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A Linux for the rest of us?
The Register ^ | Published Tuesday 17th April 2007 14:05 GMT | By Andrew Orlowski

Posted on 04/17/2007 1:01:39 PM PDT by N3WBI3

Serial entrepreneur Peter Dawe, who helped bring the internet to the UK, is launching a "safe" Linux distro tailored for the technophobe.

The idea behind his BabelLinux distro is to give users a free, go-anywhere bootable OS, which is likely to be attractive to operators of public internet PCs.

BabelLinux is tailored for simplicity, to give users access to the seven most common applications. It boots from the (free) CD, and once booted the OS can't write to the local hard drive or USB media.

Instead, users can store their data online in the "BabelBank" - which is how the venture will get its revenue. BabelBank charges £1 per GB per month, with a £10 upfront fee. The service is already in paid beta.

The Pipex founder told us he'd been using the service as his primary computer since the New Year.

BabelLinux, based on Ubuntu, offers fixed buttons for the main applications: web browsing (FireFox), email (Sylpheed), Open Office, multimedia (F-Spot), IM (GAIM), and a Freeview TV adaptor (Xine). Skype will soon be included in the default distro. Most of the cruft that fills a standard Linux distribution's start menu is hidden, although it's still there if you need to find it.

Dawe said the inspiration came about because he spent a lot of time acting as unofficial technical support to friends and family, yet most of the issues were avoidable. Hence, the zero-configuration approach.

There's an obvious appeal to cyber cafe owners, for example. With PCs set to boot the BabelLinux CD only, they can be sure no settings are being changed or any nasties are being written to disk.

BabelLinux is free and ready to download. More here.

It requires a PC with 128MB of RAM and an x86 compatible 600MHz processor. ®


TOPICS: Computers/Internet
KEYWORDS: linux; opensrouce
Thought that many who have expressed future interest in Linux would appreciate this
1 posted on 04/17/2007 1:01:40 PM PDT by N3WBI3
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To: N3WBI3; ShadowAce; Tribune7; frogjerk; Salo; LTCJ; Calvinist_Dark_Lord; amigatec; Fractal Trader; ..

OSS PING

If you are interested in the OSS ping list please mail me

2 posted on 04/17/2007 1:02:36 PM PDT by N3WBI3 (Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak....)
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To: N3WBI3
and once booted the OS can't write to the local hard drive or USB media.

That's going to make it really popular with the masses. < / grin >

3 posted on 04/17/2007 1:22:17 PM PDT by PAR35
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To: N3WBI3

Was running Puppy Linux off a 4GB USB jump drive, but I think 1 or more of its bootup files got corrupted. < |:(~


4 posted on 04/17/2007 1:23:18 PM PDT by martin_fierro (< |:)~)
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To: N3WBI3

I can’t imagine that this will fly very far. While it may sound good on paper, I don’t think people in general will go for it.


5 posted on 04/17/2007 1:37:33 PM PDT by ShadowAce (Linux -- The Ultimate Windows Service Pack)
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To: ShadowAce

Depends, I would not buy the service but I sure would give the distro to any windows user who does online banking...


6 posted on 04/17/2007 1:39:39 PM PDT by N3WBI3 (Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak....)
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To: PAR35
and once booted the OS can't write to the local hard drive or USB media.

> That's going to make it really popular with the masses. < / grin >

A real hit with the open source masses too.

I bet you could load a stripped-down Ubuntu onto a 2 gig flash drive, boot from it and have enough room to save your data on it. The cool thing would be the ability to save your system settings and bookmarks, which you cannot do with the Knoppix live CD on a system w/o a linux partition.

7 posted on 04/17/2007 2:21:10 PM PDT by cloud8
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To: N3WBI3

Just what we need, another foreign press article about Linux. I guess it’s supposed to be about all humanity getting together, so they call this one BabelLinux.


8 posted on 04/17/2007 2:46:39 PM PDT by Golden Eagle
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To: Golden Eagle
I guess it’s supposed to be about all humanity getting together, so they call this one BabelLinux.

Kumbayah, baby. Kumbayah.

9 posted on 04/17/2007 4:03:28 PM PDT by Bloody Sam Roberts (Don't question faith. Don't answer lies.)
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To: Bloody Sam Roberts

10 posted on 04/17/2007 5:14:51 PM PDT by Golden Eagle
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To: Golden Eagle
From the Book of Vista, Chapter 11 verses 5 through 9;

11:5 And the lord Bill came down to see the machine language and the Operating System which the children of men were building and the networking they were doing without need of the Windows Networking Wizard.

11:6 And the lord Bill said, See, they are all one people and have all one Operating System; and this is only the start of what they may do: and now it will not be possible to keep them buying my newest Windows Operating System.

11:7 Come, let us go down and take away the code of their language, so that they will not be able to make themselves clear to one another or access any partition on their storage devices.

11:8 So the lord Bill sent them away into every part of the World Wide Web: and they gave up building their Operating System.

11:9 So it was named Babel, because there the lord Bill took away the code of all languages and from there the lord Bill sent them away over all the pages of the Internet.

11 posted on 04/17/2007 5:32:26 PM PDT by Bloody Sam Roberts (Don't question faith. Don't answer lies.)
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To: Bloody Sam Roberts

Book of Vista? Never heard of it. However it’s quite common for Linux supporters to be compared to religious fanatics, might explain why we see all these threads created that link to the foreign press.


12 posted on 04/17/2007 6:12:40 PM PDT by Golden Eagle
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