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Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Dawg's Metaverse > ZyX LiveOS

ZyX LiveOS Strains

About

I am currently working on several niche LiveOS projects built with the VirOS toolset. Each strain has its own collection of VirOS 'traits' that define the contents of its distribution. Many traits are shared amongst several or all strains. Each strain either has the VirOS toolset trait installed, or available via online library. Thus each strain can itself generate the other strains, or new strains containing virtually infinite permutations of traits defined by the user, or available in the trait library. (In theory. In practice, the VirOS software still lacks sufficient documentation, and the important feature of upstream package caching, to be considered easy to use. But it does get better year by year...) If you'd like to keep up to date on releases of viros and these strains, just join the viros-devel mailinglist at sourceforge.

Taxonomy

: Sci-ZyX is an 'Enterprise-6' descended x86, FOSS LiveOS distribution, featuring a unique rebootless installation method. The 1.4G live .iso can be burned to DVD(LiveDVD) or 2+G usbstick(LiveUSB). This installable, portable, immutable, compressed system image can then be rebootlessly installed into traditional uncompressed and mutable form whenever the user so chooses. This installation will not even interrupt the user's desktop session, which can then later be hibernated long after the LiveDVD/USB has been removed from the system. The VirOS toolset is even installed, allowing any user, with a single viros commandline, to spawn a brand-stripped descendent distribution, with as few or as many other mutations as desired.
: Guitar-ZyX is a LiveDVD/USB operating system distribution, that can immediately boot both your Nintendo-DS, and your x86/64 PC, into a guitar pre-amp f/x processing appliance, complete with wireless dual screen touchpad remote control. You can even velcro or embed the NDS in your guitar if so inclined. In addition to switching among 77+ different f/x presets, the NDS remote control's touchscreen can also linearly control any two of about a hundred independent f/x parameters in real-time. I.e. a very cost effective TouchScreenWhammyPad.
: Fork-ZyX is a VirOS^(tm) produced, alternative to the ancestor(f12) standard desktop LiveCD. Eventually it will highlight how the VirOS toolset makes it extremely easy to produce your own derivative LiveCD distribution. Themed with whatever art you may happen to have. I happen to have some excellent work, and permission to redistribute it, from an artist who signs her work - Josie Wrath.
: E-ZyX will be descended from CentOS-6 when it is presumably released later this year.
: G-ZyX has not had a release for a few years, being superceded by Guitar-ZyX. But it remains, and will be updated, as a version of Guitar-ZyX with all the NDS devkit (ZyXdevSuite) traits, but without the music creation traits.
: D-ZyX , aka Dev-ZyX aka Dawg-ZyX will eventually be a fully self-hosting(/recompiling) superset of Guitar-ZyX and its siblings.
: U-ZyX , If I ever get around to adding debian/ubuntu support to VirOS, will represent a descendent of Ubuntu, primarily as proof-of-concept and an example for others to build on.

Go there...
http://cloudsession.com/dawg/projects/zyx-live-os/

projects::VirOS

The VirOS project aims to open the door of operating system distribution creation to everyone. With the push of a button, or a short command line, you too can create an entirely customized linux-based distribution. VirOS doesn't stand for anything, however "Virtual OS" and "Viral OS" aren't too far off the mark, if you think about the output produced as being a customized livecd.

There are some existing projects whose goal is to simplify the process of generating or remastering livecds. In addition to simplicity and ease of use, VirOS breaks new ground, by working entirely in unpriveleged mode. By not requiring root or administrator priveleges, VirOS does not pose as severe a risk of damaging or altering the host build system.

Currently, VirOS only supports producing livecd/dvd/usb/os distributions derived from ScientificLinux-6(rolling-alpha4), or Fedora-13, suitable for an x86 architecture. Future versions will support multiple architectures (namely, x86_64 definitely, and ppc for ps3 maybe), and base distributions such as centos-6.x(&5.x), debian, and ubuntu. Currently there is no GUI, though one is planned utilizing rapid GUI development tools such as python and glade. (x86_64 might already work, the author just doesn't currently have access to an x86_64 build system)

Go there...
http://cloudsession.com/dawg/projects/viros/about/index.html

Dawg's Projects

The following is a fairly comprehensive list of my projects that may be of some interest or use to some subset of the public.

Software

ZyX-Live-OS: I am currently working on several niche LiveOS 'strains' built with the VirOS toolset.
ZyX Rebootless LiveOS Installer: The ZyX Rebootless LiveOS Installer is currently available for download as part of the alpha release of the Guitar-ZyX LiveDVD/USB. Unlike traditional LiveCD installers such as those from Ubuntu and Fedora, which require you to reboot after installation, the ZyX Rebootless LiveOS Installer performs a way-cool devicemapper shell game to 'live migrate' the LiveCD filesystem to harddisk, without requiring the user to reboot as part of the installation process.
VirOS: VirOS is a system imaging toolset, with a primary focus on the generation of customized Linux(tm)-based LiveCDs.
Guitar-ZyX Master Control Program: The Guitar-ZyX Master Control Program is a Nintendo-DS(tm) based homebrew user interface for the excellent rakarrack open source electric guitar live audio effects processor.
qfakeroot: Q-FakeRoot plays an integral role in VirOS as well as being a standalone tool useful for the manipulation of virtualized OS disk images. The name is an extension of the fakeroot tool from debian, which allows unpriveledged users to perform some actions that are normally only possible as root. E.g. creating cpio archives with device nodes. Q-FakeRoot extends this functionality, by utilizing a virtual (qemu) appliance to safely perform actions as the root user. QFakeRoot predates by more than a year the (lib)guestfs toolkit which RedHat implemented with the same basic architecture. However, libguestfs has since emerged as a well supported better enterprise solution for the same problem space.
K.A.B.L.U.I.: Kablui stands for Kick-Ass-Best-LiveOS-User-Interface, and is just a marketing acronym I thought up, and using to name the scripts that I've developed to initialize my workstation desktop preferences and applications. These scripts suit my needs currently, and I hope to extend them and make them useful for a wider audience in the future.
Snake3D: Snake3D is the first 3D(OpenGL) video game that I wrote between jobs in 2000.
Dawg's Metaverse Tools: I've put quite a bit of work into the tools that generate Dawg's Metaverse from the source content. Basically I started out just doing 'view source' and wgets on Spock's Devsite. But from there I've created one big spaghetti mess of x(ht)ml, css, bash, perl, igal, webcpp, and more. It certainly would take the better part of year to make it into a nice package that others could easily use, and certainly there is no shortage of complex unwieldly content management systems out there, but... maybe a retirement project when my bones are too creaky to play disc golf...

Hardware

D2: The 'D2' is my second prototype electric guitar amplifier. No, it doesn't involve my own circuit board, or self-mined copper wiring. Really it's a carpentry project combined with some $100 bose computer speakers, my laptop, and a ton of great Free and Open Source Software.

Go there...
http://cloudsession.com/dawg/projects/

Interesting Stuff!:)

Don