I was just wondering if any Portable Apps work on a CD.
I have assembled a free and/or open-source software CD that I pass out to people with a large number of Windows applications, many of the same ones available at PortableApps.com. I thought it might be a neat idea to have a "Live" version of some of these programs available on the CD so people can test the programs without having to install them first.
Some of the programs probably wouldn't make much sense to run as a Portable App off a CD (ones that require lots of personal settings, like Gaim, Miranda or Thunderbird, along with a few others), but I thought for testing/demonstration purposes, programs like Firefox, OpenOffice.org, GIMP, VLC Player, AbiWord and maybe some others might work pretty well (assuming they work at all), at least well enough for people to get a feel for the program.
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Won't work.
The launchers modify files at startup to make them portable -- can't do that on a CD. Plus, every time one of the apps tried to access a file for writing (i.e., all the time) it would squawk.
You could make a Live version of them, if you wanted -- it shouldn't be too hard. Why not just copy 'em to the desktop and run from there?
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Mark Smith | PortableApps.com Developer
johnhaller.com
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----
R McCue
"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."
You hand out CDs with portable apps to others?
Well, I know that, if you have your own CD you use at other places, you can check out UBCD4Win, ( http://ubcd4win.com/ ) or even BartPE ( http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/ ) because they are windows installs that run completely off CD. And there are tons of plugins that allow programs to run off teh CD as well. For example, you can get a plugin to help you run Nero off the CD. ( http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/plugins/ ) list some plugins as well as links to other sites with plugins.
Of course, this all works off the live CD. Not sure if it would work in a standalone fashion (i.e. you need to even boot off teh CD into XP). But with a little dirtywork you might have some help.