Nostalgia-34-DemoLinux

DemoLinux – one of the first Live CD Linux distributions, and was created to make it possible to use Linux without having to install it on the hard disk. It is the first Linux Live CD making possible to use the system in graphic mode and without any stage of configuration.

Version 1 was based on Mandrake Linux (now Mandriva Linux), versions 2 and 3 used a mechanism independent of the distribution and were distributed mainly on a Debian basis.

Version 3.0 now introduces the Xvesa X server, replacing the framebuffer used before, which depended on VESA 2.0 cards. We now handle PCI sound cards, Lucent winmodems, Reiserfs version 3.5.x, certain USB peripherals and several other 2.2.18 kernel devices. As for version 2.0, DemoLinux 3 heavily uses a transparent compression schema that allows to sotre over a gigabyte of applications, including GNOME and KDE and the StarOffice office suite.

To try out DemoLinux, you need a PC equipped with a CD-ROM and at least 32 Mb of RAM for simple graphics interfaces, 64 for advanced graphics interfaces, 128 to use StarOffice.

DemoLinux project was composed of 3 people, all based at the Paris VII University of Paris: Vincent Balat, Roberto Di Cosmo and Jean-Vincent Loddo.

The project was under development between 2000 and 2002.