Playing SRO from a bootable USB stick - who's interested?

[OlHybrid]

Since there is a thread about running SRO through Wine in Ubuntu here, which has had quite a few views and replies, I was wondering:

Who would like to have roughly the same, but on a bootable USB key?
Here's how that would work:
You get a stripped down GNU/Linux distribution on a USB stick, with Wine pre-installed, as well as e.g. Firefox to access the item mall, a preconfigured firewall setup, maybe a media player so you can listen to MP3s while playing, and why not a torrent client to d/l new SRO versions... No office suite or anything fancy though, 100% gaming.
There are also a handful of tools to help you install SRO and get it running.

You boot directly from that stick without the need to have SRO installed on the computer you're gonna use.

Advantages:
1. You can carry SRO around and plug it in whatever computer is available around (even a Mac would do I guess, preferrably Intel-based ones though)
2. Since you don't touch the hard drive, you don't have to worry about what nasty crap could be on said computer, for example if the rig belongs to a friend whose web surfing habits are... "questionable"
3. It's a legal copy of an Operating System

Disadvantages:
Technically, so far I see only two:
1. USB/flash disks have a finite number of writes they can sustain on each "cell" before the cell becomes unusable. That means if SRO starts updating a lot frequently, or if you uninstall/reinstall a lot, chances are the USB stick will die quite fast. Remember it's all relative terms.
2. Not all computers that can run SRO can boot from USB
Another potential (future) issue is that if Joymax decides to make GameGuard operational again, Wine in its current state will fail to run SRO. Risks are slim, though be aware of that.

Then general precautions when using USB apply, like, pulling out the stick while it's running can mean Big Ouch...

Of course, the USB could prolly be used for other games, but that's another matter.

Those are basic ideas and a rough framework, I'm merely checking if it's worth spending time and effort on. So, whatcha think?

[link2113]

lol i dont think anyone will u take u seriously with your avatar lol

Just Kidding

[cpinney]

sounds interesting, i dont really think i would have much use for it but it would be a cool thing to have. have you tried it yet, or is this just an idea?

[OlHybrid]

An idea, for now...
Honestly, I'm merely an enthusiastic Linux user, not quite reached the stage where I can create a distribution from scratch but that could be a good reason to look into it.
There are similar projects out there already, like this Live DVD to play quite a bunch of Linux games.

Also quite a few small distros, including:
- SliTaz, under 30 Mb ISO
- Damn Small Linux, 50 Mb ISO
- Puppy Linux, 90ish Mb ISO
- Slax, 190 Mb
And yet those include fully functional desktops, anyway you get the idea I hope.

There is also UNetbootin to help you install ISOs on USB sticks.
And of course Pendrivelinux.com.

So basically the resources are there. Motivation and time is pretty much what is needed the most.

[nohunta]

Why is it that rogues cant be skilled?

[cpinney]

30mb iso

true true, unfortunately i dont think me usb could handle it, how much memory would you think it would take?

[OlHybrid]

The beef is the SRO installation really (takes 2.3 gigs here + 900 MB download).
A clean 4 GB stick would be enough I guess.

[cpinney]

ahh i see, well maybe at some point i will try it, or someone else will.

[OlHybrid]

Ooh don't worry, if the project sees the light of day, I'll make sure you're among the first guinea pi... Ermmm I mean Beta Testers

[cpinney]

hahahaha alright then

[OlHybrid]

Actually it looks like I don't even need to bother at all: Slax might have everything needed with its extra modules.

[chickenfeather]

Hrm, I've just copied my entire sro install folder to my usb and carry it around. Then when I get to a computer, I copy the intall folder over and play.

[Amarisa]

knoppix it was made to boot off a dvd or a cd just install it all to a big enough usb (you can get 8gb easy and cheap that should be enough room to put a few games on there).

[PR0METHEUS]

I've been very interested in doing this lately. I tried it about 2 months ago using PendriveLinux. I already had PendriveLinux installed on a 2 gig thumb drive, so I configured it to automount a second USB drive (4GB) that contained the Silkroad files. It ran SLOW! I don't think I even got into the game. The log-in screen was taking forever to come up, and when it did, the animation made it unusable.

