Re: [tlug] Live CD with Skype?

["David J Iannucci" <jlinux@example.com>]

On Thu, 22 Apr 2010 09:43 +0900, "Kyle Hasegawa" <kylehase@example.com>
wrote:
> On 4/22/2010 9:06 AM, Nick Hastings wrote:
> > I don't use skype and rarly use live cds, but google seems to have
> > many suggestions:

Thanks Nick... although I thought I had learned this lesson already, in
some cases it's still hard to remember that GIYF :-}

> You could also repack a custom live cd.  The advantage of this is that
> you can use a distro with which you are more familiar and you can add
> other programs that you may also use.

Thanks... as a matter of fact that was the first thing I tried!  I used
SUSE Studio. Very cool. (I'm a Gentoovian in real life, but this seemed
too easy to pass up.)  If I didn't mention it, this was for my wife to
use on a borrowed computer when she got to Japan. It has exactly the
software she usually uses at home on it, including her Firefox
bookmarks and her Thunderbird - old emails, settings and all, ready to
go. Very cool :-)

Unfortunately this SUSE Studio-created live disc wouldn't boot on the
(2006) hardware she's borrowing.  It failed with something about init
respawning too fast (caused by GDM I think).

So before I send her another copy of that live CD (I made a straw-
grasping attempt to fix the problem, taking the respawn flags out of
/etc/inittab), I wanted to also send 1 or 2 other live CDs that she
might try in case the Studio one was just a lost cause.  All she really
needs, when you get to it, is an off-the-shelf FF and Skype. The Skype
is particularly important to me because I'm missing my toddler twins and
wanting to see them, and them me, asap :-}

Google will tell you that MEPIS's live CD has Skype, but it's no longer
true. I found an older edition was still available on some mirror sites,
but it wasn't until downloading, burning and booting it that I found
(not surprisingly) that the Skype on it is really old and won't do
video. Without digging *too* deeply it didn't seem there were any other
"major" distros offering Skype on their (recent) live discs.

I wish I had thought of such contingencies before she left, but it
didn't occur to me for an instant that the SUSE Studio disc (which
tested out fine on a couple different machines here), would fail.

Tomorrow I'll be sending her the "fixed" SUSE, a Knoppix 4.0.2, which in
my experience has been the most reliable (boots on anything), even
compared to more recent Knoppices, and maybe one more random live CD,
along with a USB stick with the statically-linked Skype binary on it.

If none of that can be made to work... I give up :-/ Thanks for
listening :-)

Dave