Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo speed comparison to other distros

[Kevin Chadwick <ma1l1ists@yahoo.co.uk>]

> > 
> > It's one of Blueness projects based on Hardened Gentoo. It loads into
> > ram at boot (you need something like 4 gig of ram) which takes ages
> > from dvd but could be from an ssd/hdd (defeating half the point
> > without a ro switch though). It can update from the net once booted too.
> > 
> > Once done everythings in ram so firefox can literally pop up like a
> > web advert upon execution.
> >   
> 
> In other words, it's a distribution designed to not allow persistent
> storage that might possibly be poisoned,

Not really, that is one benefit, but don't forget that BIOS, HDD
or Video card firmware could have been altered.

The main goals are reliability and leave no trace elements but it does
have some added tamper ensurance yes.

I didn't spell it out because you should check the site to see all the
details and would be bound to get it a little wrong without checking
myself.

> and instead get much of its
> security-conscious code updated over the network.
> 

Security conscious code??? What do you mean? That says to me things
like PAX brute force protection??

Even though it is from a DVD it can be updated just like standard linux.
The problem is, if you run out of ram then things get killed.


> (Frankly, this sounds quite nice for kiosk environments.)

Could be if you have a good enough network connection for Linux kernel
updates or cut it right down ;-)

-- 
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'Write programs that do one thing and do it well. Write programs to work
together. Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a
universal interface'

(Doug McIlroy)
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