PendriveLinux itself ran nicely on both the desktop and laptop I tested it on, but it dragged to a halt when I tried to open SRO.

Maybe a smaller Linux distro like DSL would work, assuming of course you put wine on it. Maybe it would have worked better if the entire system was on a single thumb drive instead of the OS on one, and the .wine/ folder symlinked to a second USB drive.

[OlHybrid]

I've been very interested in doing this lately. I tried it about 2 months ago using PendriveLinux. I already had PendriveLinux installed on a 2 gig thumb drive, so I configured it to automount a second USB drive (4GB) that contained the Silkroad files. It ran SLOW! I don't think I even got into the game. The log-in screen was taking forever to come up, and when it did, the animation made it unusable.

PendriveLinux itself ran nicely on both the desktop and laptop I tested it on, but it dragged to a halt when I tried to open SRO.

Maybe a smaller Linux distro like DSL would work, assuming of course you put wine on it. Maybe it would have worked better if the entire system was on a single thumb drive instead of the OS on one, and the .wine/ folder symlinked to a second USB drive.

Sounds like the X server wasn't configured properly for direct rendering, so no hardware acceleration.

[PR0METHEUS]

I've been very interested in doing this lately. I tried it about 2 months ago using PendriveLinux. I already had PendriveLinux installed on a 2 gig thumb drive, so I configured it to automount a second USB drive (4GB) that contained the Silkroad files. It ran SLOW! I don't think I even got into the game. The log-in screen was taking forever to come up, and when it did, the animation made it unusable.

PendriveLinux itself ran nicely on both the desktop and laptop I tested it on, but it dragged to a halt when I tried to open SRO.

Maybe a smaller Linux distro like DSL would work, assuming of course you put wine on it. Maybe it would have worked better if the entire system was on a single thumb drive instead of the OS on one, and the .wine/ folder symlinked to a second USB drive.

Sounds like the X server wasn't configured properly for direct rendering, so no hardware acceleration.

I didn't think of that before, but I bet that's what it was. I don't think I had nvidia drivers enabled in pendrivelinux, unless they are enabled by default. I know pendrivelinux has compiz fusion (the 3D rotating cube, etc) but you have to enable it. So maybe I needed to just enable that first to get 3D acceleration to work.

EDIT: It finally works! I loaded CrunchBang Linux (from pendrivelinux.com) onto my thumb drive, installed wine, enabled the nvidia drivers, and changed an option in a configuration file. Loaded SRO, and it works.

If anyone's interested, here are the step-by-step instructions I did:

Spoiler!

1. Install CrunchBang Linux onto a thumb drive according to the directions over at PendriveLinux.com

2. Reboot the computer with the thumb drive plugged in (ensure BIOS is set to boot from USB)

3. Enable nvidia (right click crunchbang desktop -> System -> Restricted Device Manager -> enable nvidia -- or possibly ATI if that's what you use. I don't know if this supports ATI)

4. Open a console (hit ALT-F2 and type xterm and hit enter)

5. Edit xorg.conf file to enable direct 3drendering
5a. hit ALT-F2 and type xterm and hit enter
5b. type 'sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf' without quotes and hit enter (CTRL-O (not zero) to save, CTRL-X to exit)
5c. Scroll through the file to find entries for "dri" and "glx". Ensure the "dri" option is commented out and the "glx" option is not commented out (number sign or pound sign for comments)
5d. Locate Section "Device" with the entry of driver "nvidia" (ensure the driver is not "nv")
5e. In the "Device" section under the nvidia driver line, add a line for... Option "NvAGP" "3"
5f. Save and exit (CTRL-O and CTRL-X)

6. Install wine (sudo apt-get install wine)

7. configure wine (winecfg) -- NOTE: no 'sudo' for this command.
7a. In the window that appears, in the 'Applications' tab, set 'Windows Version' to 'Windows 98' (XP *might* work)
7b. Leave everything else default

