The DemoLinux CD allows you to use Linux without installation, disk partitioning or any other complex manipulation that prevents many people from giving Linux a try. This CD does not install Linux on your hard disk, but it allows you to play with it at length before you eventually decide to proceed with a full fledged installation.
This CD is made possible by a set of technical features in the Linux kernel and by some other free software (notably from S.u.S.E. and RedHat) that we use here.
Motivations
Our goal is to allow everybody to get an idea of what Linux can offer, and also to provide software publishers with a means to give out easy-to-use, no-hassle demos of their Linux products.
This CD is also a wonderful means of using Linux everywhere: you can take your favorite configuration with you in a CD that fits in your pocket, sit down in front of most PCs running another OS, boot from the CD and find yourself in front of your preferred environment in minutes.
Hardware requirements
To try DemoLinux, you need an IBM-PC compatible computer with a CD-ROM drive (better if it is an ATAPI one, and if it is fast - if your drive speed is less than 32x, be prepared to wait a lot), and:
This allows you to get a running Linux system with a pre-configured desktop.
WARNING : The DemoLinux CD works with a great number of hardware configurations, but it may happen that certain devices (particularly very old ones) are not recognized by this CD. This does not mean, however, that they will not work with a full installation of Linux. A full installation of Linux can support many more devices than this CD. We simply had to make some sacrifices (for example, printers and sound cards are deliberately not taken into account on this CD).
Also, to allow ease of use on many different computers, we use a graphics driver based on the VESA Bios compatibility standard supported by most cards, which can offer sub-optimal performance with your video card (the refresh rate may be less than with a specific driver, and the VESA driver will not use any acceleration features your card may offer).
Usage
Booting
If your PC allows it, the easiest way is just to boot off the CD. Most recent PCs allow this via a simple selection in the BIOS settings that you can access and modify at boot time by pressing some special key (look for a message like "Press DEL to enter BIOS Setup"). Just make sure the first boot device is the CD-Rom drive.
If you are unable to boot from your CD-ROM drive, then the next best solution is to make a boot floppy using the floppy image available on the CD, and then boot off the floppy. To make the boot floppy, start in DOS (or open an MSDOS window in your Windows) and insert the CD-ROM. In what follows we assume the CD is in drive D: . If it is in another drive, change D: accordingly. Then, in the MSDOS window, type CD D:\SUSE and then D:\DOSUTILS\RAWRITE.
This program will ask you for a filename; type BOOT.IMG. Then it will ask for the name of the floppy drive; type A:(or B: depending on where you put the blank floppy). After a few minutes, you will have your boot floppy ready. Reboot the PC leaving floppy and CD-ROM in place (make sure the floppy is in the A: drive). Make sure that your computer is set to allow booting from the floppy drive (drive A:).
Choosing the screen resolution
Once you have successfully booted your PC from CD-ROM or from the newly-created floppy disk you will see a presentation page with a information on the DemoLinux project. You can access the information pages by pressing the F1, F2, F3, F4, F5 and F6 function keys (copyright, screen resolution info., etc.). Take your time and read what you like - the boot process will only continue automatically (with minimalist settings) if you don't touch the machine for 10 full minutes.
To choose your screen resolution, type one of 1024 800 or 640 at the boot: prompt on the lower left corner of the screen.
Warning: While this should only apply to obsolete monitors, choosing an improper screen resolution (typically one higher than your display can handle) may DAMAGE your monitor permanently! The manual that came with your monitor should clearly state which resolutions are supported.
For best results, choose the resolution you regularly use on your machine. To get 1024x768, type 1024, to get 800x600, type 800, and for 640x480 type 640 (this is the default resolution).
Choose the language and keyboard layout!
After answering a couple of questions (language choice, keyboard layout), you will see a penguin appear on the screen, followed by a bunch of strange messages. Don't worry about these messages - they are part of the Linux boot process and may look odd if you've never seen a UNIX-like operating system boot before. Wait for the boot process to complete (loading an OS from a CD is a much slower process than loading from a hard disk), and after a few minutes you will see a nice graphical user interface appear with a funny background and what is called a "login panel".
Click on the penguin (the 'demo' user) then on the 'Enter' button, leaving the password field blank.
Using the disks
Normally, the DemoLinux CD does not touch your disks. This allows you to try Linux without risking the loss of your existing operating system, applications or data. However, as the whole system is running off the CDROM, it is impossible to install new applications or to modify most of the configuration files.
The demo user has almost no permissions to write outside its own /home/demo directory and on floppy disks.
Unless you take care to copy the files you create to a hard disk or a floppy disk, everything you do will be lost once you reboot the system, so take care to saving anything important on your hard disk or floppy disk!
Also, please remember that you have only limited memory available when running off the CD. This may cause problems if you run applications that try to create too big files. If some applications start to die abruptly, you have hit the limit: close all other applications and delete files you do not need in /home/demo or /tmp.
Finally, be aware that you may experience slow (very slow, at times) response times, especially when launching big applications. This is due to the slow speed of CD-ROM drivers (compared to hard disks) and is not indicative of the performance of a full Linux installation. A normal installation of Linux on a hard disk would be much faster!
You can partially solve the space limitation problem if you accept to use some of your free hard disk space to 'anchor' DemoLinux. This still does not require that you re-partition your disk. This will give you some virtual memory (swap space) and a hard-disk based /home and /tmp. You will be able to put much more data in your/home/demo directory, and, most importantly, find it again the next time you boot from the DemoLinux CD. The default values are 64 MB for swap and 32 MB for /home and /tmp.
To anchor the CD to your hard disk, just click on the anchor icon on the bottom panel. This will launch a program that will allow you to set up 'anchor'ed space on your hard disk. If you have more than one partition on your hard disk, the program will let you choose the one you wish to use. The 'anchored' space will be detected and your files and modifications will be available the next time you boot from the DemoLinux CD.
The anchor program just copies a few files in a linuxdmo directory on your disk, that takes up approximately 100Mb. You can erase this directory (from within DOS/Windows) at any time if you need to free up the space. This will, however, erase all of your DemoLinux files and settings.
Manual configuration of mouse and modem
If your mouse or modem is not properly detected, you can provide the values of some parameters at boot time by providing them on the boot: line after the resolution. For example:
boot: 1024 mouseport=ttyS0 modemport=ttyS2
would tell DemoLinux that you have a serial mouse on the first serial port (COM1 under DOS) and a modem on the third serial port (COM3 under DOS). The legal values for the modemport parameter are ttyS0, for the first serial port (COM1 under DOS), ttyS1for the second (COM2), ttyS2and ttyS3.
The legal values for the mouseport parameter are ttyS0, ttyS1, ttyS2, ttyS3 (for the serial ports), psaux (for PS2 mouses), inportbm (for Microsoft In-Port mouse) and logibm (for Logitech MousePort mouse).
If your computer does not have a floppy disk drive, add the nofloppy option on the boot: line.
You can boot in text-only mode (run-level 3) by giving the corresponding parameter on the boot line (example : boot: 1024 3).
To anchor in text mode, run the script /etc/rc.d/cddemo/anchor.tcl(DemoLinux 1.0), or/.plomb/.demolinux/ancrage/ancrage-suid(DemoLinux 2.0 sqq).
When anchored, you can configure your own X server (needed if your video card doesn't work, or simply to have better performance).