right
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don't think so, I always thought that the LGPL was to allow commercial products to link to you, not to allow you to link to commercial projects???
I don't have a clue what it says:http://www.opensource.org/licenses/lgpl-3.0.html
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If you own the copyright, you can link it to anything you'd like. You can do GPL with exceptions, for instance.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Oh, ok. I thought when it said Linux coming soon under the operating systems category that it meant booted from the flash drive. I figured an emulator made more since, kudos to you all for making one. Any idea how far along it is?