8. Download and install SRO like you normally would
8a. Note: You can just copy the "Silkroad" folder from your windows (C:/Program Files/) folder to your thumb drive

9. Make sure your thumb drive is mounted (the mount point tends to be system dependant, probably a folder under /media.

10. Run SRO (wine /path/to/Silkroad.exe) where /path/to might be /media/cdrom/Silkroad/

11. Enjoy.

[PR0METHEUS]

*bumpity-bump*

[OlHybrid]

Hehe cool to see you keep working on it.
Crunchbag is a nice base (especially the Lite version) for that purpose, though it might be possible to go even deeper:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1081678&page=4
Check Whorehay's post.

[PR0METHEUS]

Hehe cool to see you keep working on it.
Crunchbag is a nice base (especially the Lite version) for that purpose, though it might be possible to go even deeper:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1081678&page=4
Check Whorehay's post.

Yes CrunchBang is working nicely. The only issue I have with it is it doesn't save all of my configuration settings. This is most likely because of it being based on a LiveCD. I have the OS on a 2 gig thumbdrive, and SRO on a separate 4 gig thumbdrive. So I had to create an entry in /etc/fstab to allow the crunchbang user to mount the other pendrive. Upon reboot, it doesn't seem to save that setting (or some other settings).

It's not a big deal to me because I can just retype the 2 or 3 commands when I find it doesn't save it. I guess I could recreate the .iso file that it uses so these settings are saved as default and redo the thumbdrive with it.

Likely wouldn't be an issue if I was using one large thumbdrive instead of two small ones.

As for a more 'minimal' setup, the links you posted look promising. Another alternative is the Gentoo (gentoo.org) minimal install CD. Get a minimal base install of Gentoo (with a custom kernel) and only add the few packages you need for wine, nvidia, and wired/wireless networking. No need for all the other apps that come with CrunchBang

You could probably go even further than that once it's set up... Reconfigure the USE flags to recompile the entire OS/Kernel/packages to only include support for needed features. (no need for ATI kernel drives on an NVIDIA system.)

[OlHybrid]

Yes CrunchBang is working nicely. The only issue I have with it is it doesn't save all of my configuration settings. This is most likely because of it being based on a LiveCD. I have the OS on a 2 gig thumbdrive, and SRO on a separate 4 gig thumbdrive. So I had to create an entry in /etc/fstab to allow the crunchbang user to mount the other pendrive. Upon reboot, it doesn't seem to save that setting (or some other settings).

It's not a big deal to me because I can just retype the 2 or 3 commands when I find it doesn't save it. I guess I could recreate the .iso file that it uses so these settings are saved as default and redo the thumbdrive with it.

Likely wouldn't be an issue if I was using one large thumbdrive instead of two small ones.

As for a more 'minimal' setup, the links you posted look promising. Another alternative is the Gentoo (gentoo.org) minimal install CD. Get a minimal base install of Gentoo (with a custom kernel) and only add the few packages you need for wine, nvidia, and wired/wireless networking. No need for all the other apps that come with CrunchBang

You could probably go even further than that once it's set up... Reconfigure the USE flags to recompile the entire OS/Kernel/packages to only include support for needed features. (no need for ATI kernel drives on an NVIDIA system.)

Regarding the disappearing changes, that's kind of weird, since the point with PendriveLinux (over, say, UNetbootin) is AFAIK persistence.
They might only consider "user settings are saved" as applying to that definition?

I'm not too familiar with Gentoo, might check it out (though I've always had the impression it compiled everything for the machine you ran it on in the first place).

[PR0METHEUS]

I think the persistent changes are mostly user data. The system mounts a second partition on the drive read/write so you can save data. It might allow you to save changes in other places, like /etc, but I think some of the files are generated on the fly. For example, it seems (without a lot of closer inspection) that /etc/fstab is generated on the fly as the system boots and detects all of the installed drives and partitions. So any changes you make would get overwritten. I'd have to double check that.

