| DIY Linux live CD -- the really easy way! |
Aug. 29, 2007
 Thanks to a note from its creator, DesktopLinux.com learned about a new "release candidate" of Custom NimbleX 2 this week. This lesser known Slackware-derived project offers a Web-based tool that lets users concoct, and then download, their own customized live CD Linux images -- in minutes!
"I am pleased to announce ... that I just released the Release Candidate of ... Custom NimbleX 2," wrote chief maintainer Bogdan Radulescu. "It allows you to generate your customized Linux distribution by choosing what packages you want to have and it also allows you to configure several other stuff like the default wallpaper, volumes, sounds, greetings, passwords and the language of the interface."
NimbleX is a small-footprint distribution based on Slackware Linux, with the addition of "linux-live" scripts. It can boot from business-card CDs, USB thumb drives, MP3 players, or from over a network, and it appears to run entirely from RAM. One especially interesting feature of the NimbleX live CD is that it allows access to the hard drive on the system on which it boots -- making it a useful system troubleshooting tool, but also potentially dangerous.
Quoting from the project's website: "Because it has the ability to automatically detect and mount all the partitions you can access data on any another computers without even knowing the password, both on Linux and Windows. Now you can use it as a recovery disk or for any other purpose. Because of the low requirements you can also run it on old computers. NimbleX is very customizable and can be easily made to satisfy your needs."
According to Radulescu, NimbleX 2 now offers "over 150 packages" and support for "a dozen languages. Special attention was put on the user experience because I want to make Linux a viable alternative for users that have never used it before."
Building a custom live CD
I found the project's Web-based live CD ISO image creation tool to be a delight to use -- nothing could be simpler. After a few minutes spent in making selections from the easy-to-use menus, our personalized NimbleX 2 live CD ISO image file was busily downloading. The configuration process like this:
(Click each thumbnail image for a larger view)
                       
Building a Custom NimbleX live CD using the Web tool
(Click each image to enlarge)
Following the download, I burned the image and booted it up. Here's how the live CD's KDE desktop looks on my "old Thinkpad" test system:
My Custom NimbleX 2 KDE desktop
(Click to enlarge)
The following screenshots show the various menu options available (click each image for a larger view). Of course, as they say, "your mileage will vary," since, after all, it's a customized live CD.
       
NimbleX KDE menus -- remember: your "mileage" (version) will vary!
(Click each image to enlarge)
My installation of Custom NimbleX 2 showed itself to be based on a 2.6.16 Linux kernel. It occupied around 400MB of hard drive space on my test system -- not exactly a "mini distro" in the sense of DSL or Puppy which are in the 50-100MB range, but it's comparable in size to Slackware-based Zenwalk (formerly "Minislack"). It sports a fine-looking KDE 3.5.4 desktop environment, complete with sensible settings for fonts and so on. I had no difficulty instantly accessing websites using the included Firefox browser; beyond that, I only sampled a few of its many wares.
Those interested in trying out this innovative custom live CD distribution generating tool can do so here. Further details about NimbleX Linux are avialble on the project's website, here.
"Hope you like it and I also hope you will give me a honest feedback with your impressions," adds Radulescu.
--Rick Lehrbaum
[Note: Radulescu informs us that the project's website is based on a rather low-end machine -- a 550MHz processor with an IDE hard drive, "and will be very slow at generating the ISO if several simultaneous users ... use it." However, download "bandwidth is enough for everybody," he adds. --ed]
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