4MLinux-2.3-Small Is beautiful with UnetBootIn and Making Mandriva Flashdrive

As mentioned already Mandriva is good idea badly implemented and slow to boot.

One can remember Mandriva had Globe Trotter and Live Pendrives.

Now the new Mandriva is bulky and difficult to work with just for for fun I decided to make Mandriva Flashdrive (I do not know how long I will keep  it before erasing the image). 

Steps are as follows.

1. Download 4MLinux all in one.

2. Download Mandriva image.

3. Boot 4MLinux

4. Go to maintenance and click UnetBootIn

5. Plug in a Flash drive (I tried 8 GiB Flashdrive) since the image is heavy. One has to format it with FAT beforehand.
I had 6.5 for Mandriva and another 1.5 as a reserve partition.

6. Give the path to your image (need not be Mandriva any you have downloaded).

Root---> Media----> Disk-----> Image

7. Click OK and in about 5 minutes you have Mandriva in a Flash.

8. Now to reveal how bad the new Mandriva boots (if you have 1 GiB RAM like me), go and make a cup of Tea/Coffee.

I finish my tea (boiling the water to brewing and drinking it before Mandriva booted and fired up the FireFox).

It did not go to Mandriva site as it used to do.

This is why I am happy that I left Mandriva long time before their split and use 4MLinux for my work on Live sessions and say "Small is beautiful" and promote Unity Linux and (Core Linux on top of one can built ones own packages) its derivative HUMANity Musician edition (currently downloading, the last 100 or so MiB).

Unity is one of the earliest Core Live CDs before PCLinux stormed the community with Big Daddy (only in archives now).

It broke away from Mandrake and formed Unity and there are at least 8 derivatives and one of which is TinyMe.

One does not need to be FAT to be productive when the cloud is promoting thin clients.

4MLinux even though tiny and only 60 odd MiB, it can be destructive if you use it's partition utility without due care.

It only detect the first hard disk and if you select sda1 instead of sdc or /d or /e by accident your will boot Mandriva Live instead of your prized distribution (gone as you press OK in the dialogue box) in the first hard disk.

Please take care and the UnetBootIn graphic mode fonts are very tiny for  an old folk like me.

But I did not do any mistakes, simply because I check  my actions especially typos now before clicking OK in any command line operation.

Mandriva Update

Mandriva is a good idea very badly implemented.

The good idea is resurrecting once one of my favorite (I could not wait for the next release) distributions from bankruptcy.

Thank for the injection of some 3 millions.

Next is is the 3 million well spent.

I do not think so.

It is going to become regimented Russian enterprise (unfortunately we Sri-Lankans including new entrants to the university are getting regimented) without creative inputs.

The idea of using KDE only is horrible to say the least.

Why?

It is Incorporated with Unity Type additions and take up all the GiB of my RAM and cannot even get LibreOffice (another good idea) on in a live session. I have only 1 GiB on my workhorse machine.

Even PCLinuxFullMonty which is a Gorilla of a distribution consumes that amount of RAM on a Live Session. 

In defense of PCLinuxFullMonty even though it is slow to boot up once booted up and running it runs smoothly and fast with many applications running at the same time. It is my workhorse and I have no reservation of recommending it to anybody.

For the last year I had only few momentary crashes (that also due to fault of our Telecoms).

With that scenario putting installation separate was a very good idea otherwise few of the RAM cards of poor uses will be consumed or fully burned.

It might become another Linux distribution Like ALT almost Russian based and no use for the third world countries like ours.

I could not even fire up FireFox and I gave up and cannot make any further comments.

My Live session with Flashdrive created with 4MLinux was not as bad as Live DVD and I could fire up both FireFox and LibreOffice but took a hell of a long time.If you do not have at least 2 GiB of RAM please do not think of using it.

This is not going to be one my favorites for sometimes and a considerable time in future.

Thanks guys and girts making it little over 1.5 GiB otherwise i would have had a heart attack waiting its full download in this Banana Republic.

I will be promoting UNity Linux (not Ubuntu's Desktop) from now onwards, since it's refined concept of bare bone Linux (OpenBox) from which ore useful and custom distributions can be built on.

I am currently downloading Unity's derivative of musicians edition of HUMANity.
Humanity is good with AbiWord and runs smoothly with many useful applications.

I will be with you soon with comment on that and not anymore of Mandriva for sometime.