CDlinux 0.9.6.1
Sound and Multimedia
YouTube & Flash
I loaded a Lady Gaga video on YouTube. It looked and sounded great.
CDlinux surprised me by being multimedia-friendly, for the most part. I didn’t need to configure my sound card or do anything else. Given that CDlinux is a portable mini-distro, I hadn’t expected sound and video to work so well on it by default.
Problems & Headaches
One slightly annoying thing I noticed about CDlinux is that it has a flash blocker extension installed by default in Firefox. While I’ve made it clear that I dislike flash, I think having this installed by default in Firefox is unwise. I was familiar with the flash blocker so I knew how to deal with it. I just needed to click the flash overlay to play YouTube videos and to display any other flash-based objects.
But people who don’t know about it might be confused why flash-based multimedia won’t load properly in their browser. I think it would be a good idea for the flash blocker to be disabled by default by the CDlinux developers. That would prevent any confusion on the part of new users and might save them a lot of aggravation.
It’s also somewhat disappointing that CDlinux can only be installed on a USB device or a Windows C: partition. It would be nice if the range of install options were expanded in future releases.
The lack of OpenOffice.org was also a bit of a downer for me. I understand that it would bulk up the size of CDlinux considerably but a version of it with OpenOffice.org might help increase the user base of this distro. Abiword is a fine word processor but it might not cut it for certain users. OpenOffice.org should probably be bundled into the community version of CDlinux in future releases.
My Lady GaGa test video looked and sounded great in CDlinux.
The flash blocker Firefox extension might confuse some users who aren't familiar with it.
(4 votes, average: 3.25 out of 5)
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Actually, Dragon, there are three different versions of CDlinux. GIMP is installed in the community version already. So they’d just need to add OO to it. The other two versions would still be tiny so the folks that didn’t want the software could use those.
Good point about flash block. I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
I understand where you’re coming from on the system rescue disk. But if all you had with you was CDlinux then why not use it? I think it’s a good idea to have that sort of flexibility.
hola.
yo estoy tratando de usar este cdlinux pero ninguna de sus versiones es capaz de arrancar en mi hp mini, en cambio en el portatil que tengo normal si que arranca sin problemas, no se mucho de linux, pero tampoco tienen un lugar donde te den un soporte o ayuda o alguien sabe donde puede ser?
a mi se me bloquea cuando sale el logotipo y de ahi no pasa.
un saludo
I have used CDLinux a few times in the past. I tend to use antiX, or possibly one of the PCLinuxOS family of CDs that I have on hand on the rare occasions that I need some sort of recovery. Nearly always that recovery involves modifying the boot manager in some way. What CDLinux does in a useful way for me is that it provides me a quick way to access Internet based functionality, mostly for reading news, forums, and Web based Email. Beyond that, I tend to use one of the many distributions I have installed, but CDLinux does work well for this specific purpose because it is quick and responsive.
@ dragonmouth:
Nope, you can easily install it into your HDD, by manually installing a bootloader, or simply adding new entry to the existing bootloader. And i would use CDlinux for the cause i have stated in my blog post
Hi, Jim.
Thanks for your comprehensive blog, which I just discovered. Very useful in that it allows me to get a general idea of the new distros and reduce my number of downloads!
As to CDLinux, you mention as a “con” that it “Can only be installed on a USB device or Windows C: partition.” Untrue! I boot CDLinux from an ext3 HD through grub. Simply open the iso and copy everything to its own folder at first level on your HD. To flesh it out, you may also dowload CDLinux’s devel and opt archives (which contain more useful packages, e.g. opera) to the “local” sub-directory of CDLinux.
Here is my grub listing, if it can be useful to someone:
title GNU/CDlinux
root (hd0,6)
kernel /CDlinux/bzImage quiet CDL_DEV=/dev/sda7 CDL_LANG=fr_CA.UTF-8
initrd /CDlinux/initrd
boot
Once booted this way, CDLinux will keep whatever you change to it in its setings directory and retrieve those changes at next boot.
I also like that CDLinux CE offers DOSBox, Wine and Java pre-installed. These nicely compensate for its relatively small size. If there’s a non-packaged, non-included or non-Linux program you need, you can launch and use it from, say, a usb stick or SD card, or even elsewhere on your HD.
Again, thanks for your blog, and have a great day!
CLÉ
how to install feeding bottle in CDLinux ? anyone help ?