You're correct, Gentoo is a source-based distribution. However, it is compatible with binary packages. You could install the entire system, kernel, compilers, libraries, modules, apps, all in source code... or you can install the base Gentoo system from source, and use binary packages for all of the applications - then run a few commands to recompile the entire installed system to your system specs. There's a lot of options on how you want to install it.

Granted, I don't know how well it works with full system recompiles, but theoretically I think you could have the system installed for, say, an AMD processor, then switch your hardware and recompile everything to support Intel instead. It's all in the USE flags.

[firefox6]

how about a usb stick 4gb pre-installed Linux and the newest sro all set up and ready to go.
and just charge say $30to $50 for the drive with everything installed.

if you get something going soon let me know maybe it can be branded and sold.

[PR0METHEUS]

how about a usb stick 4gb pre-installed Linux and the newest sro all set up and ready to go.
and just charge say $30to $50 for the drive with everything installed.

if you get something going soon let me know maybe it can be branded and sold.

Not a bad idea I haven't used my Linux-SRO thumb drive in a while, at least since before the 100 cap, and it's actually two separate drives since the OS is on a 2 gig thumb drive. 4 GB stick with a small distro and SRO should work nicely.

[firefox6]

the thing is would anyone buy one for like $30 to $50? the higher end if they were branded like with srf or greatnova.com (my sro site)
4 gb stick is like $10 usd+ shipping cost + labor (making files to be copped to each drive) + shipping(Canada/US)

the worst thing is that shipping cost more then the drive
and also you cant sell a free Linux OS also could not use the sro logo on the item as it is copyrighted.
lots of little things to look at.. i am going to order a few(5 to 10) sticks to sell and see how much it cost.

[PR0METHEUS]

True, you can't sell Linux since it's free/open source, but you can sell service. That's what Red Hat does. You pay for a subscription to their services, security updates, tech support, etc. You can actually go to Red Hat's public FTP mirrors and download all of their source code. You can even use it all for free. You just have to strip all of the "Red Hat" branding and logos.

With the SRO-USBDrive, you'd be selling the service of building all of that software and setting it up. Actually, it should be pretty easy to set the thumb drive up so you can play SRO from within Linux, OR play the same SRO installation from within Windows (windows installed on the computer, not USB) so the user can pick their favorite OS.

I don't know what a reasonable price would be for that kind of setup.

[OlHybrid]

I think the persistent changes are mostly user data. The system mounts a second partition on the drive read/write so you can save data. It might allow you to save changes in other places, like /etc, but I think some of the files are generated on the fly. For example, it seems (without a lot of closer inspection) that /etc/fstab is generated on the fly as the system boots and detects all of the installed drives and partitions. So any changes you make would get overwritten. I'd have to double check that.

You're correct, Gentoo is a source-based distribution. However, it is compatible with binary packages. You could install the entire system, kernel, compilers, libraries, modules, apps, all in source code... or you can install the base Gentoo system from source, and use binary packages for all of the applications - then run a few commands to recompile the entire installed system to your system specs. There's a lot of options on how you want to install it.

Granted, I don't know how well it works with full system recompiles, but theoretically I think you could have the system installed for, say, an AMD processor, then switch your hardware and recompile everything to support Intel instead. It's all in the USE flags.

Thanks for the additional info.
Another neat little distro: CDLinux.
From their website:
"You can use CDlinux as your “Mobile OS”. Install it onto a USB key, take it anywhere and turn any PC/Mac that supports booting from USB to your own workstation, with the same user interface. CDlinux ships with an up-to-date version of the Linux kernel, Xorg, XFce, and many popular applications, like Firefox, Pidgin, GIMP, and even Java and Wine."
I've only had a quick look at the standard version (64MB), and I think it provides a clean interface. Hardware was auto-detected at boot.

As for selling branded USB sticks, IMO it's all boils down to users interest really.

[PR0METHEUS]

CDLinux sounds interesting. There are a bunch of different USB-bootable Linux distros out there at http://www.pendrivelinux.com. I'm not sure if any of them have wine included by default, but there are some pretty small distros on the site.