Portable Ubuntu

[ago]

>  ago -- but:
>  - couldn't find any source for portable ubuntu, perhaps it's not on SF?

I hope that demonccc will contribute to the discussion here, from what
I can see, portable ubuntu is essentially composed of:

* binaries for: colinux + xming + pulseaudio + linux.sys + kernel (I
do not think any of those was modified, so you can grab the sources in
the respective projects)
* 1 initrd (which can be opened up)
* 1 configuration file in XML (which you can read)
* 2 batch programs (which you can read), those essentially start
colinux with the above configuration, xming, and pulseaudio
* 1 disk image (which you can loopmount)

This set-up is similar to AndLinux which, IIRC, was used as a base for
PortableUbuntu.
I am not sure what modifications if any went into the initrd, I cannot
check the initrd now, but I assume that it comes from some other
colinx bundle. As for the root disk image, as you can see in
http://colinux.wikia.com/wiki/UbuntuBase and as confirmed by my
preliminary experiments, it seems that a fairly standard dd partition
image dump will work with very few changes. Making the same disk image
accessible from two different set-ups might be a bit more challenging,
but the main issue is about the robustness of the
colinux/xming/pulseaudio set-up and, as you point out, about the
efforts involved in maintaining another custom kernel/initrd.

Ago