Welcome to the LXF 85 DVD

If you've already read through our cover feature this issue, on Novell's new enterprise software line-up, you may be itching to try the company's latest Linux release. So we're really pleased to offer SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) 10 on this month's DVD - directly bootable and installable. SLED takes the best of SUSE and adds extra polish and stability, making it one of the best choices for corporate Linux deployments and home workstations. Whatever distro you're currently using, it's worth trying just for the ultra-slick desktop and XGL 3D effects! To install SLED, boot your PC from this DVD -- there's more info in the magazine. Also, see below for info on making a CD version of the distro.

But there's plenty of other software to explore on this month's disc. Take a look at ReactOS in the Distros section for a hugely impressive open source Windows clone. Although the project is only at version 0.3.0, it's already capable of running various Windows apps and moving along rapidly. If you've got an old PC sitting around doing nothing, burn ReactOS to a CD-R and give it a spin! See LXF 80's HotPicks section for a lowdown on the OS.

And then there's PCLinuxOS MiniMe, a trimmed-down version of the popular distro we included on LXF 81's coverdisc. You can burn the ISO to a CD-R and boot from it -- see the mag for more info. Don't forget to check out our Desktop, Development, Internet and Games section for all the hottest new releases, and if you have any comments or suggestions about the disc, drop me a line!

Click here to download and print out a PDF inlay card for your own case.

Mike Saunders
New Media Editor
Linux Format

Creating installation CDs from the DVD

For SLED, you can create writable CD ISO images for installation on a DVD drive-less machine. This can be done from within an existing Linux installation. Using the Jigdo system, you can assemble CD images from the DVD contents within minutes - but you only need to run one command. Mount your DVD and enter the following in a terminal:

sh /mnt/cdrom/Distros/SLED/mkiso

This will create five ISO images in your current directory. Of course, you'll need to change /mnt/cdrom to another location if your DVD is mounted elsewhere. To create the ISOs somewhere else, give the path as an argument, such as:

sh /mnt/cdrom/Distros/SLED/mkiso /tmp/iso

Note that you should not cd to the directory on the DVD when running this script. It'll be slower because the script will be unable to open the cache file used to speed up the process. If you're short of space, you can create single ISO images (here for disc 2):

sh /mnt/cdrom/Distros/SLED/mkiso -d 2

If you get an error like '../../Essentials/Jigdo/jigdo-file: Permission denied', your DVD has been mounted with the noexec option, which prevents running programs directly from the disc. For security, this is implicit if the DVD is mounted with the user option. To fix this, copy the file Essentials/Jigdo/jigdo-file from the DVD to somewhere in your path - /usr/local/bin is a good choice. mkiso will then use this in preference to the file on the DVD.

For Windows machines, run winmkiso.bat, which will generate five ISO images in your C:\ directory.