How Linux Saved A Fast Food Giant

Yes, surprised, I say.

But I also have to wonder how many more of these stories we *didn't* hear, and how many all-Windows shops were just paralyzed for a day or two?

If he wanted small, Tiny Core would have been even better. It's 10 MB if you get the bloated version. The stripped-down (CLI) version is only 6 MB. Plus it has a 2.6 kernel so the necessary drivers would probably have been available.

As I read the article, "small" wasn't the sole consideration. I believe this guy had a pretty specific "PXE" netboot issue, too. I've never fiddled with that, but getting your boxes to boot by having an ethernet card run the kernel loading is just one of those Pee Cee oddities that just kill me.

Sure, Sun and other Unix vendors have long had a way to boot diskless workstations, but the real CPU is involved. It's not a function of the ethernet card. People who deny path dependency are just blind.

I've dealt with PXE, running LinuxMCE for a while before I found LinuxMCE too restrictive for my home multi-media set up. PXE can be a pain to deal with and doesn't work all the time, but is nice from the perspective of being able to distribute a running OS from a central location. Personally I found it over-kill for a home multimedia network, but I can see its value in firing up a diskless POS system in a commercial environment.

I use PXE booting to test (LiveCD ISOs) and install several Ubuntu versions, Parted Magic, Knoppix, DSL, etc. I even have a loopback mounted FreeDOS floppy image that I can write BIOS updates to and PXE boot.