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Old 28th September 2008
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jggimi jggimi is offline
More noise than signal
 
Join Date: May 2008
Location: USA
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If you want a "portable" copy of the OS you can carry around with you, just install what you want on a USB stick. These are bootable on modern BIOSes. They behave just like a SCSI disk, as far as the OS is concerned.

Running the install script is one heck of a lot easier than adding your desired list of packages to a LiveCD. But if you really want "fluxbox plus your most favorite packages" on a LiveCD you are welcome to install them yourself. So-called "simple" Instructions are in the FAQ. Note that you will need someplace to store your apps, such as a hard drive or USB stick -- so you may as well install the OS anyway. It's easier.

A more complex rebuilding of the ISOs is possible -- start by installing the OS anyway, then mounting the ISO you want to change, replicating it into FFS disk, archiving the six to-be-mounted hierarchies, unpacking the six MFS tarballs, using chroot(8)to run the system as a virtual userland environment, adding your packages, recovering / removing files you added or changed to support chroot, rebuilding tarballs, restoring your temporary archive, remaking your bootable ISO. Note that step 1, above, is to install the OS. I'd stop there, if it were me.
From my perspective, placing a bootable BSD on CD/DVD media is nowhere near as easy as a simple OS install. At minimum, it requires a custom kernel configuration, which in and of itself isn't difficult, but it also requires modifications to /etc/rc which change every release, and a slew of ramdisk mounts and restores that make management cumbersome. Also, the ISOs are unsupported by the OpenBSD Project. It is their software, but in a custom configuration. If you have problems, there is only one support person. Me. And my best-effort support may not be sufficient. If you place the OS on a USB stick, it is a standard installation and is supported.
The ISOs are for OS familiarization by prospective users, and for hardware platform testing by existing OpenBSD users.

For the new user, I offer several X window managers so that people who are using Linux, Unix, or other BSDs as workstations may choose an environment with the same look and feel they are familiar with. From an advocacy perspective, it shows new (or soon-to-be-new) users that OpenBSD can be run as a desktop workstation; the OS has a reputation that using it as a workstation is difficult.

For an OpenBSD user, the ability to test the OS on prospective hardware is another valid reason to have X available. The variety of GUIs in that case are "nice to have" but are not required -- you can check video functionality with fvwm as easily as gnome. And much more quickly.

Last edited by jggimi; 28th September 2008 at 06:22 AM.
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