[Fedora-livecd-list] $0.02 idea- persistent desktops

[Douglas McClendon]

I think I've mentioned this idea here sometime in the past couple years, 
but for various reasons, I'll bring it up now just for the digital record-

feature: persistent desktops

example obvious non-portable implementation:

Use the recently merged persistence feature, along with software suspend 
(aka hibernate) to a partition on the liveusb.

What this gets you, is a full system, including running state, on your 
LiveUSB.  The downside as mentioned is that you are tied to the specific 
piece of hardware that you suspended on (swsusp isn't cooler than that 
is it?)

dmc implementation:

your custom persisting livecd/liveusb, as part of its default boot 
scripts, launches qemu during boot.  It launches it from a saved memory 
state image, booting perhaps against the same running livecd/liveusb 
disk/os.  That initial saved memory image is stored on the live media. 
That running image is running a vncserver.  After the livecd/usb starts 
this qemu process from the saved state, it launches a vncviewer as part 
of the autologin process, pointing at that server.

Now then, for persistence, during shutdown, a signal is automatically 
sent to the qemu monitor to hibernate it (save ram state).  Now that new 
ramstate file, is stored via the current persistence mechanism (or 
perhaps a dedicated partition on the liveusb).

going even further:

it may in some narrow use cases be useful to stare the new ramstate file 
as an xdelta diff from the initial one stored on the media.

the persistence data, including these ramstate data could be stored on 
public servers, perhaps fedorahosted, or gmailfs, or whatever.

later...  -dmc/jdog