Re: Making a localized, educational live-usb version of Netbsd? Possible, and is worth it?

["Thomas Mueller" <mueller6724%bellsouth.net@localhost>]

> I myself am not a very good Dutch speaker, but I would like to help a
> local Linux foundation here in the South of the Netherlands that deals
> with the education sector.
 
> They use Linux Mint/Ubuntu/Kubuntu for their demonstration but after
> showing them that Netbsd doesn't bite, I am considering the
> possibility of assembling a live-usb in Dutch, based on Netbsd,
> preloaded with internet/office/educational and language-specific
> localized applications, ready to go and to boot from any laptop or
> desktop.

> Has anybody ever done it?

> Is this technically possible and would a newbie like me be able to
> assemble anything decent?

> Would MaheshaNetBSD or Jibbed a good starting point?

> Any other ideas/inputs will be appreciated.

> Ottavio

I have installed NetBSD amd64 and i386 to USB sticks for stable branches of 5 
and 6, and current, don't plan to update 5.2_STABLE any more, and work more 
with current than releng-6.

I keep src and pkgsrc trees on hard drive, GPT-partitioned, and do the 
compiling work on the hard drive.

One big advantage of current branch is using labels with NAME= in /etc/fstab, 
and not having to worry about the device name that will be assigned to the USB 
stick.

On NetBSD-current, I use GPT on the USB sticks with a root partition and swap 
partition, am not sure if swap partition is really needed, but just in case.

Boot code goes on root partition, and USB stick can be booted directly without 
GRUB or anything else special.

I do better with FreeBSD than NetBSD because of better stability, 
easier-to-handle device nodes, and ports system tends to work better than 
pkgsrc.

Tom