G-ZyX(tm) "Kablui-One" Release (v0.5.004 -- 2007.09.08)

Q: Gad-Zooks!  What is G-ZyX?

G-ZyX is 'yet another LiveCD' containing much of the best free software available on the internet, as well as a few unique creations and mogrifications of my own.

This fourth alpha "kablui-one" release, is the first fully functional and aesthetically pleasing G-ZyX release. This release is mainly a platform demonstrating the "ZyX Rebootless LiveOS Installer", as well as my "Snake3D" video game that I wrote 7 years ago. Please see the release notes for an overview of its key features. Feel free to just skip to the bottom section describing the ZyX Rebootless Installer, as that is the most ground-breaking aspect of G-ZyX thus far.

Q: Is there any documentation for this release?

Actually, yes, there are now some basic release notes available.

Q: How about screenshots?

           
G-ZyX: pre-boot (bootloader), boot progress (kabluisplash), kablui desktop

           
ZyX Rebootless Installer (and Snake3D): intro, destination selection, confirmation

           
ZyX Rebootless Installer (and Snake3D): install in progress, install done, (and random screenshot of splattered applications)

Q: What is the root/administrative password?

Oops... I guess that didn't make it into the shipped release notes, along with a misspelled alpha. The answer is, not too surprisingly - 'kablui'. I may remove it in the next release.

Q: What interesting features aren't mentioned explicitly in the release notes?

There are a couple that probably should have made it into the release notes. They are-

KabluiSplash and KabluiSession

The release notes briefly mention that the kablui desktop matrix gets prepopulated with applications, specifically gnome-terminal and firefox. What it didn't mention, was the kick-ass way this happens. Rather than watching your unusable desktop populate and start up, as happens with non-kablui distros, kablui covers this up with a nice fullscreen splash screen and progress bar. Thus, until your desktop is truly finished starting up and usable, all you will see is the nice splash screen. Underneath the kabluisplash, kabsession (my version of gnome-session), is using wmctrl to prepopulate the virtual desktops with fullscreen applications, i.e. firefox and gnome-terminal. The design motivation behind all this, is because gnome-session is deficient. If gnome-session worked as well as its designers hoped, then you would never need to restart your applications when you first boot and log in. Unfortunately gnome-session isn't yet up to snuff in that regard, and the regard of supporting a _nice_ fullscreen splash screen.

Installed Package Set

The release notes also fail to mention that unlike the Fedora-7 LiveCD, G-ZyX manages to squeeze in all of OpenOffice, Emacs, and Thunderbird. This is no small feat, and something did have to go to make space for these. What went was (almost) all language and font support other than US English, as well as speech synthesis support. The final G-ZyX release, will have an accompanying LiveDVD called "G-ZyX Accessible International Version" which will include all of those nice language and accessibility options. Also, I intend to use VirOS to create a different strain of Fedora-derived LiveCD, that I will call "F-ZyX, or Fork-ZyX" which will use basically the same package set as the official Fedora LiveCD. While I'm at it, I'll mention that the other ZyXs in my sights include "E-ZyX", an enterprise class version derived from CentOS, and "U-ZyX", a version of G-ZyX derived from Ubuntu(tm).

Q: What interesting features are coming in the next releases?

Self Reproducibility Support (aka VirOS)

Currently G-ZyX does not include the software to create derivatives of itself, from itself. That needs to change ;)

LiveUSB Support

Currently G-ZyX is not sufficiently compatable with the livecd-tools livecd-iso-to-disk tool to enable it to be put onto a usbstick. This will be resolved in the next release.

(usb stick) Persistence Support

Currently G-ZyX does not even include the experimental LiveCD/USB "Persistence/Overlay" support which I have published on fedora-livecd-list. This will be included, and hopefully made more robust, in the next release. The basic idea is to be able to plug in a usbstick with your LiveCD (or just use a LiveUSB), and be able to have your system changes persist between reboots.

LiveCaching Support

LiveCaching is something I had working in my 2001 TVOS LiveCD, and was very cool. The idea is to be able to cache the LiveCD onto a hard disk (or perhaps just a file on your winblowz ntfs filesystem), such that the LiveCD can be ejected, and the needed data read from the disk cache. This will be very cool, trust me...

Extreme Boot Speed Enhancements

There are many ways that LiveCD boot speed can be enhanced, including adapting the work done here to G-ZyX (and Fedora)

Rebootless Installer support natively in anaconda

The current ZyX Rebootless LiveOS Installer is still very primitive. The long term solution (hopefully available real soon now) is to just have a little checkbox in the normal Fedora Anaconda LiveInst installer, which toggles whether or not you want the installation to happen rebootlessly.

And much, much more...

bwa ha ha ha...

Q: What are the licensing terms for G-ZyX?

G-ZyX is currently a GNU/Linux(tm) based operating system distribution derived from Fedora(tm)-7. For now, consider the licensing terms as just a public GPL modification of Fedora with some interesting GPL bash script additions and my own trademarks and artwork replacing the fedora-logos.

Q: What are the dangers of running G-ZyX?

You are running my code on your computer.  How well do you know me?

Lets just say that this release of G-ZyX is designed to make your computer explode.  If it fails to do that, or anything else, well, wait for the next release.

Though for the adventurous- I might recommend a wonderful package known as QEMU. Though honestly I'm paranoid enough to believe that nefarious software (aka malware) could probably find a way to break out of that sandbox. The best way to test any software from an untrustworthy source is to download it, and install it only on a non-networked system, whose writable storage you plan on wiping afterwords.

Q: Where did the name "G-ZyX" come from?

- The 'X' is there for probably the same reason that Linus used it.  And an homage to a great tv show.

- The 'y' is a tribute nyx.net - the spirit of the night, and a reference to the fact that this is   *Y*our operating system.  New paradigms in OS customization will be explored with future releases.

- The 'Z' is for compression.  Duh.  And because gzyx intends to be the last operating system you'll ever need.

- The 'G' is for
  - GNU
  - God
  - g00dness
  - Gigabytes of great green greasy grimy gopher guts

Q: When will the next version be released?

I'm working on it...  Until then...

   Be seeing you (insert ascii art hand gesture here)

      -dmc (AT gzyx DOT org)